Companies have an overwhelming amount of choices in software, services, and platforms they can use to better manage their business operations. But researching and evaluating the wide range of tools available can cost you and your team tons of time, and before you know it, you’ve fallen down the software rabbit hole without getting you any closer to accomplishing your goals.
To help you navigate all these software choices, we’ve put together this list of popular, highly-reviewed lead generation tools that are especially helpful to inbound marketing teams. If there’s a task you’ve been letting fall by the wayside, or you simply want to make your inbound marketing team more efficient, there’s a lead generation tool here that can help.
HubSpot for automation
Are you searching for better tools, or fewer tools? By fewer, we mean a tool that serves more than one purpose, that performs as a CRM system, email marketing platform, social media management tool, landing page and CTA tool. A tool that enables your marketing, sales and customer service teams to keep track of contacts and campaigns all in one place.
If you’ve read our blog before, you’ve probably heard us talk about HubSpot, and for good reason. It’s the leader in inbound marketing automation, offering customers an all-in-one platform that consolidates your digital marketing and lead generation tools. Here’s what HubSpot offers:
- Build and track multi-channel marketing campaigns
- Build and track CTAs and landing pages
- Advertising management tools
- Website hosting and CMS
- Marketing CRM system
- Blogging platform
- Email marketing
- Social media management
- Easy-to-build forms
- Conversational marketing tools and chat widgets
- Automated workflows
- Lead scoring
We could go on, because there is A LOT HubSpot can do, but you get the idea. Raka is a Certified HubSpot Partner Agency, so we really know this platform and what it’s done for our clients, and what it’s done for us. HubSpot isn’t the only option for marketing automation. We also wrote this comparison of marketing automation platforms. As we mention, the tools you choose will largely be determined by your business, your budget, and your goals. Of course, if you want to know more about why we love using HubSpot, we’re more than happy to chat.
Producing better-looking content
Delighting leads and customers with valuable content is at the heart of inbound marketing. But what if that great content looks terrible? Your Ultimate Guide to Finding the Right Dog Breed is definitely chock full of content your prospects can use, but if the document looks amateurish, or is just a sea of text and bullet points, the likelihood of someone finishing the read is diminished, and unfortunately so is the value.
Beacon is a design tool for creating colorful, professional-looking lead magnets in a matter of minutes. You can choose between pre-loaded templates or the template builder to create a look that matches your brand across all content. Beacon’s lead magnets are mobile ready, easy to share on social, and are integrated with WordPress and HubSpot. Plus, the beginner package, which includes a wide range of features, unlimited PDFs, and analytics, is free.
Gathering feedback
Asking people their opinion and preferences is a great way to ease site visitors into providing information and better qualifying them as a lead. If you are a construction company specializing in kitchen design, a great quiz to capture leads might be, “Which kitchen layout is right for you?” Not only can you gather contact information from people actively thinking about changing up their kitchen, you’ll have great info on what this lead is looking for, such as lots of gadgets, ample counter space for prep, or an island with built-in appliances.
LeadQuizzes promises to build quizzes people will love without a developer or a lot of hassle. It has a number of useful features, like custom forms, design flexibility, and logic branching so you can create a personalized experience by showing specific questions or results based on answers. There’s also a long list of impressive case studies, including a small skincare company that added $200,000 in new sales in two months with these quizzes.
LeadQuizzes integrates with social media, email, and HubSpot, making it easy for you to get your quizzes out to target audiences and keep track of leads.
Keyword research and managing SEO
SEO can play a huge role in your digital marketing success, so you shouldn’t be relying on just one tool to find keywords and manage of SEO. Google Ads Keyword Planner is certainly helpful, but it can only get you so far. Here at Raka, we also use Moz and SEMrush to ensure our SEO efforts are on track. Both offer keyword research tools, as well as a robust dashboard you can use to keep an eye on your search rankings, organic search traffic, who’s linking to your site, what pages they’re linking to, and so much more.
Ads management
Before we go, we wanted to add just one more thing about Hubspot. While there are lots of tools out there that can help with data analysis and ad optimization, there are precious few tools that can create custom audiences for remarketing with the level of detail that HubSpot can. Whether you are new to remarketing or have been using it for some time, HubSpot is a valuable addition to your ad management tool box. It can segment audiences in hundreds of different ways, ranging from the contact’s source, to the day they became a sales qualified lead, to their budget and even graduation date (useful for some marketers, we suppose). Creating well-defined marketing audiences makes it easier to tailor a message that will resonate with them, which has been proven to improve the efficacy of your advertising spend over time.
Whether you’re adding a tool to help with one task or are adopting a whole new CRM system, deciding on which tools are right for your company can be a big decision. We’ve tried out a number of tools over the years and can offer insight on which might be most helpful to your company. Just send us a message.
