7 New Sales and Marketing Tools We’re Using in 2016

sales and marketing toolsHere at VA Partners, we are always on the hunt for new sales and marketing tools. We do this for a few reasons; to ensure we’re on the pulse on what is new and exciting in the sales and marketing world, to improve our craft and form new best practices, as well as to increase our productivity as much as we can.

Most recently, here are 7 new tools we have been working with:

1. HubSpot CRM

Most sales and marketing professions are well aware that HubSpot is a great marketing automation tool. However, it also offers a great CRM opportunity. A couple of benefits of the HubSpot CRM include the easy-to-use interface and of course, the integration with their marketing tool. This is a great free option for those who are new to using a CRM. A couple of features I enjoy in this CRM is the auto-fill option when adding new accounts and the activity timeline for an account or contact.

2. Join.me

Working as a mobile team at VA Partners and having clients cross southern Ontario and internationally, we’ve had to come up with a solution to help facilitate discussions and meetings online. We found join.me to be our go-to tool for this. It’s easy to set up and the screen sharing functionality is especially helpful for conducting demos, and reviewing documents collaboratively.

3. YouTube

Video content has continued to dominate marketing trends this year, so it’s only right that we too experiment with this medium. We are publishing our videos on our VA Partners YouTube channel. In addition to posting videos, we have also been learning about how to optimize our channel page, how to use tools within YouTube videos such as annotations and playlists, and how videos work with our current content strategy.

4. QuickTime

One video format we have found success in producing are how-to and screen capture videos using the QuickTime tool. We found these easy to follow videos to be engaging, and can promote repeat viewers. These videos include, 3 Free Tools to Improve your Website and How to Create Twitter Lists.

5. LinkedIn Sponsored Posts

We regularly post on our LinkedIn company page with blog updates and industry news, but there is also a wealth of untapped opportunities on LinkedIn that we wanted to look into. LinkedIn sponsored posts are essentially ads that allow you to boost your updates to a targeted audience who can garner you a click to your website or piece of content.You sponsored posts can include filters on geography, job title, industry and many others. This is a great opportunity to get more qualified leads through social media.

6. AdRoll

Another emerging marketing trend are re-targeting ads. Re-targeting refers to specific ads that are fed to you depending on the previous activity you’ve had on a certain website. For example, if you make it to a landing page, but don’t actually follow through with the lead form, a targeted ad will be presented to you, reminding you of this offer. AdRoll offers this service, by helping to facilitate this process by creating ads, publishing them and reporting.

7. Google Analytics

Here at VA Partners, we’ve always been a big fan of Google Analytics. With the vast amount of data available on Google Analytics it can sometimes be difficult to extract exactly the right information. Here are some newer ways we’ve been using Google Analytics to ensure our data is in top shape.

I. Spam Filters

One area of interest in Google Analytics is the acquisition section, where you can see your traffic sources (organic, direct, referral, social). The referrals tab specifically lets you see how external links have contributed to traffic. However, the numbers in this section may be misleading because of spam. To rectify this issue, we created a new segment to filter spam referrals. By applying this segment to our data, we block any source (link) that is we’ve determined as spam.

II. Conversions

Another area of Google Analytics that we’ve been exploring is the conversions section. You will first need to set up and activate goals in the admin panel of Google Analytics. Goal types include destination goals, number of pages per visit, and duration of visits. Once a goal is completed by a viewer, it is tracked as a conversion. To add further value to your data, you can assign monetary value of certain actions. With conversion you can analyze how your website viewers behave on your site and determine how valuable their interactions are.

What new tools are you looking to incorporate in your sales and marketing mix? Let us know in the comments below!

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7 New Sales and Marketing Tools We’re Using in 2016