You know the big players in MarTech. You’ve read the statistics; you might’ve been using some of their products during the last few years. However, what if your budget capacities have changed since then? To avoid plunging into the fear of the financial unknown, we’re seeking smarter budget and resourcing decisions this year.
We’ve put together a list of useful and wallet-friendly marketing technology solutions that provide equally stellar results as their spendy counterparts.
The In-House Graphic Designer Of Your Dreams – Canva
No doubt you’ve considered hiring a graphic designer externally, or have debated investing in the Adobe Suite of products. Likely, you’ve put off visual content upgrades because of the cost, and as a result, lack of priority. However, dressing your content to impress for the occasion is important. Introducing…Canva. Canva has millions of free (and some priced) templates which can be used to create copyright-free, unique content for your business. There are endless features suitable for website design, easily transferable to website builders such as WordPress or Squarespace or Weebly. You can also create show-stopping social media content (video and photo), with features such as music, captioning, effects and artist-designed stickers.
Make Your Meetings & Collaboration More Productive and Meaningful – Evernote
If you’re looking for a tool that is similar to Google Workspace, Slack or Salesforce’s Community Cloud that’s cost-effective and perhaps even more detailed, Evernote could be the solution for you. Unlike some of the pricier options, Evernote is an individual application that combines several features from the big-apps. There are various modules of Evernote – including a free package – which allows you to take notes, share with your team, and organise archives for your projects. Additionally, you can integrate Evernote with applications such as Google Calendar to automatically align your meeting notes with their scheduled times. You can even export and store large PDF files as well, making it easy to get your project resources sorted.
A Cutting-Edge Alternative to Salesforce’s Service Cloud – Drift
Looking for a cost-friendly but incredibly innovative way to connect with your customers? Drift is a commerce and sales generating business that looks to transform your customer relationships. Drift provides conversational marketing across a wide array of customer-business connectivity situations such as video, chat or email. Drift uses conversational AI, to create predictability and prompts for your staff when navigating customer interactions. Drift allows you to humanise problem-solving and generate holistic leads, without making your customers feel like they’re talking to a robot, or that they’re just a purchase order.
Create Content that Google Loves Too – Storychief
The buzzword of B2B’s digital sphere over the last few years has been ‘SEO’ (search engine optimisation). Basically, this means ensuring that your content is readable by Google, thus boosting your website and content onto the very front page of the search results for potential and recurring customers. Storychief is a combination of Answer The Public, Google Analytics and Salesforce. It allows you to get instant insights into SEO keywords that connect with your target demographic and potential customers. For a productivity boost, try Storychief’s in-built AI copywriter or get your scheduling done across several social media platforms/websites in a singular space.
Data Management That Doesn’t Deplete Your Budget – Proof Analytics and Databox
If you’ve heard of Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics, and have been looking for a cheaper – but equally as effective – alternative, these two applications might be the just solution you need. Proof Analytics is a Salesforce partner tool – meaning it runs the same insights you’d get on Salesforce; including budget projections, digital compliance, scaling and campaign/project management, all at a way more cost-effective price point. Similarly, Databox can help you with analysis for your social media posts – including interactivity, click-rate, lead generation, demographic insights and real-time customer updates. Databox operates at a much friendlier price-point than most of its competitors, and is simple to navigate.
MarTech database compiles thousands of marketing technology applications and demonstrates how to create your ideal marketing tech stack. You can research competitor companies within your industry and compare what products are part of their tech stack, and then discover cost-effective solutions for your business needs. We recommend making use of the filtering tabs in order to find the most relevant applications for your needs. You don’t always need to make external hires or spend a fortune on popular software solutions because there are companies and products out there that are exactly what you need, for the price that suits you.
So the main takeaway is this – you can make those changes and innovations to your business without spending an absolute fortune. Based on B2B business experiences so far this year, we know that sometimes the key to staying alive when times get tough is just being ready to accept change. It isn’t easy, but as a startup owner, you’re built for challenges and you’re way stronger than you think. If you find yourself in need of a boost, you can always chat to us at Rovert Digital and we can talk through the next steps for growing your business, and overcoming those obstacles together.