As marketers, we rely on various tools to help us with our day to day work. Unfortunately with COVID, you might have discontinued some of the more expensive tools you were using. Luckily for us, some fantastic cost-effective options are available. Most of them have free versions so you can upgrade to the paid version for better features. Here are some simple yet powerful tools I would recommend for any SME tech marketer These tools are especially useful if you are a one-person or small marketing team.
Tools for better writing
Grammarly, Hemingway, and Ginger. In my previous article, I spoke about why tech marketers should get into writing. Regardless of what you are writing a second pair of eyes helps make it better. Grammarly helps identify how clear and engaging your content is and also to identify tone. Hemingway analyzes how easy your content is to read. For example, if you have several long sentences, continued use of passive voice, these issues are raised. Ginger, which I discovered recently, helps minimize punctuation errors. Ginger also gives you alternatives to writing style and tone. You might think one tool is enough to do it all, but it helps to use a least two get the most optimal results.
Tools for graphics and artwork
Canva and Pixabay. Hats off to the marketers who do graphics by themselves! This is true of most one-person or smaller marketing teams. Pixabay has a good selection of free images you can use for social media posts, slide decks, and brochures. Once you get these images, you can use Canva to create the artwork, whether it is a tweet, a flyer, or an infographic. Canva also has its own set of images, so you can choose between the two. Canva also works for creating basic logos, brief videos, and even simple website and newsletter templates. It might take time to get these templates to working status, but it’s a great tool if you want to work independently as an all-round marketer.
The tool for website analytics
Google Analytics. Before you invest in any marketing efforts, it is crucial to know how your website is performing. By setting up Google Analytics, you can identify the pages with the highest visits, how users navigate from one page to another, the sources of your web traffic, and more. Plus, if you are running a campaign and want to make sure you track the traffic from it, you can use Google’s UTM builder so you can create a trackable link. You can present a lot of insights at the next board meeting with GA, so make sure it’s set up. The best part is most of its features are free so you can get an in-depth view of your website performance at no cost.
Tools for content strategy
Moz and Google Keyword Planner. You probably have a bunch of blogs and articles going out every 2-3 months. And don’t forget the whitepapers and product brochures. Moz and Google keyword planner is ideal for finding out the type of keywords you should use in your content. Google Keyword Planner is usually used for paid AD search but you can still use it for organic content. You can compare traffic volume, SEO value, and competition between a set of identified keywords to find the combination that works best for your content. And if you are getting pressured to use buzzwords, you can use stats generated from these tools to show that buzzwords in the content won’t have much impact.
Tools to leverage your Twitter presence
TweetDeck and Hashtagify. Any organization selling a technology product or service must commit to a proper social media strategy. Channels like Linkedin and Twitter are a great way to stay on top of conversations and engage with your community. Tweetdeck allows you to track conversations happening around the # relevant to your business as well as the trending # in your region. It’s a fantastic way to identify the conversations you want to comment, like, and retweet. Hashtagify helps you select associated keywords to include in your tweet. This is an easy way to improve the engagement of the tweet, which helps get more eyes on your profile.
These aren’t the only tools you can use!
These are just a few of the tools you can use at a very minimal cost. There are plenty of other great tools that come with paid subscriptions. Hootsuite and Sprout Social for social media, Hotjar for the website, and Mail Chimp for email marketing are a few examples. Stay tuned for another article on more great tools SME tech marketers can use.