With an overwhelming number of marketing tools out there to choose from, finding the right ones for your business can be quite challenging. Fortunately for you, we’ve done some exploring and come up with a quick list of local marketing tools that can help grow your profits. Let’s dive in!
Google Tools
What once was just a (very robust) search engine is now a full suite of business services that are intended to make your marketing efforts more efficient, more transparent, and easier to understand. When you’ve got all the information you need at your fingertips, you can more easily hone campaigns that are specifically directed at your target markets. With this in mind, Google tools kick off our list of essential local marketing tools.
Setting up a Google My Business listing is an important step in getting your local SEO efforts up and running. It’s important that you don’t just claim your local business and forget about it, though, which is what a lot of companies do. Instead, make sure you optimize your Google My Business listing by providing all the information you can about your company, including:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Business hours
- Types of payments accepted
The more information you provide, the more likely you’ll be to show up in important places like Google Maps when customers are searching for the products and services you provide.
Helping you understand the insights into your customers’ behaviors, Google Analytics tracks and reports website traffic in a way that enables you to measure advertising ROI so you can identify successes and opportunities.
Keep an eye on, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google’s search results using the Google Search Console.
Get an in-depth understanding of each impression your campaigns make so you can deliver better user experiences to your audiences with Google Ad Manager.
Easily add campaign parameters to URLs so you can track the successes of your individual marketing efforts in Google Analytics with Google UTM Builder.
Google Trends gives you access to the top search queries in Google Search so you can create content that’s relevant to the things people are talking about in real time.
Google Alerts enables you to automatically monitor the web for keywords, phrases, and content as soon as it’s posted (or less frequently, if you so choose). Any time Google finds content that fits your search terms, you’ll receive a notification of the new results.
Sync all of your calls, meeting notes, and other vital information onto Google Calendar. Plus, you can send calendar invites and screen-share opportunities with the built-in Google Hangouts option.
Website Management
Having a website simply isn’t enough; you need to have a site that’s built with a positive user experience in mind while simultaneously ensuring the search engines see your brand in the best light. Here are some tools to help you achieve this mission:
WordPress is the most popular website hosting platform and a place where free and open-source ideas come together in a single content management system (CMS).
Wix boasts of a drag-and-drop approach to website creation, offering an assortment of templates and customizable canvases that can easily turn into a website you’ll be proud to show customers.
With Ahrefs, you can audit your own website, explore those of your competitors, and research backlinks and keywords—all from one place.
Screaming Frog offers a website crawling service, through which, you can analyze and audit your own URLs or those of your competitors.
From keyword research to tracking optimal backlinking opportunities, SEMrush was built to give you an upper leg on your SEO efforts.
Moz provides an all-in-one set of SEO tools, including site audits, rank tracking, backlink analysis, and keyword research.
If you’re looking for heatmaps that give insights into what your customers are doing when they arrive on your pages, Crazy Egg has your solution.
Yoast is an SEO tool that’s designed to make your website as search-engine-friendly as possible.
Ubersuggest is a free SEO tool that specializes in generating new keyword ideas.
Zyratalk provides an omnichannel customer experience that helps generate qualified leads while significantly enhancing customer retention and engagement.
Reputation Management
What people say (and how they say it) can have a big impact on your brand, especially since the entire world can see the reviews and testimonials people publish online. With these tools, you’ll be able to keep tabs on compliments, comments, and complaints so you can address reviews as quickly as possible.
Yelp is one of the first places people will go to talk about their experience with your brand publicly. Be sure to monitor your business’s page regularly, and comment on reviews (both good and bad).
Engage with your community and thank your neighbors when they recommend you on Nextdoor. This is a social site that brings people in neighborhoods together so they can bolster the best businesses around town.
GeoJuice is an app that makes it easy to upload photos of your work, geotag content, and grab real-time customer testimonials while you’re still on the job.
Social Mention aggregates user-generated content across the entire internet into a single stream of information so you can see who’s talking about your own business or your competitors.
Business Listings Management
You want the search engines to know exactly what kinds of products and services you provide because that will enable them to drive searchers your way when they enter the appropriate keywords. This is why it’s important to have a business listing management resource that gives you an ongoing opportunity to talk about what you do and how you serve your customers. This brings us to:
Yext helps businesses manage their search presences online by providing a Q&A-type forum that ultimately helps boost customer engagement and SEO opportunities simultaneously.
Social Media Marketing
You know your customers are hanging out on various social sites, so you’d be remiss to leave this part of marketing out of your total package. There are tons of tools to help you engage on social media and get the word out about your brand. Here are a few of the top resources you should be using:
Give the latest updates about your business, talk to your customers, and share content that’ll keep people excited about your brand on Facebook. And, make sure you take advantage of Facebook ads when you’re looking for ways to get extra eyes coming your way.
