In the last few years, digital marketing has grown from being a hobby to a full-time career. With the constant rise of digital platforms like social media, email, and web browsers, marketers can easily market their products online.
However, not all online marketing platforms are created equal. Some tools that are popular among marketers are free, while others are incredibly expensive. If you’re looking to automate your online marketing efforts or need a push to begin consistently marketing online, this article is for you. Here, we’ll cover the most essential things you need to know about four of the most popular and effective platforms for online marketing automation.
HubSpot
If you’re looking for a tool that is truly comprehensive, you may want to consider HubSpot. With HubSpot, you can create automated emails, build landing pages, schedule blog posts, capture leads, and track marketing performance all from a single platform. You can also integrate with over 40 different apps, tools, and services to become a one-stop shop for your digital marketing.
While HubSpot does offer a free version, its growth as a platform depends on how you want to use it. If you’re looking for a simple tool that can help you automate some of your marketing processes, HubSpot may not be the right fit. However, if you’re looking for a platform that can help you scale your marketing efforts and don’t want to spend a lot of money on apps and tools, HubSpot may be the right solution for you.
Forbes has named HubSpot one of the top 25 marketing platforms because it empowers businesses to simply do more with less effort. The company’s platform is trusted by over 500,000 active users worldwide and has been recognized as one of the best free marketing platforms. If you’ve never heard of HubSpot, it’s probably time for you to get to know it better.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the digital marketing platform from Salesforce, the business software company. Similar to HubSpot, the Marketing Cloud offers a one-stop shop for marketing activities. It offers customers the ability to build email campaigns, websites, and landing pages– all with custom CSS and HTML. On top of that, they can track the performance of their online marketing efforts across different channels and devices. The Marketing Cloud is part of SFDC, which also offers customers a CRM and ERP system. This combination of software allows businesses to manage their sales, marketing, and operations throughout the entire sales process.
While the Salesforce Marketing Cloud doesn’t offer a free version, it’s still an incredibly popular choice among businesses. Around 2.9 million users trust the platform to manage their marketing and analytics, and over 600,000 active users use the product daily. If you’re looking for a marketing platform that can help you automate your email campaigns, website content, and digital marketing performance, the Marketing Cloud is the tool you need to know about.
Dynamics CRM
If you’ve ever heard of CRM, it’s probably time for you to know more about it. Customer relationship management (or CRM) is a platform used by businesses to track and manage customer data from beginning to end. With Dynamics CRM, you can create targeted email campaigns, set up automated dialing and email campaigns, track customer behavior, and more. Some businesses use Dynamics CRM to maintain customer files and track customer data across departments. In some cases, marketers may use CRM to collect feedback and get insight into how customers are engaging with your business.
Dynamics CRM is the preferred tool of over 200,000 businesses worldwide because it lets them manage customer data easily and effectively. The product was originally developed for sales teams, but it can be adapted to other areas of the business for maximum efficiency. If you’re looking for a versatile and popular tool to help you automate your marketing efforts, consider Dynamics CRM.
Marketing Automation
If you’re looking for a tool to help you automate your marketing tasks, you’ll want to consider Marketing Automation. Like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Dynamics CRM, Marketing Automation allows you to automate the process of sending emails, making phone calls, and publishing posts on social media. With these three tools combined, you can automate the majority of your marketing activities– no matter your budget.
However, while all three of these tools are effective at helping businesses automate their marketing, not all are created equal. Marketing Automation was built by HubSpot, so it inherits many of the same features as their product. This automation tool is popular because it’s easy to use and allows businesses to efficiently scale their marketing efforts. If you’ve never heard of Marketing Automation, it’s probably time for you to know more.
Choosing The Right Automation Tool
Now that you know about the various tools available for online marketing automation, it’s time to figure out which one is right for your business. To begin, you may want to ask yourself these questions:
- What is my budget?
- Do I want to integrate with other systems?
- How much support do I need?
- Who is my target audience?
- Which marketing tactics do I want to automate?
- How much time do I have to commit to this?
To answer these questions, you may want to put yourself in the shoes of a business owner who’s just getting started. If so, let’s take a look at how each of these tools could solve their most common problems.
No Budget
One of the major problems that every business owner encounters is a lack of resources. No matter the amount of money that a business owner is willing to spend on their company’s marketing, it always seems like there’s never enough. At the end of the day, business owners simply can’t afford to lose sight of the value that their business creates. This is where budgeting comes in handy. If you know that you don’t have unlimited funds to spend on marketing, you may want to consider a tool that doesn’t cost anything.
As a company, we don’t charge businesses for using our platform because we believe in giving back to the industry. Instead, we’re proud to offer a completely free version of our software that allows companies to grow their business online without all the stress. If you don’t want to spend any money on tools or apps that can help you market your business, this is the perfect solution for you.
Too Many Apps, Tools, And Services
Another major headache for any business owner is having too many apps, tools, and services that they need to learn how to use. If you’re looking for a lightweight tool that can help you manage your day-to-day marketing activities, consider Marketing Automation. As a business owner, you may find that Marketing Automation easily integrates with other tools and services that you’re already using since it was built on top of HubSpot’s API.
One of the reasons why Marketing Automation is such a popular tool is because it allows businesses to simply do more with less effort. If you’re looking for a tool that can automate the process of sending out emails, making phone calls, and publishing posts on social media, Marketing Automation is the right choice for you.
Email Marketing Automation
If you’ve never worried about email marketing automation, it may be time for you to start. Every business owns a mail list; however, not all of them are created equal. If you want to send out quality emails to your target audience, you may want to consider automating the process. Luckily, you can with Marketing Automation. Like we mentioned before, this tool is popular among businesses because it lets them easily automate their email marketing activities.
To put it simply, if you want to send out emails to your target audience on a regular basis, Marketing Automation is the tool for you. It’s a popular solution among marketers because it provides them with the automated tools to build and send out email campaigns completely free of charge.