As the marketer’s role becomes more data-driven and analytical, they need to master a new set of tools.
According to a survey conducted by the Economist, CMOs said marketing operations, technology, and data analysis were some of the top areas where their organizations need expertise. One CMO told the Economist, “when we hire, we look for people with digital capabilities, who can do things like run a marketing automation platform, a data analytics function, or execute and listen to multiple social media properties.”
Marketers have access to more digital tools than we could possibly list. We’ve targeted some of the most popular tools for automation, analytics, digital asset management, social media management, and other digital technologies modern marketers need to get the job done.
Analytics
The ability to measure and analyze marketing data to improve ROI is one of the most desired skills for marketers. Analytics is also the area where companies face the biggest gap in talent, according to a survey of Fortune 500 executives. Some tools to help marketers with analytics include:
- Google Analytics, which offers free and paid options, has a variety of tools to help marketers analyze website traffic
- Mixpanel tracks customers’ actions on websites and mobile apps
- KISSmetrics provides details about how customers use websites before and after making a purchase
- Lattice Engines uses predictive modeling to forecast buyer behavior
A/B testing
Marketers are increasingly expected to justify or improve the effectiveness of their content, often with A/B testing. Some commonly used A/B testing tools include:
- Optimizely is a website optimization platform that offers A/B testing tools
- Unbounce lets marketers build and test landing pages without a developer
- Visual Website Optimizer also lets marketers test websites without requiring coding skills, and offers heatmaps and click maps to provide insights into visitor behavior
- Google Analytics allows marketers to run A/B tests with Optimize and offers a free version
- guessthetest.com gives paid members access to other brands’ A/B test results
Automation
Marketing automation is another area where marketing organizations face a skills gap, according to OMI’s survey. Some of the most used marketing automation platforms include:
- Infusionsoft gives small businesses automation for CRM, email marketing, and e-commerce
- HubSpot provides tools for inbound marketing automation based on goals
- iContact offers automation for content marketing
- SimplyCast provides marketing automation for small business, including A/B testing
- Marketo automates demand generation, lead capture, and drip email campaigns for marketers and sales teams
Data visualization
The ability to depict numbers and content graphically is valuable to modern marketers, especially as digital media has shrunk the average attention span to eight seconds. A few tools to help marketers master data visualization include:
- Tableau, the popular data visualization software, also offers a Tableau Public version that lets users create visualizations and share them on social media for free
- Google Charts is a free app that lets users display live data in a variety of charts on websites and mobile devices
Social media management and analytics
Social media is integral to modern marketing, but most companies say they haven’t developed advanced social media marketing skills yet, according to a Capgemini survey. Marketers have many tools to help them manage social media, including:
- HootSuite gives marketers a dashboard to monitor and post to social media accounts
- Buffer lets users schedule and post content to multiple social media accounts
- StatSocial provides data about social media audiences across 60 social networks
- ReadyPulse curates and displays social user generated content, including photos, videos and testimonials, from your most influential customers
Mobile marketing
As we spend more time viewing media on mobile devices, mobile marketing is becoming increasingly important. Here are a few tools to help marketers get started with mobile:
- Outspoken helps brands send text, picture, and video messages for mobile campaigns
- MailChimp, a popular email marketing tool, offers features to help marketers to optimize email marketing campaigns for mobile devices
- sumotext is a mobile relationship management platform that lets marketers communicate with mobile audiences through messaging and mobile wallet apps
Digital asset management
Marketing and creative teams deal with a growing number of files as they expand their digital marketing efforts. Here are a few tools to help marketers manage all of their creative files:
- Bynder is a digital asset management platform for managing, sharing, searching and distributing creative files in the cloud. Bynder also integrates with Box, Dropbox and other business applications
- Box is a secure online file sharing and cloud content management service for businesses
- Dropbox is a secure service for storing photos, docs, and videos for businesses
- Google Drive is a cloud storage service that allows you to store your documents, photos, videos, and more online. Google drive is useful for collaborating in real-time on drafts between teammates and stakeholders
To see how DAM could help make your marketing more effective, download DAM for the Modern Marketer.
