Looking to improve your audience engagement? There are a number of different marketing tools online that you can use to engage your customers. These tools are great for small business owners. They don't usually have the resources or staff to stay on top of their social media, but these tools can reduce the time or work needed.
Here are nine effective tools that you may consider using to boost your audience engagement. Some of them have free trials or are actually free if you don’t need more than a limited account.
Hubspot is an automation tool that allows small businesses to compete with their larger counterparts. It provides you with many different types of data—page performance, social media information, website clicks, blog hits and any type of information you’re looking for can be gathered and reported by Hubspot.
Hubspot also has a calendar program that lets you create a centralized content calendar for all of your team members. You can easily see what social media content is scheduled to go out, when emails will be sent, what blog posts are being worked on and much more. It can be perfect for keeping all of your team members in the loop.
Zendesk is a customer service tool that allows you to maintain better relationships with customers, respond to questions quickly or view your engagement with them. This helps you determine if more or less communication is needed. It makes converting leads into customers quick and easy.
Rather than one set price per month, you pay per user. So you only really pay for the people who will be using the product. In some cases, this makes it much cheaper than the alternatives.
Intercom is another customer engagement application that focuses on dialogue and two-way communication. You can send emails and messages back and forth. You can also set up automated messages that are triggered based on your customer’s behavior or at specific times. This makes it very easy to engage customers and provide them with support when they need it, especially when they need that support in a timely manner.
PureChat allows you to answer customer questions instantly. Many customers no longer appreciate the delay time that comes with emails, which is why more and more companies are going to an instant message type format like PureChat. In addition to offering a free version, PureChat also has a mobile app that allows both customers and employees to log in to the chat server at any time. PureChat is installed and integrated directly into your website, so it doesn’t even look like it’s an external program.
Mailchimp is a great way to manage your email marketing campaigns. It gives you a number of different email tools that:
It also has tracking tools that help you see which emails had the best engagement so you can pinpoint what to work on. Mailchimp also has plugins that let it work with a number of other email programs.
Switch.co is an online communication app specifically designed to replace traditional business phone systems. In this internet era, as everything is going cloud, why should your business phone systems be left behind. With a simple mechanism, your business phone number is routed through the internet and to the phone of your choice, so you can take your business calls at home, at the office or on your cell phone. Plus, it can save voicemails and do anything a regular phone can do. Just a working internet connection is required, that’s all.
Hootsuite is one of the top social media apps because it allows you to create, send, reply to and manage all of your Twitter accounts. It has a very competitive and flexible pricing system, is very adaptable to almost any need, and can scale with your business as you grow. While it started out as a Twitter program, Hootsuite has expanded to include other social media sites. It can be used online, but there’s also a downloadable app that can be integrated with your desktop.
Outbrain is an advertising platform that is quick and easy to learn and use. You can set your budgets, push your content to a number of premium websites for recommendations, and much more. If you’re running multiple ad campaigns, Outbrain is a good way of keeping track of them all and making sure that you stay within budget.
Tweetdeck is another app that was originally designed for Twitter. It allows you to search keywords and terms related to your brand. In addition to that, it allows you to set up scheduled Tweets and keeps you on top of retweets and mentions. Its ability to notify you whenever someone is Tweeting about your business, industry, or specific topics is a great tool for keeping up with the market.
These are just nine of the many different tools out there to engage customers and bring in new ones. Whether it’s making it faster to write posts, letting you schedule emails weeks in advance or keeping you on budget, these apps are definitely worth checking out. Most of these apps have free demos, so it doesn’t hurt to try them out. They may not all be right for you; but you may find that several of them are tools you can’t live without.
