Creating a successful marketing campaign can be a tough job. You could spend hour after hour gathering the best resources, only for it to get a handful of views. It can be really disheartening, but it’s important to work past it. A little help can go a long way, which is why there’s a variety of tools that have been designed to assist you.
When you have a marketing campaign, your main aim is to sell your brand to the consumer. You aren’t in control of a person’s buying habits, so it’s incredibly easy for them to simply choose a different brand over yours. You may be identical to another brand, but marketing yourself as unique will definitely make you more of an attraction than your competitor.
No longer can you rely on a simple radio advert or billboard spot. Unless you’re an established brand, it’s more than likely that you’ll be ignored. You need to create something that targets your ideal audience, all the while being informative and engaging.
Whilst a lot of the work will still be down to you, there are a variety of tools that can help you on the way to creating one of the best marketing campaigns ever seen. In this blog, we’ll be showcasing the best tools that you should never be without:
Find out what’s going on with Alltop
When creating a marketing campaign, it can often be tough to write about something that’s relevant. What you believed to be interesting one day may be completely irrelevant the next. Alltop is your essential tool to discovering what’s trending in current times.
One of the best ways to describe Alltop is that it’s a search engine for topics. You search for a specific topic and you’ll be presented with all of the different articles about that topic and the website it’s featured on.
With every search result is the ‘Most Topular Stories’ section. Here, you can see stories that are based on your chosen topic that have trended well. This information is invaluable, allowing you to understand what it is you should be focusing on.
In the situation where you are struggling to find a topic, on the front page of Alltop is ‘What’s hot on Alltop’, showing you the topics that are trending well at the current time.
Make the most out of emails with MailChimp
With over 6 million people using MailChimp, this is clearly an effective tool to use. It allows you to create, send and even track email newsletters. It doesn’t matter how large or small your business is, the features MailChimp has on offer allows you to optimise any newsletters you send out.
By using the intelligent design frames they have on offer, you can create a regular newsletter that not only matches the way your brand looks and feels, but it will also alert any of your subscribers of any events or announcements that you believe to be relevant.
One of the best things about MailChimp is that it’s free to use for lists of up to 2,000 subscribers, so if you’re just setting up a newsletter, it’s a great place to start.
Optimise your tweets through Tweriod
Twitter has been embraced by businesses as a way of communicating on a public forum. By utilising the correct #, you are able to hit an audience of thousands. One of the biggest problems is timing. You could tweet out a link to a piece of content that is outstanding, just for it to be completely ignored.
Tweriod allows users to understand when a tweet is best made on a certain day. With your permission you allow Tweriod to handle your Twitter account, it will then do a full analysis of your followers and their tweets, creating an in-depth analysis that is either emailed or direct messaged through Twitter to you.
The analysis report will show you when tweets are best exposed on a particular day, generally on an hourly basis. You are also able to discover the general statistics about your Twitter account, thanks to hourly graphs on how your content does and the quality of replies you get.
This is an essential part of understanding your audience, allowing your marketing campaign to flourish and grow, rather than sailing on by without being noticed.
Easily organise any of your day to day work with Trello
As with any form of work, organisation is vital. An unorganised project is likely to result in a messy marketing campaign which wouldn’t impress anyone. It can often be tough to stay organised, especially if you’re aiming to create a marketing campaign which has a lot of aspects to it.
Trello is one of the easiest and fastest ways of organising any aspect of your project, no matter how large or small. It has been praised for being one of the most intuitive tools that is available for free. The interface has been created to be easy to use, and it is easy to understand. Every action you make happens instantly, so nothing will stop your workflow.
Although you are able to use Trello by yourself, it has been purposely created to work even better with a group. Your whole business is able to use it at the same time, and you can see the updates they make as they do it. You’ll never be in the situation where you’re wondering what a certain person is doing.
What makes Trello unique compared to other online storage systems is how it adapts to how you want it to be. Whether it be for a business bulletin, a marketing campaign plan or something else, Trello can work for you.
Create important lists with Wunderlist
For a lot of people, their preferred form of planning consists of creating lists. Whilst this can be incredibly useful, more often than not lists get lost or damaged, and some people’s handwriting seems only to be readable by the writer. If you’re working within a group, this can create setbacks.
