Brief Marketer

I'll Keep It Brief.

Marketing Tools and Resources

marketing tools and resources

Here is a collection of marketing tools and resources to help with your business that I would personally recommend. I have used all of these except for a few that I either researched or were recommended to me, which are labeled with a *.

Categories

Website
WordPress Plugins
Shopify Apps
FTP Management
Creative/Design
Content
Learning
Admin/Productivity
Social Media
Advertising
Email
Analytics
Monetize
Chrome Extensions
Contests
Screencasting
Miscellaneous

Website

  • Google Domains – My new favorite registrar as it’s always one low price and includes free privacy. Extremely simple and easy to use.
  • GoDaddy – They often offer discounts and robust features. It can get more confusing, but they have good support and know their stuff.
  • Namecheap* – Another big domain registrar that offers domains for cheap.
  • Blue Host – Relatively simple hosting. Highly recommend going with the unlimited website plan rather than being limited to only 1. It’s a hassle to change it later and get a good price.
  • WordPress.org – This is what I use to power my website along with over ¼ of all websites on the internet.
  • Genesis theme – This is a very powerful framework for WordPress that is widely used. I use the framework with a child theme on top for customizations.
  • Child theme – The one I’m using is called Dumplin which I found on Creative Market. I heavily customized it, but you can find all sorts of different child themes for the genesis framework.
  • Instapage – I use Instapage for landing page and lead generation. It’s very customizable and pretty reasonably priced.
  • Leadpages – I have also used Leadpages which is a little more expensive. I do like their leadboxes which are their popups that can be used outside of their landing pages which Instapage does not currently have.
  • Shopify – Eccomerce platform with all the bells and whistles. I use it for thinkpup.com
  • Namechk – Check availability of domain names and social media usernames all at once. Great tool when brainstorming new business ideas.
  • Mobile Friendly Test – A Google tool to check if a website is mobile friendly.
  • Peek – Free website user experience testing.
  • SEM Rush – Keyword research tool for paid and organic strategies.
  • Ahrefs – Track keywords, backlinks, brand mentions, and competitors.
  • Buzzsumo – Contenet marketing research, influencer finding, monitoring, and more.
  • Backlink Checker – Free backlink checker.
  • Zapier – Connect apps and automate workflows.
  • Google PageSpeed Insights – See how your website load times rank on mobile and desktop, and what you can do to improve site speed.

WordPress Plugins

Currently Installed on Brief Marketer:

  • Yoast SEO – The best plugin for SEO. Also makes setting up Facebook OG codes very simple.
  • AdRotate – Allows you to rotate through multiple banners in one placement. Can use in a sidebar or anywhere else on your site.
  • Disqus comments – A better commenting system than the default WordPress one, used on my blog.
  • Instapage – For easy integration when building pages on Instapage.
  • Ninja forms – A better contact form submission than the default WordPress one, used on my contact page.
  • Simple social icons – The social icons that live in my sidebar.
  • SumoMe – Free tools for list building, social sharing, and analytics.
  • Pretty Link Lite – A simple to use link shortener.
  • Click to Tweet – Add Click to Tweet boxes in blogs to encourage sharing.

Other Good Plugins:

Shopify Apps

  • Printful – Fully automated apparel and gift drop shipper. Large selection and good prices. Also works with other ecommerce providers.
  • Notify – Popup notifications of recent purchases to increase credibility and conversions.
  • MailChimp – Auto syncs your email lists.

FTP management

Creative/Design

Content

  • Title Generator – Type in your topic and they’ll make it interesting for you.
  • Title Capitalization – Put in your title and it will automatically capitalize it correctly.
  • Grammarly – Grammar and spell check, plagiarism check, vocabulary enhancement, and more.
  • Word Hippo – Find new or different words.
  • Hemmingway – Write stronger articles and copy.

Learning

  • Digital Marketer – Tons of marketing content in their monthly membership and access to their large Facebook community.
  • Myspeed – Speed up or slow down videos, great for training and instructional videos or audio, podcasts, webinar recordings, etc.
  • Pocket – Save articles for later and store all in one place.
  • TheSkimm – Daily 5 minute read to your inbox to keep you up to date on all things current events.

Admin/Productivity

  • Evernote.com – Easy way to take and organize notes, images, files, etc.
  • Google Drive and Docs – Cloud storage and eliminates the need for Office products like word, excel, and powerpoint.
  • Google Apps for Work – Use Gmail for your business accounts.
  • DropBox – Cloud storage that syncs across computers and devices effortlessly.
  • Divvy – Desktop window management.
  • PayPal – Make and receive payments.
  • Square – Great for online or point of purchase sales.
  • Braintree Payments – Payment processor. No fees on first 50k.
  • 1password – Password manager.
  • WeTransfer – Send large files to people.
  • Grasshopper* – Business phone service.
  • Boomerang for Gmail – Schedule emails to come back into your inbox when you need them.
  • SurveyMonkey – Surveys.
  • Google Forms – Best and easiest forms to use with instant integration with google sheets.
  • Slack – Internal team communication. Cuts down on unnecessary emails and saves time.
  • Asana – Project and task management. Great for work and personal.
  • Zendesk – Customer Service.
  • Unroll.me – Mass unsubscribe from emails and add others to a daily digest email.
  • Amazon Fresh – Save time, have your groceries delivered.
  • Timer-Tab – Easy, free tool for timers, countdowns, and alarms in a browser tab while you work.

Social Media

  • Hootsuite – Schedule your social media posts and engage in conversations.
  • SproutSocial – A more robust scheduler. This is used at my agency.
  • Buffer – Social scheduler that posts at the best time for your audience.
  • Quuu – Hand-picked content suggestions automatically pushed to Buffer.
  • Edgar – Schedule and reuse evergreen content on social.
  • Jarvis – A cheaper option to reuse and schedule content on social. Also includes a content discovery search.
  • Instagress – Automate Instagram actions.
  • Grum – Schedule Instagram posts.
  • Crowd Fire – Twitter automation and stats.
  • Facebook Sharing Debugger – Preview how our links will show up on Facebook.
  • Twitter Card Validator – Preview how your links will show up on Twitter.
  • Hubspot Marketing Grader – Get a free and quick grade for your site and see where you can improve.

Advertising

  • AdWords – Search ads, display network ads, product ads, and YouTube ads all go through AdWords.
  • Google Adwords Editor – A more advanced tool that you must learn if you’re doing large amounts of ads.
  • Facebook – Also where you would run Instagram ads.
  • AdEspresso – A very powerful split tester for Facebook ads. This is hands down MY FAVORITE tool.
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest

Email System

  • MailChimp – This is what I currently use and is great for beginners. Integrates with a ton of other platforms.
  • Infusionsoft – When you’re ready to upgrade to the next level this is a very popular and robust platform.
  • OptinMonster* – Grow your list with pop-ups.
  • OptiMonk – Another pop-up list building provider.

Analytics

  • Google Analytics – Free tool to track all your site analytics.
  • Google Tag Manager – Manage all your pixels and tracking codes from one place.
  • Google UTM Builder – Use UTMs to track campaigns in Google Analytics.
  • Cyfe – Create your own simple dashboard that pulls in widgets from other sources important to you.

Monetize

  • ShareASale – Affiliate network.
  • CJ (Commission Junction) – Affiliate network.
  • Amazon Associates – Amazon’s affiliate program.
  • AdSense – Place Google’s display network banners on your site.
  • Swagbucks – Earn redeemable points for shopping or completing actions.
  • Kit – Allows you to put products into “kits” and attach your amazon affiliate link.

Chrome Extensions

Contests

Screencasting

Misc