The world of marketing gets more complex each day: what was once print, radio and TV has grown to include social media, digital marketing and mobile and much more. On top of that, each has their own algorithm, platforms, and trends, and each seems to change at the drop of a hat.
How much easier would our lives be if we could simplify?
As we wrap up 2013 and plan for a more exciting 2014, let’s examine some ways that we can stay ahead of the curve, reduce work, increase productivity, and above all, simplify the process of doing great marketing.
Here are some thoughts on three marketing tools that are here to stay and that will help us in the coming year.
Social Media:
Between establishing your online presence, creating original content and expanding your followers, it’s hard to find time to actually post the content! What’s more, the best times to post – between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. – are also usually the busiest hours of the day.
If you have a huge client meeting that’s going to take most of your afternoon, but you also have to debut a social media campaign for a brand that must go live during the same time, how do you accomplish both?
Social media schedulers take care of this problem and so much more. These tools are essentially your extra set of hands in getting content out when and where you want it. Scheduling posts ahead of time also means you can enter content as you create it, eliminating the risk of forgetting later down the road.
We recommend: Hootsuite
Hootsuite is an especially great tool as it allows you to add nearly all of your social media hubs and schedule posts in one place. Worried about over-posting characters for Twitter? Hootsuite will alert you when you’ve gone over your allowed characters, shorten your links and generate #hashtags for your posts. You can even keep track of what people are saying about you on these sites by adding news feed columns to monitor the social interactions you’re having; from messages to retweets, you can keep up to speed on how your audience is responding to your posts.
Website Analytics:
We recommend: Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides endless insights on traffic, conversions, downloads and referral traffic to your site. Whether it’s knowing what pages are most frequented on your site, or how users are getting to your page, Google Analytics comprehensively covers it all.
File Management:
As we all know, online marketing involves a lot more than just a website in today’s digital age. From social media campaigns to reporting, keeping your information organized and as accessible as possible is vital to your marketing programs success.
We recommend: Drobox
Dropbox allows users to store their files in the cloud, which means that their information can be accessed from anywhere. Whether you are at the office, home or walking the dog, you will be able to access any of your stored files at any time and on any type of device. Dropbox also makes file sharing a completely seamless process for you and your team.
While these tools can help simplify your marketing efforts, marketing itself is of course far from simple. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed with handling the marketing for your business, contact us. We are here to lend a helping hand and give your company the expertise it deserves.
On the subject of SEM…
Being a newbie, I have found that Google will have me pay only a penny above the top bidder if I’m bidding high to get the top spot. So, I bid an outrageous amount for my max CPC, but never pay anywhere close to that. I only pay a penny over the sharpest knife in the drawer, yet still have maintained an average position of 1.1 with a 98% impression share, and almost 2.3% CTR.