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The Secret Weapons Every Marketer Needs

Today’s marketers have to wear many hats: web developer, systems integrator, publicist, social-media manager, email expert and so forth. The good news is that the marketing-tech industry has seen an overwhelming number of new vendors and tools to help marketers handle all of these roles efficiently and successfully. The even better news is that many of these new tools are helping to empower marketers to become even more self-service, limiting the number of additional resources like development or designers they need to rely on.

Here’s a sample of some of the best tools and vendors to help you be a faster marketer:

Web Development

WixSquarespaceWordPress -- These are all user-friendly content management systems that make it easy to create and maintain your web presence.

LanderUnbounceLeadPages -- These tools provide you with simple interfaces for creating and optimizing landing pages for your website. You can use them in conjunction with any of the CMS platforms mentioned above.

Systems Integration

Kevy, PodboxZapierIFTTT -- The first two are heavy duty options for integration of disparate data sources and probably require someone with technical chops to help deploy. The second two are lighter weight and can easily be set up by anyone.

Publicist

TalkWalker AlertsMention, Google Alerts -- These tools allow you to closely monitor your brand’s reputation.
PR.coPressKing, -- These tools help you create a press room for your website as well as create pitches and releases.
HAROPressFriendlyHitwake -- These are three tools for media outreach.

Social Media

BufferHootsuiteEdgar -- All three will help you manage your social media posting schedule but each has a different strengths. Buffer helps you “queue” your posts and establish a pre-determined number of posts per day with a healthy set of analytics to boot. Hootsuite is useful for managing your own posts as well as responses and has scheduling functionality as well. Edgar is a brand new contender that offers you the ability to store your posts for re-use in the future.

FollowerwonkSumAllTopsy -- These are some great analytics tools for analyzing your channels’ followers and performance.

Email Marketing

MailchimpGoodbitsEmail Monks -- Mailchimp is a best-in-class email marketing provider with top notch design functionality and many, many integrations available to help you sync it with other services...including Goodbits. Goodbits is a lightweight, easy way to curate and send email “newsletter” digests. Email Monks is a great way to get your email’s design coded so it’s ready to import to your choice of email providers.