by Casey Watts
If you’re a small business, then you need these three marketing apps and programs. They put the power of social media, online advertising, and reputation management in the palm of your hands. With these, you’ll never have to worry about missing crucial data points ever again.
Without further adieu, here are our top three picks for must-have marketing apps.
HootSuite
If you’re on social media, then Hootsuite is a must-have. It’s an all-in-one social media management tool that allows you to see, schedule, and manage posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Youtube.
With HootSuite, you can do more on social media in less time by having it all at your fingertips. Because you can schedule posts, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting to promote anything on the day off — you can schedule it well in advance.
Additionally, you can produce quality content catered to your audience, access your images and video assets directly from the dashboard, and keep an eye on the latest social trends.
Hootsuite’s free plan allows users to manage up to three social accounts, and schedule up to 30 posts at a time. This is more than enough if you’re just starting to build a social following. If you need a little more, don’t worry. Payment plans start at $25 per month and allow you to add team members, schedule more posts, and manage additional accounts.
Business Warrior
Empower yourself to take control of your business with Business Warrior, a free marketing software. Become your own warrior, where your knowledge of online advertising is your whetstone and your free business score is your shield.
What does all of that mean? Business Warrior scours the web to rate your business based on its Advertising Readiness, Business Listings, Reputation, and Website/SEO. The higher your score, the more new customers you’re likely to get.
Business Warrior runs on the philosophy that the traditional way of doing business isn’t enough anymore. You need to be online to be profitable. To be profitable online, you need very specific tools and management systems added to your website to know what is working and what is wasting your money in relation to online advertising. All of these tools are interconnected and are essential for getting you new customers.
For example, their software scans Google, Yelp and Facebook to find out what people are saying about your business. Because over 90% of people look at reviews before choosing to buy, managing your reputation is key to getting new business and to make happy life-long customers.
In that same vein, you’re more likely to get more conversions from ads if you’re a trusted business with high-quality products. You’re also more likely to be discovered through Business Listings if customers see you have 5-star reviews versus 3 stars. See how it all connects?
Business Warrior makes it easy and gives you everything you need, right in one helpful tool. They have three payment plans — free, Scout (to learn how to increase your score with step-by-step tutorials, videos, and access to a professional), and Pro (they do it all for you and set up your first Google ads account).
Mention
We talked earlier about the importance of your reputation and Mention takes that one step further. It lets you see what people are saying about you, as they’re saying it. It’s an app designed to monitor social media, blog posts, and news sites. You’ll get up-to-date reports on real information.
Why is this important? Responding to reviews and mentions is a big deal! It’s basically you shouting to the world that you care about your customers and their feedback matters. It also creates a great opportunity for you to build trust and to remedy any negative reviews left by customers.
Mention is used by more than 500,000 professionals to manage their online presence! It’s really easy to use too. All you have to do is create an alert for your company name, your brand, your competition — anything you want to track! — and you’ll be updated in real-time.
In addition, Mention also has:
- Anti-noise management to better filter out noise so you’re not wasting your time reading every single mention of your company
- Smart actions that allow you to connect your social accounts and react to any mention
- Share your alerts and assign tasks to the most relevant person in your team
- Customised stats to help you analyze your data
You can link to social media accounts for easier access, as well as create customized statistics that matter to your business. For smaller businesses, a free plan will probably suffice, but there are also paid options starting at $25/month up to $600/month for large corporations.
Casey Watts is a former journalist and current content writer for Helix House, a digital advertising company. She enjoys spending time hiking, reading, and hanging out with her dog, Peter, and her cat, Olive.
