8 Inbound Marketing Tools Every Specialist Should Try

Successful inbound marketing requires good data management, an accurate analysis of ROI, and seamless coordination of resource. All three of these areas can be improved with the use of inbound marketing tools. The good news is that there are many different tools out there, all with the same goal: to keep you organized, up-to-date and fully optimized in the data department. But how do you choose the right ones for your team? From all-in-one platforms to niche analytics, there are countless options, and this can sometimes be confusing.

The first thing to remember is that no amount of technology can make up for bad strategy – so get the basics in place first. Once you have defined your strategy and outlined a plan, it’s all about deploying the most suitable tools for various stages of the process. Here’s a look at some of the best tools to try.

1. HubSpot CRM

The HubSpot CRM tool is one of the most popular free tools for tracking deals, tasks and conversations as well as managing contacts. Used to align marketing with sales, HubSpot CRM is fantastic for improving collaboration in your organization. Some of the functions include filtering to find contacts, messaging contacts from your inbox, creating custom fields, automated logging of sales activity, and the ability to schedule and assign tasks to team members.

A reliable CRM is essential for nurturing leads at every stage of the funnel. It’s the next crucial step to demand generation, and CRM software like HubSpot can make it easier for marketing to pass on critical information to the sales team.

2. HubSpot Workflows

Designed to help marketers set up powerful, automated workflows and email drip campaigns, HubSpot Workflows is one of the best inbound marketing tools out there. Essential for lead nurturing, this kind of tool helps you automate your campaigns to move prospects further down the funnel without any coding.

Through a simple, visual interface, HubSpot Workflows makes it easy for teams to create beautiful emails that are sent to the right people at the right time. As it’s a part of the fully integrated HubSpot platform, you can easily grow and manage your contacts throughout the sales cycle.

3. Hotjar

Inbound marketing runs on data, and that’s why tools like Hotjar are so important for making your campaigns effective. Hotjar provides nurwebsite heat maps and behavior analytics so you can get to know your audience better. This type of data feeds into your buyer personas, helping you build a more accurate picture of your target customer.

As well as user behavior on specific web pages, you can also access feedback polls, see conversion funnel analytics, and understand how visitors engage with your site. It has everything you need to tap into insights and make changes to improve your long-term strategy.

4. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder can be integrated with Google Analytics (GA) to uncover exactly who is visiting your site. It helps you identify companies from your anonymous website visitors on GA, and allows you to sync with different CRM and automation tools. This software is essential in making your lead generation more impactful, assisting sales and marketing teams in generating, qualifying and converting.

By tracking visitors at account level, businesses can fill their sales pipeline with leads they never even knew they had.

5. GatherContent

From blog posts and articles to whitepapers and eBooks, GatherContent creates a visual workflow for all your content efforts. It helps you manage and organize basic content as well as advanced content, keeping track of everything you put out there. Content marketing is the heart of every great inbound strategy, and is essential to the early-funnel phase, building your reputation and raising your profile to prospects.

As you scale your content, take on new channels or hire new marketers, the need to manage deadlines and approvals is even more vital. GatherContent can coordinate content at every level, taking you from brand awareness pieces to gated content pieces required for lead generation. There’s also easy visibility and accountability, so you can collaborate with multiple contributors and delegate responsibilities.

6. Beacon

This lead magnet software acts as a complete solution for designing beautiful, professional lead magnets for your website – an important tactic for pushing people further along the funnel. If you’ve been having problems increasing your reader conversion rate, Beacon is a tool that can help you out.

In order to be attention-grabbing, it’s important to get the aesthetics right. Beacon’s Lead Magnet Editor simplifies the creation process, making it easy to stick to tight budgets while minimizing resource.

7. Basecamp

Any successful inbound campaign needs good collaboration. From aligning internal teams such as sales and marketing to merging external consultants and content creators, it pays to have a system in place. This is even more important when your marketing function is remote, making it essential for organizations to adopt digital collaboration tools like Basecamp.

Making it easy to create tasks and projects, set milestones and deadlines, manage communication, and upload and share files, Basecamp gives your team one single place to coordinate all campaigns. Not only can you communicate better, reduce meeting times and be more productive, but you can run multiple projects without having to switch platforms.

8. BuzzSumo

Well-oiled campaigns rely on having the right content for the right people at the right time. Relevance and timing are key, and inbound marketing tools like BuzzSumo help you gain better insight into what topics appeal to your audience. Not only that, but BuzzSumo analyzes where and when they are most likely to engage with your content.

For instance, it’s easy to see how many times a link has been shared on social channels and you can quickly filter all results by date. You’ll also be able to search for influencers in any topic area and follow them directly in the BuzzSumo app.

Social media engagement is one of the most important tactics for demand generation, so improving your social strategy is something that should never be overlooked.