Wunderlist offers a way to organise your business in a clear and concise way. It is possibly one of the easiest ways to not only manage but to also share your important to-do lists. It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple office task, or a main project as part of your marketing campaign, Wunderlist can be an asset for your business.
You’re able to plan for everything, helping to make any of your goals an achievable target. The interface is easy to use, no matter if you’re at the office or down at the shops. Wunderlist allows you to share any lists with other people easily, letting you set reminders, check off tasks and even create design briefs.
What makes it such a popular tool is its accessibility. You can use it on a variety of devices, such as Apple and Android products, as well as on the web. Allowing you to access a list even when you aren’t at your computer lets your marketing campaign run smoothly no matter where you are.
Create and edit high quality images with GIMP
One of the most popular image editing and creation softwares is Adobe Photoshop, but depending on what package you purchase, it can cost a lot of money. If you’re a smaller business that is trying to establish themselves on the market, this software may be out of of your budget range.
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s a brilliant program for creating images, retouching images and even image authoring. GIMP is also free to download and use, although if you find it useful it’s always worth leaving a donation.
What makes it stand out from other free image programs is just how adaptable it is. If you simply want to use it as a more sophisticated version of MS Paint, then you can, but that’s without even accessing the image retouching system, online batch processing system, mass production image renderer or image format converter, and that’s just naming a few of its processes.
GIMP has been designed to be as extensive as possible, allowing you to expand it with various plugins and extensions that allow you to do what you wish. It has a built-in advanced scripting interface that allows you to make even the simplest of tasks undergo complex image manipulation that is close to the high standard of Photoshop.
Record your computer screen or edit a video with Camtasia
In recent years, video content has become popular. Rather than being stuck reading a wall of text like standard written content, video content can be a unique and effective addition to any marketing campaign. What a lot of businesses struggle with though is the editing of the video footage, sometimes resulting in unprofessional-looking videos.
Camtasia is a great tool to make the most out of, even offering a free trial so you can get a feel of what it’s like. If you want to make a guide for your website, you are able to record your screen. You can then import music or record your voice so it comes together as a useful guide.
The Camtasia editor is a great asset to use, allowing you to not only edit but also enhance the footage you have captured. There are a variety of themes, backgrounds, callouts, graphics and more that can allow you to provide unique videos for any marketing campaign.
Making sure that you can engage your audience is essential, and Camtasia provides you with features that let you do just that. Interactive videos that allow a person to click a link is more memorable than a standard video that simply runs for a certain period of time. The features are numerous and useful, and they’re also available for both Mac and Windows, the two main systems used by the majority of businesses.
Create commercial quality presentations and videos with PowToon
When creating a marketing campaign, it can be easy to fall in the trap of being too boring, or it simply being too text-heavy. A lot of people struggle when it comes to creating entertaining video content due to the lack of programs out there.
PowToon should be your go-to tool, and it’s completely free to use. The system has been created to be as simple to use without sacrificing the high-end features. You don’t need any previous experience of being an animator either. As soon as you start you’ll be guided through the process until you understand how to work it yourself.
Once you’ve created your video or presentation, it goes onto the sharing aspect. A lot of other websites that offer video editing hold your finished piece ransom, only releasing it if you include their watermark. PowToon is nothing like that, allowing you to upload it straight to YouTube or download it to your computer with a single click.
How many presentations have you sat through where it’s simply slide after slide of the same writing and similar stock images? If you have any experience of these then you’ll understand just how forgettable they can be. Being able to introduce animated characters, unique images and even moving text can be the difference between your audience being engaged and really not paying any attention whatsoever.
It’s perfect for all types of businesses, whether you are only small or a full marketing professional. Being able to increase the engagement aspect of a marketing campaign can be the difference between it flourishing or failing. The features PowToon offer allow you to create some of the most impressive and professional videos and presentations that will capture the eye of both potential customers and other businesses.
The tools for success
All of the tools listed above provide you with some of the best programs that can help utilise your marketing campaign. It’s amazing how many people ignore these tools when they can be a major benefit. The majority are free, and the others are available for an affordable price. Either way, you’ll be sure to see the difference in the content you create.
What do you think of this blog? Do you use any of the tools listed? Which tools would you suggest? Get involved in the conversation on Twitter, @theukseo