How to Pick the Right Marketing Platform for Your Business

Perhaps you have been at this ‘marketing your business’ thing for a while now and consider yourself a guru at traditional digital marketing techniques. However, marketing platform software is what will really drive your business forward online.

Otherwise you may be wondering which of the many marketing platforms are better suited for your brand, product, or service? To know the answer to this question, you need to begin with an analysis of your marketing goals and where you want to see your business.

What are you looking to get from your marketing platform?

Your digital marketing goals need to be aligned with your business objectives. This will maintain synergy and help determine that you use the right marketing platform for the right job.

Start by defining your objectives. What do you want to achieve? Is it brand awareness, or is it to increase customer engagement on social media? Or perhaps you want to generate leads and grow your sales.

Whatever your target, make sure it is clear and consult it when choosing the right marketing platform for your business.

Do you know which marketing metrics your boss actually cares about? Download our free Cheat Sheet and start setting KPIs that really matter!

The greatest marketing platforms

Here is a list of some of the finest marketing platforms in the outbound marketing industry. Each one has a unique offering in managing and executing digital marketing strategies effectively. Some look specifically at social media marketing, others at other digital marketing verticals. By undertaking careful platform management, you should be able to select the right mix of marketing platforms for your own business needs.

Hootsuite – creates synergy within your brand, manages your social media automatically, helps find new customers and keeps your business’s online presence intact. It costs $9.99 per month for the Pro plan.

Marketo – builds multi-channel campaigns in a time-efficient way. It is easy to use and good for flexible marketing strategies. Prices differ according to specific campaigns.

Rather, the wise thing is to carefully consider the actual target of your campaign. What would you like clients to do at the end of the communication channel? Download your tool? Become a subscriber? Make a purchase?

Your CTA should be your guide in selecting the best marketing platform.

Do you have a budget for your marketing platform?

Marketing platforms are an investment, just like your digital marketing campaign.

It is imperative that you understand the value of having the right one for your business, and follow up by including it in your marketing budget. When done right, the cost of purchasing a marketing platform license will be rewardingly outweighed by the effects that it will have on your revenue.

Opportunity cost of not having one

Perhaps you are thinking that businesses used to do without marketing platforms and so can yours. But before you make any uncalculated decisions on this, consider today’s businesses environment. In the midst of technology, your customers’ behaviour has shifted in many ways. The way they access information, the things that influence them and even their purchasing processes are now more digitally inclined than before.

This means you are operating in a different field than in the past.

You are facing somewhat new challenges. You need to collect and analyse data for customer profiling and marketing content. You need a tracking tool, as well as to consolidate all your channels. These can be time-consuming and very difficult to do without a marketing platform.

What are the benefits of marketing platforms to your business?

Are you a marketing agency? Instead of taking an umbrella approach to marketing platforms, think more about how your B2B customers will actually benefit from them. You know your clients; which media they use, what they are interested in, what could help them find the products/services they need, and so on.
Narrow your marketing platform choices to the ones that will help you attract and serve your customers better, and incorporate them into your digital marketing campaign.

If you are a B2C business, it might benefit you to partner up with a marketing agency with a well-established method to digital marketing. An agency that already has marketing platforms they use on a regular basis will give you the expert assistance you need to boost your marketing performance while saving you time and money.

Consider engaging a marketing agency to manage your marketing for you – in the meantime, you can download our Lead Generation Toolkit to test the effectiveness of your current lead generation activities and set smart goals and objectives.