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Inside Our Marketing Agency - 7 Tools I Use Everyday

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It takes a lot of software packages to do what we do at our marketing agency.   As the agency's owner, I have several roles that require me to spend a significant amount of time with both our sales and marketing efforts.  To manage my time effectively I've adopted a host of software solutions that really help.  If you're looking for some ideas on how you can improve your production I have 7 tools you'll find value in.

7 Software Tools I Use Every Day to Run Our Marketing Agency

For remote meetings, I use Uber Conference 

I'm in meetings all the time, often with prospects and clients in different states.  We use the crap out of our web conferencing tools, someone is on a conference pretty much every hour of every day.  After cycling through several other options for web conferencing we've landed on Uber Conference.  I love Uber for two reasons.  First, it's perhaps the most economical solution on the market.  Their pricing is great and we were simply spending way too much money on our previous solutions.  Uber has solved for the customer by providing great volume-friendly pricing.  

Second, it's super easy for our prospects and clients.  They simply have to click the link, enter their name, and join the conference.  The system will call them and they can join a screen share with one click.  No 16-digit access codes, pin numbers, or other pains in the ass that drive me nuts about most other options.  

If you don't like the conference system you're using I think you should consider Uber.  Uber has a really nice free version but you'll want to go with a paid subscription to personalize your link and manage a lot of calls properly. 

To keep track of all our projects, I use Teamwork

I'm involved with large web projects that require detailed tracking of multiple resources.  I know there are a lot of project management tools to choose from but at Revenue River, we prefer Teamwork.  Teamwork has the ability to quickly revise due dates based on a single task update, which really helps.  The time saved here alone makes it worth the small monthly investment required to manage every website redesign we have in process.  

Teamwork has a free version but you'll need to upgrade if you're going to manage a large team with a lot of projects.

For marketing our agency, I use HubSpot and Trello

I work on our own marketing campaign, working to develop our own lead generation machine.  As a Platinum Certified HubSpot Agency we practice what we preach, using HubSpot for all our marketing automation needs.  I'm in our own software license every day, reviewing metrics and analyzing results across each of our campaigns.  I closely monitor our keyword rankings, landing page performance, email marketing efforts, and use the social tools to share our best content across all our channels.  

Another tool I couldn't live without these days is Trello.  Trello provides a fantastic at-a-glance view of every assignment we have working with our team.  I can leave quick notes about status, move cards along as their status changes.  It provides a great look at where all our content offers stand and really helps our Marketing Manager Doug Eldridge manage the editorial calendar.  

HubSpot has several different license levels to choose from but Trello is completely free.  

For custom image creation, I use Canva

I write a lot of articles for our blog and for other industry blogs I'm a guest author for.  A difficulty many writers have is building custom images for their articles and Canva is a tool I absolutely love for this.  It's very easy to build the exact size of image needed before customizing it with text, icons, and other designs that make my images more engaging.  If you haven't used Canva, you should.  

The best thing about Canva is it's completely free.

To manage all our sales opportunities, I use Sidekick and HelloSign

I'm the sales manager, working with Adrian Doggrell to bring on new clients for the agency.  I use Sidekick to manage every opportunity from the time they're identified until they're ready to sign a contract.   The ability to carefully manage every interaction, response, meeting, and document delivery through Sidekick ensures that nothing is lost along the way.  

Once we've agreed to terms we load our proposals into HelloSign before sending them for execution.  I can add an easy digital signature request for new clients, preventing them from printing, scanning, and emailing it back to me.  It's a fantastic convenience to allow our new clients we've worked so hard to bring aboard and the combination of the two makes for a fantastic mechanism for managing our sales efforts.  

Both of these solutions have a free version to get you started but you'll likely want to upgrade once you've decided to use them regularly.

 

These are just a handful of the software solutions our marketing agency uses to manage our day to day.  Although there are many others different employees use within their individual roles, these are the tools that I use the most.  If you have a secret tool that you use a lot I'd love to hear about it.  I'm constantly evaluating new toys and trying them out if I think they can help us solve for the client.  I hope you found a couple new toys to try out too.

 

 

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