Twitter is an excellent place to get free advertising. If you publish content that people will talk about, you’re sure to get shares and follows. Don’t forget to follow other companies and influencers, and mention people and brands when appropriate.
Instagram is a great place to tell your brand’s story and build a following of people who are most likely to engage with your brand.
LinkedIn is a professional social site where you can share industry information and participate in discussions and elements that could affect your business on a broader level. It’s a great way to attract influencers and bolster your brand as an authority in your industry.
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that gives you a single dashboard, which integrates all of your social media accounts into a single screen.
With Buffer, you can put all of your social posts in a queue so they’re ready to go out to the world at a time and date you designate.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still an essential part of the marketing puzzle.
Mailchimp enables you to organize your contacts, segment lists, and send group emails effortlessly.
Content Marketing
We’ve made several references to the importance of having great content, but how do you create the content that you put out to the world? You use these tools!
Adobe offers a huge sweet of creative services for everyone from amateurs to super pros.
With BuzzSumo, you can quickly discover content ideas, uncover platform insights, and identify influencers who can help bolster your brand’s awareness.
- Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that gives users the power to create graphics, presentations, posters, and all sorts of visual content.
Wistia gives you the ability to create and publish high-quality streaming, regardless of network speed.
YouTube is a premier place to upload and share videos. Introduce your audience to your team, share how-to videos, or interview your staff to answer FAQs.
Grammarly gives you an extra set of eyes, helping to make sure your content is publish-ready. It features grammar checkers and spell checkers, so your writing is as clear and concise as possible.
Phone Tracking
Phone tracking gives you the ability to alleviate attribution blind spots so you have a full view of your customers’ journeys by analyzing which marketing efforts are causing customers to pick up their phones and call you.
Bazaarvoice is a network that connects brands to the authentic voices of the people who patronize their businesses. With network analytics, you can provide more engaging experiences that drive brand awareness and customer loyalty.
800 Response is a lead generation, call tracking, and customer analytics platform that gives you a full view of the data that tells the stories of your customers’ buying behaviors.
Project Management
Keeping everything in one accessible place so all relevant team members can access the information they need is one of the hardest parts of any project. With these project management tools, however, things just got a whole lot easier.
ClickUp was created to improve productivity and communication within teams. It offers an all-in-one platform where you can post tasks, docs, goals, and chats.
Thanks to a combination of boards, lists, and tasks, Trello’s project management platform is easy to use and offers a simple way for all team members to keep track of their responsibilities.
Asana is another platform that gives you the power of organizing and planning workflow and projects all in one place so it’s easy to see progress or bottlenecks.
Monday.com is a cloud-based operating system that organizes tasks, assigns roles, and encourages improved productivity and engagement.
Internal Communication
Communication about specific projects is important, but it doesn’t deal with the day-to-day information employees need to know. That’s where these tools come in handy:
Slack is an app that enables you to share information, conversations, and other important work details through the power of messaging.
Microsoft Teams keeps all of your team’s chats, files, meeting notes, and apps in one place.
With Skype, you can have face-to-face meetings with your teams, customers, and clients, no matter where everyone is located.
With easy access to chat, screen share capabilities, and video conferencing, Google Hangouts makes it easy to conduct business anytime, anywhere.
Zoom is video conferencing made easy, offering video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinar capabilities.
If your business uses Microsoft office but wants to enjoy the conveniences offered by Google Drive, there is a way you can marry these two elements together.
From storing files of all sizes in a single place to creating a workspace where creation and collaboration come together, the Dropbox brand has you covered.
You need professional email that’s dependable and trustworthy. Both Gmail and Outlook are leaders in the industry.
Business Processes
Owning a business and creating a product isn’t the entirety of what your organization does. Think of all the back-office tasks that need to be taken care of in order to ensure success. These tools can help with those functions:
QuickBooks makes it easy to keep track of incoming and outgoing money, create and send invoices, and reconcile bank accounts.
Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) system that enables you to store contact information and important details about vendor and customer relationships.
Find out what your customers are thinking about your business by soliciting feedback from them. Create engaging surveys and send them out to your audience to hear from their words how your brand resonates with their lives.
Tips to Make Sure You Pick the Right Local Marketing Tools for Your Unique Business
This is an exhaustive list of 53 awesome local marketing tools that could help your business be better, but you obviously don’t need every single one of them. So, how do you pick the tools that are best for your business? Ask yourself these questions:
- Does it utilize artificial intelligence and marketing automation?
- Is it easy to use?
- Does it give you transparency into the effectiveness of your activities?
- Is the tool agile and evolving to keep current with modern times?
- Are there all-in-one tools out there that could meet your needs rather than paying for a dozen tools that perform their tasks individually?
At Surefire Local, we’ve built a platform that integrates with the most important marketing sales tools out there, so you can deliver great customer experiences as you work to grow your business and increase your online visibility. Request a demo of the Surefire Local Marketing Platform today!
