February 22, 2018
FMarketing and sales practices and technology are always evolving. As professionals, if we continue to do what we have always done, we’ll miss out on opportunities to grow. At SmartBug Media, our team is full of knowledge hogs. Whether it’s the latest and greatest or someone else’s tried and true, we want to know everything there is to know about it.
Despite being a 100 percent remote team, we participate in bi-weekly all-hands meetings via Zoom (our “Brady Bunch” images are awesome). During a recent gathering, each SmartBug team member answered this question:
In addition to HubSpot (which is the foundation of our technology stack), what marketing tools have you discovered in the last year that have significantly helped you grow as an intelligent inbound professional?
The recommendations were too good not to share with our community of subscribers.
Paul Schmidt, Marketing Strategist
Recommendation: Moz Keyword Explorer’s Competitor Functionality
"This is my secret sauce to understanding the breadth of topics that competitors are owning in organic search. As part of any SEO-related campaign, I use this tool to see if there are other keywords that I should be targeting, as well as to understand the kinds of content that rank well for a given set of topics."
Nicki Kamau, Director of Marketing
Recommendation: Databox
“When I want to report on a campaign’s effectiveness, HubSpot is my initial go-to, but sometimes I want to verify or expand on the data I’m seeing, and then I hop into Google Analytics. With Databox, I’m able to configure a dashboard for myself that aggregates the data I’m looking for from both platforms, automatically. Databox also delivers the dashboard to my inbox, saving me time.”
Jennifer Lux, Marketing Strategist and Team Lead
Recommendation: Spiceworks
“This excellent resource for IT companies conducts and publishes market surveys frequently that quantify the evolving technology landscape. Spiceworks provides research to help optimize IT lead generation with meaningful market insights.”
Drew Cohen, Marketing Strategist and Team Lead
Recommendation: LocationScan by Yext
“Many times, when it comes to local SEO, companies don’t know where to start. By having a nifty little tool that shows your directory and citation listings, LocationScan by Yext can really give you a great foundation to build off of.”
Other team recommendations include the following:
GaggleAMP for social media engagement and reach amplification
SEMRush for competitive intelligence
Lumen5 for AI-powered video creation
Hotjar for website heatmaps and visitor recordings
ReturnPath for email deliverability
BrokenLinkCheck.com checks your website for broken links :-)
Google Tag Manager for managing JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics
CoverageBook, a reporting tool to measure impact of public relations
Email on Acid measures email across the most popular clients, apps, and devices
Have you had great experiences with these marketing tools? What is the SmartBug team missing? Share the tool or tactic that helps you make your inbound sales and inbound marketing more intelligent.
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