At our agency, we’re constantly looking for and trying out new public relations and marketing tools to improve our marketing tactics and measure the results of our campaigns. In this blog post, I’ll highlight some of our favorite tools and how they can help you with your marketing and PR efforts.
Related Post: 5 of the Best Digital Tools for Social Media Pros
1. Sprout Social
What is it?
Sprout Social is a social media management tool that helps businesses analyze their social media marketing strategy and grow their presence across various platforms. For agencies managing multiple client accounts, Sprout’s marketing tools are a great way to centralize your efforts and collaborate across agency and client teams.
Our favorite features
- Publishing: Content creators can plan and schedule content across multiple platforms at the same time with Sprout’s publishing tool. There is also an option to send posts through an approval workflow within the platform.
- Social Listening: Sprout’s social listening solution gives marketers access to listening reports where they can analyze specific keywords, hashtags, as well as topics that relate to their client’s market or industry.
- Mobile Apps: Sprout has apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android that allow for social media monitoring, posting, and analyzing on the go. As we all know – social media never stops, and this feature helps to put out any social media fires that happen on the weekend or after hours.
We’re proud to be a certified Sprout Social Agency Partner – you can learn more about their Agency Partner Program here.
2. Google Analytics
What is it?
Google Analytics (GA) is a website analytics tool that tracks and reports website traffic. It allows marketers to analyze and measure website, app, digital, and offline data to gain consumer insights and calculate their advertising ROI.
Our favorite features:
- Goal Tracking: GA can track conversions to help marketers to analyze their marketing efforts. You can track leads and newsletter sign-ups in real-time. Tracking is easy to set up in GA’s settings.
- Internal Traffic Filters: Users can set up filters to exclude any internal traffic that comes to your own site.
- Search Console: Search Console allows for users to see the terms people are searching to click through to your website. With these terms, marketers can more specifically tailor their websites to rank higher in Google’s search rankings.
3. Airtable
What is it?
Airtable is a cloud collaboration service that allows teams to organize everything from daily tasks to monthly social media content. While it works like any other spreadsheet, it is so much more powerful.
Our favorite features:
- Customizable Fields: You can customize cells to hold checkboxes, photo attachments, as well as URLs and emails.
- Templates: Users can start their tables from scratch or choose from a variety of templates that the Airtable team offers. Organized by industry, there are templates that range from social media content calendars to media lists. Once working in a template, users are still able to customize their table to best fit their needs.
- Integrations: Airtable can be integrated with applications from Twitter, WordPress, and MailChimp, to Slack, Trello, and Google Drive.
4. Unbounce
What is it?
Unbounce is a landing page and conversion marketing tool that allows marketers to easily create, publish and test landing pages, popups and sticky bars without the help of a developer.
Our favorite features:
- Mobile Responsiveness: Users can easily turn on a mobile responsive version of their landing page. Graphics or copy can be toggled on and off, which allows users to specify which content they want on the desktop or mobile version.
- WordPress Integration: Unbounce landing pages can be published to any WordPress site without the help of a developer.
- Customizable Forms: Any forms on the landing page can be customized to fit the user’s needs.
5. Canva
What is it?
Canva is a drag-and-drop format graphic design and digital marketing tool that allows marketers to design, share and print anything from business cards to posters and social media graphics without downloading expensive software or hiring a graphic designer.
Our favorite features:
- Optimized Templates: Canva offers templates that are sized and optimized for specific social media platforms, postcards, etc.
- Customizable Layouts: Users can choose from a wide variety of pre-designed layouts which make graphic design doable for anyone in the office.
- Brand Kit: For teams using Canva, there is a Brand Kit section where you can keep track of colors, fonts, and logos. The Brand Kit is a simple way to ensure all of your designs are on brand regardless of who is making them across your team.
Have PR or marketing tools you couldn’t live without that we didn’t mention above? Share it with us in a comment below!