Any product goes through two phases: pre-production and post production. While pre-production is mostly the technical work involved in the design and manufacture of that particular product and was the sole factor a year ago in the successful run of that product, it’s the post-production work that has emerged as the new winner. No doubt that the product itself must be good and in compliance with the market needs, but it doesn’t connect directly with the consumer. You must first create a launch pad from where your product can take off and reach new heights. Moreover, after your product is in the market, the services must be satisfying for the customers. Connecting to the consumer base was a field job before but thanks to social marketing that you can now reach them directly from your laptop. But you need some specific tools to make the most out of it. So let’s hear it from them:
AMAZON S3:
Any problem with your database can cost you lots of bucks. Your website must always be in service and ready for the consumers. You must invest in a good storage solution that will host all the data of your website so that if there’s any technical issue with your website, the viewers are not affected. Such an efficient and economic solution is Amazon Simple Storage Solution.
It costs around $0.010-$0.085/GB which is real easy on your pocket.
SPROUT SOCIAL:
See, in a time when social media is so important from marketing point of view, you need to utilize this medium to the fullest. It’s a straight highway to your consumers. All you need to do is step on the road and you’re in a crowd of potential customers. So now that you’ve landed there and any such person is asking you a question regarding your products/services and you’re not responding to him/her, what impression do you think you’ve left behind? It’s obvious and proven in fact that if your response timie to the queries of people on your Facebook/Twitter page is more than an hour, you’re too late to impress them. So what you need is an application that can cater to all such problems and present you with analysis and reports on your performance. So we recommend Sprout Social for that purpose which is a social media management tool.
Plans start at $39/user/month.
KISSMETRICS:
You can only improve if you know what’s wrong. So wouldn’t it have been better if you could find out what content on your website do people like and what’s useless? Turning your visitors’ base into customer base is so simple yet so far. If they get what they want, they’ll stay or else find a new address. So tracking your users is one solution. But there are many users who are alike in terms of their search and requirements and it would be a lot easier for you to track them if you can make a group out of them. Moreover, it would be easier for you to track a specific group and make appropriate changes into your website. Kissmetrics is such an analytics service that enables you to build customer funnels.
Plans range from $150-$500/month.
CLICKTALE:
What if you cannot see your customers online? You can see each of their activity from every mouse movement to all the clicks, thanks to Clicktale. It’s an analytics program designed to help you know your visitors/customers better. They use heat maps to help you visualise the usage distribution across different pages of your website. You can also record user sessions for analysis purposes.
Both free and premium plans are available.
UNBOUNCE:
A/B split testing is a measure to eliminate the leakage points. If you’ve invested in a machine, you want it to work properly and give you back profitable returns. Similarly, suppose you’ve bought some back links on another popular and a not-so-popular website to divert some more traffic to your website. The traffic finally starts coming but it in fact was more due to the weaker website which had cost you lesser than the popular one. So you can do A/B testing on both those links and keep what’s beneficial to you.
Unbounce is such an application that’ll make the laboratory work much easier for you and help you build a better working platform.
Plans range from $149-$199/month.
HUBSPOT:
Inbound marketing is very different and difficult from outbound marketing. While it’s relatively easy to reach your customers through social media, it’s very difficult to convince them to sign up for your website or any event. While you can track a person’s online trajectory, the valuable personal information is only available via the person himself. That’s where sign-up forms and landing pages play a vital role and Hubspot comes into play. Hubspot helps you design those landing pages, forms and automates the marketing process. After you’ve received the info, automatic emails are sent to the clients regarding any proposals/sign-ups. Moreover, Hubspot also helps you improving traffic to your website via SEO services.
Plans range from $200-2400/month.
ACT-ON:
Each customer is unique and must be treated that way: this is the principle of Act-On. So when a person visits your website, depending upon his/her activities, this app ranks it in the potential customers’ list. So while you’re reverting back to them via email or social media, you know your priority and you know how to deal with a particular client. For example, you might even contact directly a person if he’s on your top priority list. Plans are high-end but so are their services.
Plans range from $500-6120/month.
So summing it all up, these 7 applications will give the helping hand and rescue you from any problem related to online marketing. You can always trust them. They all serve different purposes and have different areas of expertise but all share the common ground of marketing strategies. Depending upon your requirements, you can choose one, more or all of them. Let us know the names of the lucky ones and don’t forget to share your feedback!
