Marketing Tools Every Start-Up Business Needs

There are over 2 million businesses in Australia. That’s a lot of businesses! Some of that 2 million is probably going to be your competition when starting your business. It has never been more difficult for small businesses to actually succeed. There is simply so much competition.

To be successful and beat out your competition you will need a competitive edge. You will need tools and strategies that will boost you up above your rivals. You can never really know what’s going to happen in the future, so you will need to start with your best foot forward to ensure you are giving your business the greatest chance possible to thrive.

Unfortunately 1 in 3 businesses in Australia tend to fail within the first year.

You obviously don’t want to be one of those businesses. But with the increase in competition, it is no longer enough just to have a great business idea. You will need to have a strategy in place to market your business, in particular a digital marketing strategy.

The internet can no longer be ignored, your marketing strategy will need to include a digital component. This needs to be in place from day one. Don’t think you can start your business and then after a bit add a digital marketing strategy. If you do this you are certainly setting yourself up to fail.

Digital marketing is a relatively new area and it is nothing like traditional marketing methods i.e. print. Digital marketing is constantly changing, making it much harder to stay on top. Lucky for you there are some marketing tools you can use to help you with your strategy.

Most of these tools will cost some money, but they will provide you with valuable insights and assistance to ensure you are on top. The tools will help simplifying digital marketing and allow you to better market your business.

With these tools on your side you will get the competitive edge you need to be successful.

So let’s begin! Have a read below of the top 4 marketing tools that every start-up business will need to flourish:

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics should most certainly be part of your digital marketing strategy from the get-go. This tool provides you with valuable information about your website that you simply cannot do without! It only takes a few minutes to set up your analytics account. Once this is done you have the ability to track every single action on your website by each visitor.

Some people think it’s just a traffic tool, but it is so much more than that, if you know how to properly use it! You can also see where the traffic is coming from, i.e. organic search, direct, social media or referral.

By having this data you could link a particular campaign to a certain method of inbound traffic. For example, if you are running a new social media campaign and you notice a rapid increase in your social traffic you know it works and you can design further campaigns that are similar.

You should never ignore Google Analytics.

It can help you with a lot of your strategy decision making and by using this tool from the beginning, you will have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. The data provided off this tool is so valuable, especially for start-up businesses.

Price: The best thing about this tool? It’s free! It doesn’t cost a single cent to have access to all the great features this tool offers.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a great tool for marketing, CRM and sales software. When it comes to digital marketing, it gives you any software you need. In this blog, we will just talk about their marketing software.

Their marketing software will help you get your entire marketing funnel together.

A marketing funnel is the process of getting would-be customers all the way to post-purchase bliss! Think about how you are going to convert a visitor on your website into a paying customer. Sounds a bit tricky right? Well not with HubSpot! They make the process easy and ensures your marketing funnel is working like it should.

I like HubSpot because they can help you in a lot of different areas:

• Website
• SEO
• Social media
• Blogging
• Email
• Landing pages
• Lead management
• Analytics
• Calls-to-Action
• Marketing automation

Anything you could need help with, HupSpot has you covered! You can put your faith in HubSpot’s amazing marketing software. This is why I would choose HubSpot to help get me started for my business.

Anything you need is in the one place.

It makes it a lot easier to access the information and you don’t have to waste your time looking in different places to find what you need. This tool will help keep you focused and organised when you really need it; at the beginning!

Price: For the marketing software there are 3 packages:

1. The basic package is $270/ month.
2. The pro package is $1,050/ month.
3. The enterprise package is $3,200/ month.

As a start-up business, you would probably be looking at the basic package. In the basic package you get:

• Content creation tools
• Content optimisation
• Email marketing
• Social media suite
• Marketing analytics dashboards

3. Hootsuite

I use Hootsuite pretty much every day and personally I have to say that it is the best social media tool out there. You can’t deny the influence of social media. Social media plays a big part in your branding and allows another funnel of communication between you and your consumers.

No matter your size, you will need to have some sort of presence on social media.

Many small businesses tend to stay away from social media because of the time it takes. They can’t justify the time spend creating social media posts etc. because they are unable to see a direct translation to sales and profit.

With Hootsuite on your side you can save a lot of time. When using Hootsuite, you have the ability to schedule posts into the future. As well as this you can add different social media platforms onto your account. This means you don’t have to physically log onto Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. each day to create a post. All you need to do is log onto Hootsuite and it’s all taken care of!

You can designate one time per week to create engaging posts and then leave it at that. You don’t have to spend any more time focussed on social media if you don’t want to. Although I do recommend spending a little time reviewing your analytics and looking at what your competitors are doing.

