16 Kick-Ass Marketing Tools That Will Save You Time

As a small business owner, you wear many hats; including marketing guru. But you likely don’t have the time, nor the budget to make everything happen. These 16 kick-ass marketing tools will save you time and money. They will help you improve your content, SEO, social media and creative.

Caution: Some people may take you for a marketing guru upon using these awesome tools. Drum roll please…

Tools for writing amazing content

You may have heard that “content is king”. Quality content is crucial for driving inbound marketing results. These tools will help you write clear, concise and grammatically correct content. It will even help you create a killer headline!

Hemingway App

This tool will make sure your writing is clear and concise. It even offers suggestions for improvement. It’s like having a personal editor (or kid) review your content to make sure it’s clear and easy to read. The Hemingway App offers a web or desktop version. Our favorite part of this application is how easy it is to use. We especially like the color coding, for the visual people like us!

Grammarly

Spellcheckers are a great tool and common. Yet a lot of people overlook the grammar they use. We get it, you might not remember all the grammar rules that you learned in school. This is exactly why we love Grammarly. It reviews your content for grammar errors, it highlights where the errors occur and offers an appropriate suggestions for improvement. You can even get the chrome extension to make it easier to have your grammar checked on the regular.

Co-Schedule Headline Analyzer

This marketing tool is great and also important. Everyone spends hours writing great content, only to consider the headline as an afterthought. Yet, if your headline isn’t engaging, no one is going to even read your content piece. Think of the headline as a gatekeeper. HubSpot states, “You can increase the traffic to your articles by as much as 500%, based solely on the headline.” That’s huge! To make sure your headline rocks, this tool will give your headline a score out of 100. It rates you on:

  • Word balance between common, uncommon, emotional, and power words
  • Headline type (if your headline is too generic)
  • Length
  • and more!

SEO report cards

SEO is critical, no doubt. Besides the common Google Analytics, Google AdWords and MOZ, there are some other tools. The following tools will give you a quick SEO overview. You can see what’s working, what’s not and what you can do about it.

MozBar

This is another chrome extension that we love. This extension is conveniently located under your search bar. It allows you to see an overview of various on-page SEO factors specific to the site you are visiting. This includes domain (DA) and page authority (PA). We use this to help us:

  • Quickly determine how we are doing with SEO (is our DA going up? and by how much?)
  • Compare our DA against competitors
  • Determine how authoritative a site is. This helps when deciding who to reach out to for guest posts, backlinks etc

SEO SiteCheckup

This is a great web based tool for providing a holistic overview of your SEO efforts. It looks at what you are doing right, where you are falling short and how you can improve. All you have to do is enter your website’s addresses. After a few moments, results populate and give you a score out of 100. You can then dig deeper into the results, seeing where you fell short. What’s even better is that it tells you how to fix your issues.

A bigger email list

Aside from social media, your email list is key to being able to engage with your audience. SumoMe creates more opportunity to increase your e-mail list. It offers a suite of easy to use online tools that are great for converting website traffic. You need to register for SumoMe and then install the plugin on your site. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be technical to do this. SumoMe provides great instructions on how to install it. From there, the tool is intuitive and easy to use. You can select which specific tools you want to install. There are particularly two that we are a fan of:

SumoMe List Builder

This allows you to add a pop-up box to your website to get more email addresses. Again, it’s intuitive and easy to use. You can customize the copy and design to best suite your website and offer. You can also select:

  • How long the app waits before popping up
  • The frequency of the pop-up
  • How many times the pop up will show to the same user. For example. you can select “Do NOT show the pop-up to the same visitor again until 1 month has passed.” This ensures you don’t annoy your visitors with the same pop-up reappearing.

SumoMe Scroll Box

This is like the SumoMe List Builder. Some people may even prefer this one though because it’s less obstructive to the reader. Scroll Box is another tool to help generate more e-mail addresses. It’s a pop-up box that appears as the reader scrolls down a page on your website. The pop-up appears at the side of the screen. This ensures the reader’s screen isn’t obstructed but it’s enough to capture attention. You can customize the messaging, but the purpose is to ask your visitors for their email address.

Photoshop guru (without photoshop)

Image Optimizer

Often you will need an image optimized for different platforms. Whether that’s the web, Facebook, Twitter etc. Each platform needs different sized images. Image Optimizer is perfect for people who aren’t technical. It allows you to resize images. You just have to upload the image, enter the dimensions and then poof! You create an image to the required size. Bonus: To help you out, BufferSocial posted a great article. ‘The Mega Guide to Ideal Image Sizes for Your Social Media Posts‘ will tell you which size you need to resize images to for social media.

Killin’ it at social media

To make social media seamless and to get more website traffic, you’ll want to check out the following:

Buffer App

You may have already heard of Buffer but we thought it was important to include. Buffer is a tool that pre-loads your social media posts at scheduled times. You can use it across all social media platforms, except for Instagram (of course). But Instagram never makes it easy for marketers. Anyway, Buffer even suggests optimal posting times to help deliver top results.

Bitly

When it comes to social media, less is more. This is why a long URL link won’t get you far when it comes to sharing content on social media.

  • Bitly will take whatever url you input
    • ie: https://growthlabs.agency/blog/is-the-static-call-to-action-a-thing-of-the-past
  • It will then create create a shortened version of it
    • ie: http://bit.ly/1ScMCFh
  • You can even customize the url
    • ie: http://bit.ly/StatCTA

It also tracks how many link clicks that custom URL receives. This helps if you want to do some A/B testing on different posts.

SumoMe Share

The promotion of content is just as important as crafting a great piece of content. Social media is a great avenue to help that sharing happen. If you want users to share your content on social media, you need to make it easy to share. SumoMe Share is yet another addition to the SumoMe plugin. It creates a pop-up at the side of your web page (or wherever you should choose) with social media share options. This makes it easier for users to share your awesome content! Thus, generates more website traffic as well. Again, you have the flexibility to decide:

  • How often the pop-up appears
  • Text and color options
  • Which social media platforms you want to offer for sharing and more!

Become a design genius 

Canva

This is a ‘go-to’ tool for a variety of design needs. If you need something designed that’s quick, beautiful and affordable, you will love Canva. You can start off with a template and then completely customize it. This online tool will help you create designs for the following.  

  • eBook covers
  • Social media posts
  • Documents
  • Blogging and ebooks
  • Marketing materials (poster, business card, menu)
  • Social media
  • Events (invitations)
  • Ads (leaderboard, skyscraper)

Easelly

Unless you are a designer, creating an infographic can be a challenge. Easelly is a great tool for creating custom infographics. The many templates help get you started and inspired. Once you get going, you have the ability to customize.

PicMonkey

If you need to edit a photo but aren’t familiar with Photoshop, you’ll love this tool. It’s easy to use. You upload an image and then can start editing. You can crop, filter, add text, add overlays and even select themes.

Place It

If you need to bring your vision or design to life, you will love Place it. You can create a mockup, showcasing your product or design “in action”. From packaging, coffee mugs, billboards, apparel and more.

Typeform

If you need to create any sort of form or survey, then you need Typeform. From customer surveys, to event registration, to application form. Typeform allows you to design a beautiful and simple online form. The unique form interface makes it less overwhelming for users by only showing one question at a time. We like the flexibility that you can include images, videos, and more.