Introduction
In 2020 the world was going through the horror of Covid-19. Every country was meticulously putting efforts to identify Covid positive people to quarantine them for the sake of thousands of other lives.
And then something happened that sent chills down the spines of the officials of Public Health England (PHE), the UK government body responsible for tallying new COVID-19 infections. The data of 16,000 corona-positive people was simply wiped out of their system, leaving the PHE clueless about who and where these people were.
When they looked into the problem it was revealed that PHE was using Excel to record data and Excel has a data limitation that allows only 16,384 columns per sheet, and when that was exceeded Excel simply erased about 16000 extra entries at the bottom.
Lesson – Well, we can easily conclude that Excel is a bad tool and its data limitations are the culprit, but we are barely at the tip of the problem. The problem was that Excel was not the best for the job.
The right tools can make all the difference in your business-they can help you save time, money, and improve your productivity. You will find so many options for marketing tools and that’s the real challenge- how to decide which tool best suits your marketing needs?
In this Review, we reveal seven parameters that you should consider and weigh when choosing the right marketing tools for your business. By the end of this Review, you should be on your way to find the most suitable marketing tools for your business growth.
The 7 Parameters
These 7 parameters are designed to help you in your journey of marketing tool selection.
1. Start with Multiple Options
The Internet, your friends, social media, and even our Reviews can suggest the best tools for your business, but it is your job to judge whether these suggestions (tools) can really be helpful for you. The best way to judge is by starting with multiple options and comparing the different tools to find the one that best meets your needs.
For example, you will find CRM tool options such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, and many more, but we would suggest going for a consultation before starting. You can start by getting inputs from people in the industry, or even through a quick web search.
2. Feature analysis
This is the first and the most important step when selecting a marketing tool. First, you need to assess what your needs are as that will serve as the base to analyze the features of a tool.
Always start by arranging the list of features in the order of priority according to your need. Then judge every alternative according to your priority list. For example, if your target is to create a waitlist for a product launch then the first feature an ideal tool should have is to create a wish list showing the details of people signing up, second important feature will be the referral feature that will allow the referee to go further up the waitlist, and third, it should have the ability to reflect your brand colors in the process.
3. Check for Free Trial
Free trials are an easy way to compare different tools and get a firsthand feel of how they function. During this trial period you can do a test run of whether the features are suitable for your purpose. Free trials also give you the chance to understand which tool is easy-to-use than others, performs effectively with your requirement and overall efficiency. The best part is that, generally, most of the tools offer a certain period of free trial that allows you to have deeper insights than secondary research. Make sure to do a thorough scrutiny of tools as per your feature checklist, and if you are entering billing details before starting the trial, remember to cancel it before the due date to avoid unnecessary expenditure.
4. Documentation and Integration
Documentation features and integration capabilities are two of the most important qualities that you should look for in an ideal marketing tool. From the documentation, you need to judge the level of complexity involved in using the marketing tools because this tool is going to be used by people in your business with different skill levels, so it is essential that the tool be easy to use for a technical and non-technical person alike.
The next feature to check is the tool’s integration capabilities. To foster a cohesive marketing ecosystem and prevent data silos, a marketing tool needs to work harmoniously with other existing software. Integration capability ensures that data flows seamlessly between different marketing tools, providing a unified view of customer interactions and improving data accuracy. Integration with other tools allows for automated workflows, reducing manual tasks and enhancing overall marketing efficiency.
For example, Mailchimp can be integrated with Facebook, Instagram and Twitch to automatically add your followers as contacts in Mailchimp to easily create targeted email campaigns.
5. Customer support
No matter which tool you select, it is most likely that sooner or later you may need to ring up customer support to sort out problems during onboarding, integration and regular operation. In all these cases, prompt customer support is absolutely necessary to prevent stalling your business operations. Testing the promptness and efficiency of customer support is an essential task to do during the trial period. Even the most efficient tool can become a burden if it lacks prompt customer support in times of need. We suggest selecting a tool that offers live chat customer support instead of chat bots to enable quick grievance redressal.
6. Scalability
Let’s revisit our PHE example with the Excel sheets. The excel sheet maintained by PHE lacked scalability because it couldn’t record data after a certain count. To put simply, scalability of a marketing tool means its ability to handle increasing traffic and demand without sacrificing performance or quality. A scalable marketing tool is one that can grow with your business as you acquire more customers and generate more leads. The tool should be able to handle more users and more data as your business grows.
7. Cost (and Negotiation)
This parameter is widely regarded as the most important and sometimes the only parameter to judge a good marketing tool: the cost. It is general consumer behavior to go for things that are feature-rich at a lower price, or simply the least priced option. However, these options may turn out to be ineffective, or simply irrelevant for your use.
Well, it is obviously vital to look at the cost of a tool but try to look at the bigger picture. Most marketing tools offer tiered subscriptions with associated features. The higher you go on the subscription cost ladder the more features you will get. Here you have to judge exactly what and how many features you need, and which tool is offering those features with quality but without exceeding your budget.
But what if you find a tool with all the required features, but it is out of your budget?
Here’s a pro tip- you can negotiate the price!
Yes, that’s possible. Most companies are open to discuss more generous options if you have a conversation with them explaining your needs and challenges.
Conclusion
In the end, let’s look at the gist of this Review. Consultation is the most important thing to do in the tool selection journey. You can consult your friends, people from industry, the internet, or even us to learn about and select tools for trial. Then consult this guideline we have provided to choose the best one for your purpose.
That’s all for now.
Let us know your feedback in our comment section.
