“You can’t please all the people all of the time.” However, as marketers, it’s our job to try and disprove this old saying by John Lydgate and get absolutely everyone to love your brand. We’re not saying it’s easy. You may not be able to sell your product/service to everyone, but the more people know about it, and like it, the more exposure you’ll get. This translates to more leads and conversions. It sounds tough, but honestly, for the Digital Bees the process is a mere walk in the park.
It can get overwhelming trying to dig through all the available apps and softwares in the market, but we did.
Here are the 5 tried and tested essential marketing tools to make your life easier used by African marketers.
Project Management and Planning
Before all else, plan. It is the foundation that everything else is built on, so it’s crucial to get this part right. Our recommendations to best plan and assign tasks or projects are Trello and ClickUp.
They allow you to prioritize, manage and delegate tasks, share and store documents, add images and effectively communicate internally with team members. They also have a free version that work well for simple projects. However, ClickUp has more features in its free version.
Trello is great for solopreneurs, small teams and freelancers. ClickUp is best for small to midsized businesses with more robust features.
Social Media Advertising
Hands up if your brand is not on social media… Anyone? No? Great. Every brand today has some sort of presence on social media because that’s where the audiences are.
Social media platforms serve as tools that humanize a brand and are an extension of your website. You can share brand content, engage with your customers, reach new and potential audiences, and much more.
The type of business and target audience determines which social media platform should be in use.
The Platforms
If you’re selling directly to customers, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp are fantastic. If you’re a business to business…business, LinkedIn is a sure bet.
Instagram has become a little tricky to maneuverer lately. First, to be popular, the likes and comments numbers had to be high. Next, posting stories. Now, you need slideshows and reels (which are mostly just content from TikTok), plus you must post on your feed around twice a day and go LIVE.
Instagram now tells users, it doesn’t need to be perfect. Aesthetics are dead. Gorgeous carousels don’t do jack squat. Just post a lot! Not too much like Twitter.
Don’t get me wrong, you should consider having a brand presence on Instagram, especially if you’re in the creative industry, but you’ll have to work harder than before to grow your brand.
Subsequently, TikTok is where all creatives are migrating to because all you need is a 7 second video with some text and the trending hashtags to appear in the ‘For You’ page #fyp. Having a brand presence on TikTok is a guaranteed way to reach bigger and more engaged audiences than Instagram. More so when you partner with TikTok influencers.
Snapchat is the least popular social media platform in Africa with less than 4 million users. This doesn’t mean you can’t use some of it’s features to grow your brand. Find out how by reaching out to the Digital Bees here.
Ranking of the number of Snapchat users in Africa by country – 2020 (in millions)
On the other hand, Twitter is used by African tweeps to protest political, economic, and social injustices. Notwithstanding, this fast-paced network allows you to create a list of your competitors and influential thought leaders in your industry. This list reduces the ‘noise’ on Twitter, showing more tweets and topics from accounts on the list.
You can upload video of events and activities of your company to YouTube. With YouTube shorts, you can tell your brand story in 60 seconds or less, especially if your target audience is Gen Z.
Social Media Marketing Tools
Essential marketing tools sure to make your life easier, whether it’s to advertise, manage or schedule your posts on any of the above platforms, are their respective business suites. Conversely, social media tools like HubSpot, Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer make it incredibly easy to ensure your brand is active on all social networks regularly, without having to constantly hit the post button.
Display Advertising Tools
They’re not as annoying as they used to be over a decade ago. Now, you can customize a display ad as a video, GIF, or pop-up. The more creative a display ad is, the more likely it is to get noticed. This form of paid advertising appears on almost every website. Users might ignore them, a tendency known as banner blindness, which can lead to low engagement with the ads.
Consider adding Adplugg or ClickUp into your arsenal of marketing tools so you can rotate, schedule and target your display ads individually or as a group, without a fuss.
Content Marketing
Create the correct marketing tactics, build better relationships, and expand your consumer base by implementing a robust content marketing strategy using tools like Mention, SEMRush, Contently and StoryChief.
Don’t have that kind of time? We do. Get in touch and we’ll create a content marketing strategy by developing and curating relevant and quality content.
Email Marketing
Don’t underestimate the reach and influence of an email. There are 4 billion daily email users – that’s half the global population, and 64% of small businesses use email to reach their customers.
Statistics aside, email marketing is more than just a list of email addresses on an excel sheet. Compose, send, and track your emails, then integrate data from your email campaigns with other backend systems such as CRM (customer relations management).
Email Marketing Tools
Whether it’s a value-add newsletter delivered to a gated subscriber community, a special offer or deals to recipients. One tool that nurtures leads and converts subscribers into customers is ActiveCampaign. It is impressively intuitive, easy to use and affordable.
Our second choice is HubSpot, which has a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to send email campaigns directly from WordPress.
Conclusion
Its time start working smarter, not harder. Get automated essential marketing tools and make your life easier. Automate, optimize, and connect very aspect of your business. Test drive and start as many free trials as you can from our selection of tools to find what works for your business, your team and your pocket.
Not sure where to start? Get in touch here.
