What's something you use every day that genuinely makes running your business easier?
Just sharing some tools I find endless value from for new marketers since I see a lot of posts on here about "how do I get started, what should I learn, etc."
A little about me for context:
- Been marketing 15 years
- Generalist with undergrad degree in psych (no formal marketing training)
- Generated over $100M in my career
- Currently leading a SaaS marketing team, but have worked in CPG too.
- Have managed teams up to 15 people in size
Feel free to share your tools below!
GA4 - I actually hate GA4, but it is what it is. Learn this thing because you need it, like it or not. It's the standard.
Ryze AI - If you're managing multiple ad accounts, this saves hours. Monitors everything, generates reports across all accounts at once, and can auto-apply fixes. I was manually checking each account every morning like an idiot before this.
OneTab - Honestly this chrome extension changed my life. I'm one of those people who keeps 47 tabs open, then feels stressed about having them open, but also stressed about closing them. OneTab allows me to get a fresh slate every morning without any concern about losing something.
Klaviyo - Without a doubt, Klaviyo is best marketing email platform for the money. The automation features are unbelievable and the integrations are really solid as well. To me, Klaviyo brings big business segmentation and automation to small marketing teams in an easy to use interface with super transparent pricing.
Looker - I really love building a visual dashboard for my marketing data. Looker has a learning curve, but if you know GA4 and you're willing to fuss with the regex and filters, you can build some really powerful and insightful dashboards for marketing channels like email, social, ads, etc. Bonus: you can connect Google Search Console to pipe in data into an actual digestible format.
Google Ads - This is the first ads channel you should learn inside out. Mainly because it's the easiest one to find success with (because the technology is much better than any other ads platform, and because search ads capture intent instead of trying to capture interest). Between Google and YouTube, you've got access to the majority of the internet with this one platform.
Asana - Absolutely love Asana. The most intuitive and powerful project management system (also FREE). I've tried Jira, Trello, Monday, Notion, and ClickUp and they are all lackluster compared to Asana when it comes to marketing project management.
Noun Project - There are so many underwhelming stock image sites. I really love this site. Most of my marketing graphics are either using icons or photos and Noun Project has the best selection for the best price, hands down. Also love that you can customize icons.
Google Slides & Google Sheets - Don't roll your eyes because most marketers I've worked with aren't using half of the functionality these free tools offer. Things like pivots, well made chart visuals, data formatting formulas, etc are all underutilized.
Apollo.io - Cold emails are tough, but I think for the money you can't beat Apollo. It pulls in the stuff you typically have to pay a ton for like a huge database of contacts, recordable calls with transcripts and snippets, etc for a flat affordable monthly rate.
Loom - Can't tell you how helpful it is for async communication and documentation to just record my screen while I'm talking and send it to someone. Hidden gem: AI transcription is a nice feature.
ChatGPT - Here's how I use this one: organizing a mess of notes into a coherent doc, drafting blog posts, generating customer avatars that I can ask questions, preparing for job interviews, negative keyword lists, and competitive analysis. You just have to understand: 90% of the copy and ideas you get from ChatGPT is unusable trash. But the 10% is well worth it.
Reddit - lol. I mean, every time I have a question I can't find an answer to, I come here and ask, and I get answers. Aside from that, it's a fantastic listening tool. Jump into a forum and just look at what people say about the problem your business solves, your competitors, you, etc.
TinyPNG - I get an image from a designer for an email and it's like 4.5mb. TinyPNG is free and almost always cranks the image down to a few KB without making it look like shit.
LinkedIn - I received 3 job offers in one month because I built a solid personal brand before I started looking for my most recent role. Yes, your connections (quantity and quality) do matter. Yes, it matters if you post on there actively.
Those are the main ones. What about you?