Hello, hello! In keeping with the theme of my series, here is part five of the social media tools for small businesses conversation! You can read part four in the series Here, which introduces and breaks down the concept of inbound marketing/why it’s such an important option that businesses should consider as they try to grow their customer base and interaction online.
To sum up what I wrote about in my last post, inbound marketing involves turning leads into customers into brand/business promoters by producing quality content that addresses the needs of/engages a company’s various audiences. To review, the major themes or goals of inbound marketing are:
- content creation
- lifecycle marketing
- personalization
- multi-channel communication
- and integration.
So this is all fine and dandy, but where does a small business start if they decide inbound marketing is the way to go? It takes a lot of time, money, and creativity to come up with a solid content marketing plan, and to maintain it and to attain ROI (i.e. return on investment). However, software exists that does all this for a small business. This software automates creation of content, it finds potential leads, it handles distribution, and measures ROI. There are various options for software out there, and today I am going to highlight five that help with ROI. Please note, as always, I am not paid to endorse any of these options, and I personally have not used them myself.
Positioning itself as the go-to solution for small to medium-sized businesses, Hubspot has made a name for itself as one of the top software/service options for inbound marketing. Specializing in helping business owners who are not very tech savvy, Hubspot allows business owners to blog, find leads, manage social media, and do analytics all from one interface. It also offers SEO (search engine optimization) features and tips (learn more about SEO here and here), training for its resources, certifications, and even conferences. With a starting cost of $300/month, it is one of the cheapest options for small businesses and those looking to start out. It even offers a free trial period to see if you want to stick with the company.
Marketo to is an inbound marketing service that works a little differently just because it mainly focuses on business-to-business (B2B) marketing. This service helps a business focus in on the sale cycle of the customer, focusing on helping to create content that can be shared across many platforms to get the attention of new leads. The software Marketo offers helps companies create profiles of customers that hones in on a customer’s behavioral paths, and are shown content based on that profile. In addition to these features, Marketo is especially known for its ROI reporting tools. However, Marketo is not very user-friendly to the technologically challenged out there, and its starting price is a lot higher than Hupspot’s, starting at $750/month upwards to $25,000/month. However, this software appears to work best if you already have an idea of which direction you’re headed with your company’s marketing, and what sorts of audiences you’re trying to attract.
Well, because it is late and this post is about to run very long, I’m going to stop here. I will post a part 2 to this post later, which will include two more services/software options that stood out in my searches.
Until then, arrivederci y’all!
