75. The Marketing Technology Stack every Small Business Needs
With so many marketing tools and platforms out there, it's easy to feel overwhelmed on which ones to choose, and can quickly lead to overspending.
On this episode of the High Performance Marketing Podcast we'll review the marketing technology stack every entrepreneur and small business needs. From email marketing to social media management to analytics, the right marketing technology stack can simplify your efforts to connect with your ideal customer, help you make the best use of your time, and make sure you're not overwhelming your marketing budget.
Transcript
Welcome to The High Performance Marketing Podcast, a show focused on helping entrepreneurs and small business owners connect with their ideal customers using simple marketing and quality content. I'm your Marketing Guide, Ali Garbero.
Building your business with modern technology is both overwhelming and expensive. But entrepreneurs and small to medium-sized businesses like ours depend on digital marketing technology to reach a larger and targeted audience. How else are we going to increase brand awareness in a digital age?
It’s amazing what’s available to us not previously available in any other era of business. Technology acts like that magical genie in Aladdin, that proposes to grant your business its every wish. Technology is amazing in its ability to help automate processes, reach new customers and save you much needed and highly valuable time.
Did you know that in 2022, an annual study showed that there were 9,932 marketing technology solutions available? With so many tools and technologies vying for your attention, how do you know which are the must haves for your business so you only invest in what you need?
On today’s episode of the podcast let’s explore the 5 marketing technologies and tools I believe every entrepreneur and small business owner should invest in for optimizing online success.
First, your website.
This one’s a no-brainer. For nearly two decades, having a website has been a fundamental part of owning and operating a business. People are information consumers and are far more likely to do business with a business that has a well written and beautifully designed website. If your website isn’t making you money, it’s most likely that it isn’t optimized for conversion. Schedule time to talk to me about that, if that’s what’s happening on your end.
If you have the ability to hire a website designer who designs and hosts the site for you, great. Most of us will use a website builder like Wordpress, Squarespace or Wix. I personally use Kajabi. The reason I love Kajabi is, first not only do they have nice modern template designs, their templates are also really simple to use and edit, adding my own personal brand style and logo to it. There are limitations to editing their templates, but nothing that makes it enough of a con for me not to use them.
Kajabi has an amazing customer support team, so as you build your site out, if you get stuck, their chat feature is the best I’ve experienced in regards to quick response times, knowledgeability, and simple answers. Making updates to your site in Kajabi is simple.
Why I chose to use Kajabi as my website builder is because of how robust their technology is. For a monthly subscription of about $199, I can sell my products and services, they provide a check out page so I can capture online payment, you can build and sell digital courses, I can host my podcast on the site, create unlimited landing pages, their blog feature allows video options as well, and they have email marketing with simple to use templates and automations. This means I don’t have to pay for an additional email marketing provider like Mailchimp, Active Campaign, or Constant Contact.
Which leads me into the second marketing tool
...every business needs and that’s an email marketing platform. If you don’t use Kajabi, most likely your website builder won’t have email functionalities, so you’ll need a separate tool for delivering emails to your database or audience base.
I mentioned a few just a minute ago. Some of the more common names you’ve heard may be Mailchimp, Mailer Lite, or Convert Kit. I tried Convert kit and didn’t love it. It felt a bit too complicated and required zapier integrations that quickly just made things feel harder than they needed to be.
My two favorite email marketing platforms are Mailchimp and Flodesk. What you want and need most from an email marketing platform is the ability to track the analytics. Open, click rates, unsubscribe rates, numbers like those are important so you know what content is resonating with your audience, who’s opening your emails and clicking on your offer links.
When it comes to pricing, mailchimp and flo desk will run you around $20 a month.
I can’t over emphasize the impact of email marketing.
For every dollar you invest in email you can expect a $44 return on your investment. So if you aren’t growing your email list, stop every other marketing activity and start there. Why? Because 66% of consumers make a purchase because of an email. If you want to learn more about email marketing listen to my episode called 50% more sales ready leads. I’ll include the link in the show notes.
Third, let’s talk about project management tools.
You know how it feels to not have enough hours in the day to remember and manage everything on your plate. A project management tool is an amazing way to optimize your time, delegate tasks to an assistant or team members, and track the progress of your projects.
Even if it’s just you as a solopreneur, a project management tool is the best way to keep everything organized in a simple way for you to see what’s on your plate and set deadlines for getting things done.
Project management or PM tools like Asana, Monday dot com and Click up are some of the best available and I personally use Asana because the user experience is simple. If you don’t have priorities around the things you need to get done, then everything becomes a priority and those projects you wish you had time to work on never get done.
Asana also allows me to communicate with others and assign them tasks and check in on their progress without the need to send another slack message or email.
PM tools like Asana or Monday will run you on average about $30 a month.
Fourth, is a CRM tool.
Your Customer relationship management tool is a technology for keeping track of current and potential customers, as well as a history of your interactions with them.
You can also set follow up tasks and reminders to help with the sales process so you know when the right time is to follow up with a lead or potential customer - or a past client for renewal or ongoing services.
The goal of a CRM is simple: Improve business relationships to grow your business. Some well known CRM tools are found in Monday dot com, Pipedrive, and of course the granddaddy of them all Hubspot.
Why I say that, is because I don’t believe there’s a small business feature Hubspot doesn’t offer. From a website, to email marketing to your CRM. The one challenge however, is it’s expensive. The professional plan starts at $800 a month.
So depending on the revenue and size of your business Hubspot may not be the right fit. If you can afford it without breaking the bank, go for it. I truly believe Hubspot is the leader in small business marketing and sales technology.
Finally, number five
...on the must have of small business marketing technology are social media marketing tools. Which include a good phone with a camera, a lapel mic that inserts into your smartphone if you plan to do talking head style videos, where you’re doing the majority of the speaking, next some kind of captions app like the app called Captions.
Although many social tools offer captions now, the app Captions makes your captions more fun and they look different and help your videos stand out. I would also recommend a video editor such as Capcut or InShot. Both apps are about $10 a month.
These two video editors make it simple for you to edit your videos, slice them up and remove clips if needed, add music and effects as well. These are cost effective tools that don’t cost much and make your social media marketing look great!
And if you get ahead of the game and can organize your social media content, then a social publishing tool like Buffer or Hootsuite are helpful. These tools run you anywhere from $40-$99 a month, but you can connect to all of your social channels in one platform. Which is highly valuable for saving you time.
I would fail to do this show justice if I didn’t mention Canva. Canva has a free version but for as low as about $15 a month their Pro plan is all you will ever need to access any marketing material your business will ever need. They have thousands of templates, graphics, and images to make your marketing look top notch. I’ve used for over 10 years and I literally don’t know how any of us ever did business marketing without it.
Well there you have it, the marketing tech stack every business owner needs.
I know how overwhelming the world of online marketing can be, but with these tools on your side, you'll be able to streamline your efforts and achieve sustainable growth. I’m cheering you on.
Thanks for joining me today. I’m Ali Garbero, Copywriting is what I do, Content Marketing is what I create, more customers is what you get.