As a marketer working in a small business, you may find yourself wearing many hats. You may find that you are responsible for a lot more than just the marketing and that the growth and existence of the business very much depends on you. Therefore, your KPI s are most probably measured by: How many leads you bring in How much revenue you bring in How many products you sell How much costs you are able to keep down etc Put simply, you find that you aren t just a marketing manager but also a Sales Rep, a Designer, a Copywriter, an Accountant, a Bookkeeper, an Admin Manager and an IT guy all in one! Well done! Give yourself a clap and Hats off to you! It s people like you that help small businesses active and thriving in Australia and considering that over 90% of businesses are indeed small then you are doing very well for the economy. Now how do we make your job easier in return?
AUTOMATION AUTOMATION AUTOMATION AUTOMATION AUTOMATION Automation is Key! I cannot emphasise enough the amount of time this will save you. You may even get to have a proper lunch break again. You know the one where you leave the office for 1 hour and spend some time relaxing. As a small business owner of 2 businesses running for over 7 years now I have stumbled upon a few helpful automation tools that have been instrumental to the growth of my businesses. I d like to share these with you along with their expected long-term costs, reviews and comparison to others in the market. I hope at the very least this helps save you time in researching the best one to use.
Marketing Automation
http://www.hubspot.com/ Marketing automation is the use of a software to help nurture contacts more efficiently. It consists of email, workflows, lists, blogs and social tools that work with a large database of contacts to nurture them down the funnel. The biggest issue is that many marketers get the wrong software with little to no support on how to actually use it and very little time to learn how to use it. The beauty of HubSpot is that it s extremely easy to use. I would say this is the most user-friendly software on the market right now. It comes with massive support, an academy where you can quickly learn everything and hundreds of thousands of educational blogs on all things to do with marketing. This Marketing Automation Software helps you create automation for all parts of the Funnel. Whether you re Attracting, Converting or Closing potential customers or trying to Delight existing ones HubSpot will help you do things quicker and smarter! It s also cheap! The basic package is as little as $9/day and you can always upgrade once you start to see great results.
Social Media Automation
http://everypost.me/ This clever tool will help you engage with people across all your social media accounts through a single dashboard. Automate all your social media and post on all platforms from the same dashboard! Wouldn t that save you so much time! You can also create custom, targeted streams to see the conversations relevant to you as they unfold. Then engage with your audiences quickly and consistently across your organization to ensure you re on top of customer service. Best of all, be accountable for all Social Media efforts with easy to read reports. You can visually track follower growth and find out which content resonates most with your audience. This tool will help out with such tasks as: Content Curation Post Customization across all social platforms Social Analytics and reporting Scheduling & Publishing Collaboration - when you have a team or an agency See Comparison to others overleaf
Price & Function Comparison From US$9.99/month Connects to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Dropbox & email Curates Content from YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest and RSS feeds Photo Editing with 18 filters to choose from Trending Hashtags are integrated and updated every 30 minutes Automatically customizes your content for each network before cross-posting Allows Scheduling From US$9.99/month Connects to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare Allows Scheduling No Photo Editing No Curated Content No Hashtag Integration No Cross-post customization No connection to Pinterest, Tumblr, Dropbox & email From US$10/month Connects to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn Allows Scheduling No Photo Editing No Curated Content No Hashtag Integration No Cross-post customization No connection to Pinterest, Tumblr, Dropbox & email
Content Automation
https://www.google.com.au/alerts Automate your Content and Research. If you want to increase the speed at which you write blogs/articles/etc and you want to limit the amount of time you spend on research then use Google Alerts. Put in any keyword you want to see and then select a source. Choose from News, Blogs, Video and much more! Depending on what your content is about this could save you hours in research time. Automate it by setting up daily or weekly alerts. This tool can also act as inspiration for what you write next as it shows you what is trending and what is making headlines at the moment.
