The SaaS (software as a service) landscape within the digital marketing space is extremely vast. There are endless numbers of companies whose products come with a diverse number of features. The small business owner who needs to navigate this forest of choices can quickly become overwhelmed.
The bright spot is that 99% of digital marketing software comes with free trials extending from 2 weeks to 2 months as in the case of Constant Contact, an email provider. However, I am sure you would much rather be focusing on your business than test driving a conglomeration of software options.
The following suggestions address five key aspects of digital marketing which include email, graphic design, project management/ collaboration, online presence analysis, and content curation.
My opinions on each of these is based on the software’s ability to meet my specific business needs, is supported by excellent customer support, and provides value. I also included an honorable mention or free option for each category.
Email:
This one is a toss up. I have gone back and forth between Constant Contact and MailChimp. Constant Contact s one of the pricier answers out there, but it’s layout and ease of development appeal to me. As for customer service, they don’t offer 24 hour service, but their hours are reasonable, and their CS is located right in Loveland, CO just 30 minutes from my home. So they score the local points as well.
Some negatives are they don’t offer auto responders and canceling your subscription is like trying to cancel a gym membership. You can’t just do it online, you have to call into customer service. Now the folks in Loveland are real nice, but they will pitch you to stay.
Don’t really need to talk to a human? Is your email list less than 2000? Do you like free? Mailchimp would be a good alternate option for you.
Project Management:
Team Work is a great choice for small businesses with features such as messenger, email, time tracking and billing, calendar, and several 3rd party software integrations such FreshBooks and QuickBooks.
Now if you have this addiction as I once did to Post It notes and you need free software, Trello is your best option. The digital version of post it notes, it gives you a great place to manage your project and even day to day operations. It’s paid version comes with more bells and whistles. Trello is one of the most widely used free SaaS online.
Graphic Design:
Now I don’t advise you do your own graphic design unless you have experience in it. But if you need to boot strap and do your own, then Canva is a great choice. It is simple to use and free. It offers a variety of assets including fonts, images, and backgrounds. Many of which are free or cost $1. For most small jobs I need done on the fly, I use Canva. For more complex tasks I hire a professional or I use GIMP, which is very similar to Adobe Photo Shop but is free and has a huge community of users and helpers.
Content Curation:
Need a place to manage all the contact you collect online? Feedly is a great place to find, share and save online content. It took the place of Google reader and it is also free. A small monthly fee will add some additional options.
Pinterest. Yes Pinterst comes in as my second mention in this group. Pinterest provides a great place to not only curate your content but to share it on a popular social platform. Your content can also be kept private until you’re ready to share it.
Online Presence Analyses:
Need to know how well you rank for your keywords and sector phrases? Want to find out about your SEO stats or maybe spy on your competition to find out what strategies they are using and how they rank to you? SEMrush is my go to tool for this. It’s the tool I use for SEO, competition analyses, social metric measuring and online analyses. It has a bevy of features and is very user friendly. Once you know how to use it, you will be impressed with the amount of knowledge you can garner from its reports. If you want to shorten the learning time, hiring a consultant to set it up for you, then you’re off to the races.
Honorable Mention: Moz has one of the most read blogs in the digital marketing space, and their founder Rand Fishkin is an SEO godfather. It’s monthly SEO online presence tool is used by some of the biggest brands out there.
Do you have some better suggestions for tools? Have you had experience with any of the ones I mentioned. Would love to hear your thoughts.
