With 2020 forcing more companies to rely on online marketing channels, I thought I'd share some of my favourite marketing tools to help SMEs get up to speed. If this is your first time on my blog www.christopher-moss.com then welcome! As a quick introduction: over the last 10 years I have run a small group of companies all within the online marketing space, you can learn more here.
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Here are some of the most useful platforms worth considering in 2021:
1. HotJar
What is it:
HotJar is a platform that allows you to record what your users (possible customers) are doing on your website. Once set up, you can record your users' screen to see how they use your website. Sounds a little spooky, but it's really useful. If you have advertisements or call to action buttons, then you can also see a heat map of where is being clicked.
Why Use it:
By seeing how your website is being used, you can analyse how to improve it. For example you might notice that 8/10 users scroll 30% of the way down your home page and then leave. As a result you might choose to put some key information and a call-to-action within that first 30%. If you can see what your users are doing, you have a chance of directing them to the relevant information they are looking for.
What is it:
Moz is a website analysing software that allows you to understand the performance of your website. If you put your website URL in, it will let you know all sorts of data, including how you can improve it. It can even tell you if your 'Google Local' business listing is optimised correctly.
Why Use it:
Moz will let you know how Google "sees" your website and then show you how to improve it in Google's "eyes". If you can measure the performance of it, you have a chance of fixing it. If you are wanting to improve your visibility on Google, this is a great place to start. Moz also has a number of blogs and guides to help you.
What is it:
Canva is a really simple to use 'drag and drop' design platform. It allows you to design everything from social posts to videos and presentations. With hundreds of templates, it's a great way to create nice looking graphics quickly. The tool has over 30 million users (at the time of writing) making its founder Melanie Perkins one of the youngest female CEOs of a tech start-up valued over $1 Billion and the third richest women in Australia.
Why Use it:
Canva allows you to create professional looking graphics without the need for more complicated design software. Whether you want to create a professional looking report, social post or social ad, this can be a great option. The best bit is that its basic offering is FREE. That being said, for a small monthly fee, the premium version is well worth is.
What is it:
Hubspot is a FREE online customer relationship management software that allows you to manage your sales, marketing leads and service of customers in one place. While their basic version is free you have to pay between £100 - £1500 per month to unlock the full power of Hubspot. See how we used it to attract and manage over £2m in revenue.
Why Use it:
If you currently keep customer data on an Excel or Google Doc, this could be a great addition for managing contacts and 'sales pipelines'. Hubspot is like a gym: if you use it correctly then it can be amazing, but it will take some time to tailor it to your needs. They have a great training academy free to use though and couldn't recommend it any more highly.
What is it:
Facebook Ad Manager is the ad platform that allows you to run social media adverts across Facebook and Instagram. If you have watched the Netflix documentaries The Great Hack or The Social Dilemma, you will know the power this platform can have if used correctly.
Why Use it:
Almost all of our clients use Facebook Ad Manager to help them market - in a fully trackable way - to potential clients or customers. It's not uncommon for our clients to spend £3,000 and receive £12,000+ back (4x return without taking into account future business). If you are looking to run digital marketing, this is a great place to start testing.
What is it:
Unbounce is a platform that allows you to very easily and quickly build landing pages (a basic one page webpage that is optimised to convert traffic.) These can be created very easily and can be integrated with your current website/URL. No coding skills needed.
Why Use it:
If you are trying to generate leads online, this could be a really quick and easy way to get pages live and test different product offerings. You will need to drive traffic to these webpages via your website or ad campaigns, but they are quick and easy to test, rather than building a whole new website to find it makes little difference.
What is it:
Rev allows you, for £1 per minute, to get your videos subtitled. You will then need to use a different platform to add and resize the subtitles for different platforms. You upload your video to Rev and within a few hours, the subtitles will be sent back.
Why Use it:
Adding subtitles to your videos on social increases the chance people watch it. Playing the video sound while in a public place isn't always possible, so having subtitles allows the watcher to still take value from the video.
What is it:
Google Analytics at the most basic level is a platform that allows you to see how many people are on your website. Diving into it a bit deeper and it can provide stats on everything including how long a user stayed on your website or from where a user viewed your site. Using UTM codes, you can also see how effective marketing partners and campaigns are.
Why Use it:
It allows you to understand a number of things including: How are people finding your website (via social, via Google etc); how long are they staying for; how many pages are they viewing; what pages are people viewing. All this data allows you to understand what's going on, so you can set about improving it. (We used this and Google Search Console - see below - to get one of our websites hitting over 1 million monthly views - it can be very powerful).
What is it:
Google Search Console allows you to check and make sure your website is running smoothly in Google's eyes. You can also see other data, for instance where you are raking for certain keywords on Google.
Why Use it:
The data can be useful for a number of reasons, but mainly to increase your SEO traffic. For example you might notice that you are ranking 4th on google for 'Best letting agents in Cardiff'. You could then choose to improve that content in a hope to attract more people to click on the content, eventually getting you to number one. On one of our sites we are currently seeing a 15-20% increase month-on-month using this approach.
What is it:
Airtable is an interactive, easy to manage live excel platform. Very similar to Google Sheets or Excel, but with the ability to add images and other interactive features very easily. A spreadsheet database hybrid that can be customised to your needs. It's free to try and I would recommend checking it out.
Why Use it:
It can be used for hundreds of different reasons but the most common use within the marketing space is to manage cross collaboration on marketing copy and asset creation. When managing our high profile entrepreneurs' personal brands, we use Airtable to manage the communication of their assets across their Personal Content Managers and Personal Content Assistant.
Tips and Tricks
1.
Before setting out to implement any of these tools, I'd recommend coming up with your strategy. If you don't you could waste hours building or learning the wrong thing.
2.
Rome wasn't built in a day. Remember these things can take time: it took us over 5 years to get over 1 millions views on one of our websites.
3.
Depending on your situation, it might be better to outsource some of these platforms, but I'd recommend having a basic understanding.
I'd be happy to talk over some best practices for these - add me on my social channels and drop me a message - LinkedIn - Facebook - Instagram
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