Communication Automation
http://mailchimp.com/ Automate your Emails and get on top of your Customer Relationship Management! With MailChimp, you can easily create a beautiful template, upload a mailing list and send regular emails. The software will automatically manage unsubscribes and report on all engagement with your emails so you have solid data on what content is working and what is not. The Free package allows you to send to up to 2,000 contacts a total of 12,000 emails per month. Not that you d be spamming your customers that much but still a good limit to have And best of all it helps you set-up Work Flows. About Workflows A workflow is the schedule, trigger settings, and content for your automated emails. Trigger settings cover a variety of different criteria, like a subscriber s birthday, sign up date, or when someone makes a purchase or downloads a file. MailChimp offers many workflow types with built-in triggers and other configuration details for common activities. If our pre-built options don't fit your needs, a Custom workflow type is also available. After a subscriber receives the first email in a workflow, they ll receive every email in the series in sequence, unless they are removed from the workflow. You can edit triggers for any email in your Automation workflow when you pause sending.
Price & Function Comparison Free for up to 2,000 Subscribers Let s you either design your forms entirely from scratch or pick from over 300 templates Allows Auto-Responders Email Tracking Flexible interface to design HTML emails Image Hosting provided No Phone Support No Landing Page Creator From US$19/month Email Tracking - you can tell exactly who has opened your email and exactly which links that they have clicked on and when Allows Auto-Responders Offers both Phone & Email Support Aweber seems to steer you towards using one of their pre-baked form templates. No Design Interface No Image hosting From US$15/month Let s you either design your forms entirely from scratch or pick from over 500 templates (not as pretty as MailChimp) Allows Auto-Responders Email Tracking Has a Landing Page Creator Offers both Phone & Email Support Limited reporting, no conversation tracking
Competitor Analysis Automation
https://moz.com/products/pro If you do want to go down the road of competitor analysis then you should be comparing things like online visibility. How much more visible are they than you and for which keywords? Also, what are they doing online to help with their visibility that you aren t implementing yourself? I won t provide a comparison table because there is simply one software out there that takes the cake. And that is MOZ. At a very reasonable price, MOZ will tell you how your competitors are ranking online compared to you. It also has a chrome extension that allows you to analyse their on-page SEO so you can see how they have Optimised their website. It also provides you with much more data on how to Optimise each page and maps a particular keyword to a page for you. Website errors? Competitive research? SEO opportunities? Moz Pro deciphers the data so you don't have to. Another clever way to Automate and save time!
Accounting & Bookkeeping Automation
https://www.xero.com/au/ There are many accounting software's out there for small businesses but this one takes the cake. Not only are you able to automate all invoices and staff payslips but you can also connect to your bank account and pull out Profit & Loss reports whenever you please. (amongst other reports) Unlike other tools out there (MYOB), this one also let s you create recurring invoices & late payment reminders so set them up once and let Xero do all the work for you. Also, connect to PayPal & eway for automatic payments into your bank account for easier cash-flow management. Worried about design? Xero has just released a new layout editor which allows you to customize nearly any aspect of a financial report.
Price & Function Comparison From $25/month Creates Invoices Creates Recurring Invoices Creates Expenses Creates Recurring Expenses Connects to Bank Account Automated Payroll & Superannuation Can work with multiple accounts From $35/month Creates Invoices Creates Expenses Connects to Bank Account Automated Payroll & Superannuation Can work with multiple accounts No Recurring Invoices option From $19.95/month Creates Invoices Creates Recurring Invoices Creates Expenses Creates Recurring Expenses Time Tracking No connection to Bank Account No automated Payroll & Superannuation
https://www.gimp.org/ Think Photoshop but rather than pay thousands of dollars for an Adobe license you get it for FREE! Yay. There are no limitations with Gimp. You can create website graphics, banners, buttons and patterns from scratch. You can edit images and import existing Photoshop files. This Open Source software is also very easy to learn! There are numerous video tutorials and forums where you can ask the community for help. Save thousands on software and a Graphic Designer by doing it yourself. 1. Design Software
https://www.picmonkey.com/ If you re not in a position to be learning GIMP and only require basic editing of your images then this my be a much better tool for you. It s much easier to learn & use. The Free trial comes with core editing tools, basic touch-up features, effects/filters, textures, frames and overlays. And if you require something a little more special, then you only need to pay $8/month that s like 2 cups of coffee right? 2. Image Editing Software Best of all download the app and use it on your smartphone or tablet where all your photos are stored anyway. which is probably