Hootsuite doesn’t just have save you a chunk of time; this tool can also assist with your engagement in terms of:

• Replying to comments as well as mentions through the tool (this means you don’t have to go to each platform individually)
• Identifying potential industry influencers and providing leads to follow up on
• Benefitting from targeted responses that are pre-written

Contrary to popular belief, social media marketing isn’t difficult. It also becomes a lot easier when you have a great tool like Hootsuite to fall back on! The website is easy to follow and the dashboard gives you all the vital information you need straight away. Hootsuite is essentially your social media marketing manager.

It will help keep you organised and save you time.

Price: Hootsuite offers a free 30 day trial. This gives you enough time to test out the tool and see if this could work well for you in the future. Hootsuite offers 4 packages suitable for businesses:

1. The professional package is $25/ month.
2. The team package is $129/ month.
3. The business package starts from $675/ month.
4. The enterprise package is completely customisable and the price depends on what you are looking for.

For a small business I would either recommend the professional or team package. If you have more than one person who will work on the social media for your business you should probably go with the team package.

The specific components offered by the team package include:

• 20 social media accounts
• 3 users
• Real-time analytics
• Bulk scheduling
• Social sweepstakes
• Unlimited RSS integrations
• Team assignments
• Custom analytics reports
• 1 Custom Branded URL
• 6 contest templates
• 1 social media certification
• 1-on-1 training (15 minutes)

4. BuzzSumo

Keeping with the theme of social media and social sharing, BuzzSumo is an excellent tool for businesses that need more important information about their market (i.e. start-up businesses). I have talked about this tool many times before, because I really think it is incredibly useful.

When starting a business, you will need to have a solid understanding of your competition. As well as this, you should also know what type of content you need to produce. When producing great content you should receive more engagement and shares on social media.

(If you want more details on how to produce quality content that is more shareable, I wrote a previous blog to show you!) 

Producing fresh and new content is a major part of Google’s ranking alrogrithm. So if you want to see a good ranking you need to be constantly publishing new content. But how do you know what topics work and what doesn’t? Enter BuzzSumo!

Will this tool you enter keywords for a topic related to your industry. You will then be shown pieces of content from different websites that are related to the keyword. You can also see important high level data related to shares.

Obviously, the more shares a piece of content receives, the better the content is. Now I’m not saying you copy someone else’s content, but you use this tool as a spring board for your own ideas. So if you are ever strapped for new content ideas, this is the tool to use.

Price: The basic features of this website are free to use. Basic access includes:

• Ability to view top 10 results
• Capability to segment where total amount of shares originated from (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)

If you would like access to more detailed features you should go BuzzSumo Pro. There are 3 packages in pro and you can try them free for 30 days. After the 30 days has expired the prices are:

1. The pro package is $79/ month.
2. The agency package is $239/ month.
3. The enterprise page is $559/ month.

As a start-up business, I would recommend the pro package. This package includes:

• 1-5 users
• 5 alerts
• 50 exports
• 10 trending feeds
• Content analysis reports
• Unrestricted searches
• Outreach lists
• Domain comparison reports

Final Thoughts

There are so many businesses in Australia; this means that no matter your industry, you have a lot more competition. This makes it even harder for start-ups to actually succeed. This is reflected in the statistic which shows that 1 in 3 small businesses fail within the first year.

With the failure rate so high and the competition even more fierce, it is important for you do to everything you can from the very beginning to increase your chances of success. Your success is contingent on your ability to get the word out about your business. To do this you need marketing!

Digital marketing is a fairly recent phenomenon, yet it is something you cannot ignore.

The difference between digital and more traditional forms of marketing is its ever evolving nature. This means that your digital marketing campaign needs to be incredibly flexible in order to successfully deal with all issues thrown its way.

Lucky for you there are some excellent marketing tools that can make the world of digital marketing much easier. Google Analytics is a very useful tool for keeping an eye on your website’s traffic and specifically where it is coming from! This tool is a must have, and why wouldn’t you? It’s free!

HubSpot is a great software tool that helps in every stage in your marketing funnel. Do not underestimate the power of HubSpot, it can do so much more than just help turn visitors into paying customers.

Hootsuite is a great tool to help you save time on social media. This tool helps make everything related to social media easy! You no longer have to do each social media platform individually and you can schedule posts into the future.

BuzzSumo is awesome if you are stuck for ideas when creating new content. With this tool you can see the top articles in relation to the keyword you searched. The tool shows how much shares each article received. The more shares, the better the article!

Read ➡ 8 Ways to Incorporate Similar Phrased Keywords into your Content