With so many no-code and low-code options on the table now, it’s easy to get your marketing stack working on autopilot. In this easy to digest guide, we break down the top tools you need to get your marketing team working more efficiently.
A well-oiled marketing machine isn’t made overnight. There are many moving parts to ensure marketing success. And, of course, you want your teams to be as productive as possible, which is why you want them to have the most efficient tech stack. Leaning on marketing automation tools will transform your marketing processes and allow your team to be as productive as possible. In this article, we will look at marketing automation tools that will ramp up many of your traditional marketing activities such as email, social media, customer management, and more. The five tools we will discuss in this article are Buffer, BuzzSumo, HubSpot, MailGun, and Zapier.
Let’s dive in!
Buffer
Getting high-quality engagement on social media is not an easy feat, especially when you’re building your following organically. If you want to reach your target audience across multiple social media platforms, it’s best to be able to manage everything in one spot. Not only can you schedule your social media posts across all of your platforms, but you can monitor your feeds, engagement, and keep track of performance and analytics on the Buffer platform.
If you work on a large social media team, or conversely, a small marketing team and your social media posts need to be approved, you can do all of that within Buffer. You can draft, get approval, and schedule posts all in one place by setting different levels of access for team collaboration.
The analytics within Buffer are in-depth to give you insight into everything to measure your social media impact. You can analyze both organic and paid social media, post insights, story insights, and more. Buffer also allows you to build analytics reports that you can share with your team and key stakeholders.
Buffer Pricing: Buffer pricing differs based on your needs – with different tiers for their “publish” and “analyze” features. Every tier has a free 14-day trial, so you can test out what works best for you and your team. Additionally, Buffer for Business allows you to pair both features together in a package that gives you everything you need for social media automation.
Buzzsumo
When it comes to content marketing, especially in a highly saturated market, getting your content in front of your target audience can take some practice. These days, everyone has a blog, so your competitors are likely blogging and creating content to feed their funnel and nurture buyers through the buying process. No matter what industry you’re in, you’re going to be competing for visits, views, and ultimately, revenue.
As you produce content, you want to keep an eye on what other people in your industry are publishing online. Buzzsumo allows you to find out which content is popular within your industry and where the content is being published. Buzzsumo can allow you to gain insight into content, industry influencers, important organic search keywords, and competitive analysis.
While many of these features are traditionally manual, BuzzSumo makes it much easier. Rather than combing through the internet, you can use BuzzSumo to do the dirty work for you. Enter a keyword, and their tool will provide you with content and keyword trends to make it easier than ever before to shape your content strategy. Plus, that’s just the tip of the iceberg – BuzzSumo has many more features to automate your content research process.
Buzzsumo Pricing: BuzzSumo has a free 30-day trial so that you can try before you buy. Then, their pricing tiers range from $99 per month to $499+ per month, depending on your needs.
HubSpot
HubSpot is every SMB’s one-stop-shop for marketing automation. Not only is it an excellent CRM tool that will make your company more efficient, but the marketing automation within HubSpot stands far above similar tools. As we’ve already outlined, a lot of marketing activities are highly repetitive and time-consuming. To reduce the repetition of traditional marketing activities, marketers leverage these great tools.
While HubSpot has many notable features, let’s focus on a few highlights for teams of any size. HubSpot has an advanced email marketing feature that lets you create nurture campaigns, trigger-based emails, and personalized campaigns. Additionally, HubSpot integrates right with your browser and email host to alert you in real-time when your prospect or contact visits a specific webpage or opens an email. HubSpot is also beneficial for your sales team to book meetings, conduct sales outreach, and for your customer success team to support your current customers.
HubSpot Pricing: If you want to get started with HubSpot, you can do so for free. As you scale your teams and your business, you can get a subscription to HubSpot that varies in price based on which product you need and the size of your business.
MailGun
MailGun is the email service that all developers should be using. MailGun is built with API in mind so that you can create and send emails with accuracy and ease in the format that works best for you. The email tool from MailGun is drag and drop, which means no coding is needed to get started designing beautiful emails. If you do want to integrate your emails with an application you’re already using, MailGun has great APIs for popular coding languages such as Java, C#, Ruby, Python, and more.
Not only will MailGun help you launch an email campaign, but they have backend analytics to help you gain insights on email performance. That way, you can continue to sharpen your email marketing strategy without having to do a manual analysis of email trends – which no one enjoys doing!
MailGun Pricing: MailGun is free to sign up for and has multiple pricing tiers based on company size, email sends per month, and additional features. Their coolest payment tier is “Pay As You Grow,” where you can try out the platform, then you pay only for the number of emails you send.
Zapier
Zapier is the marketing automation tool that makes nearly everything much more efficient. In an ideal world, we could automate every manual process we do every day. With the help of Zapier, you actually can automate nearly everything you do. Zapier connects all of your apps via triggered workflows known as Zaps, to get your data from point A to point B, to cut out the messy middle work for you and your team.
The best part about Zapier is that there is no-coding required to use it, so you and your team can get started zapping with ease. Zapier can help you automate over 2,000 apps that you use, which will increase your team’s efficiency. Whether you want to automate data collection, email campaigns, or support tickets, Zapier has a solution for you.
Zapier Pricing: Zapier is free to start using, with their most basic level of access. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise company, there is a Zapier plan for you, ranging from $20 per month to $600 per month.
With the help of these five essential tools for marketing automation, you’ll be able to save time, enhance your current marketing tech stack, and transform your marketing processes. Automation helps you remove repetitive, manual tasks from your workday and spend more time on the tasks that matter most. To learn more about automating your workflows, connect with a Workload Automation expert today.