If you are a firm believer in “Let your work speak for itself” then you are not alone. But there is a slight problem surrounding the above philosophy.
REACH. EXPOSURE.
Your creativity could be above par yet not receive significant attention from netizens. This isn’t uncommon. With cut-throat competition, it might get exceedingly difficult and time-consuming to promote yourself.
57% of Fortune500 companies say that implementing key digital technologies is essential for their digital growth and sustenance.
What tool can one use for promoting a creative website?
Sadly, there isn’t one ring to rule them all. You need to find the right bundle that best suits your requirements, financials and appetite.
I have done the legwork and reached out to over 30 brands (5% of them replying) asking three simple questions…
– How can {Brand} help a website for creative businesses promote themselves?
– How do you differentiate from competitors?
– Any suggestions for first-time users in the creative space?
All the research and replies have helped me segment the tools and services below for your convenience. From email promotions to graphic creation to catch the spotlight.
In this article, we will look at a few software and services that can help you automate and radicalize your marketing efforts.
Tools that help with your outreach.
Below is the stack of tools that will help you with your direct outreach via emails. We will not be focusing on SMS marketing in this segment.
1. Similarweb
Similarweb is perhaps the strongest host of tools under one roof. It offers digital research and marketing intelligence along with sales and shopper intelligence.
Digital research and marketing intelligence helps you understand your customers better by identifying the most relevant and valuable information about your target audience.
Their sales intelligence should be of significant importance in case you are looking at selling your services.
Features
- Analyze, evaluate and build an industry overview.
- Create your ideal consumer profile using digital behavioural data, competitive insight and audience profile.
- Discover the most effective paid ads strategy for your niche.
How to make the most of it?
After analyzing the above, you need to identify your audience’s needs. Knowing what they want helps you know the trends and consequently you know which direction to point your website to get the best traction.
Keep a close eye on the competition by using the benchmarking feature to your advantage. Constant updates help you micro-measure and adjust your strategies and mitigate any potentially disastrous decision.
Working with networks and publishers that perform the best in your niche helps you increase your ROI on paid promos.
2. Hunter.io
Hunter helps you find emails of the right Person of Contact (POC) with the help of website URLs.
As simple as their offering is, email list building to outreach to potential collaborators and maybe even competitors is an integral part of outreach.
You can also use their chrome extension to quickly glance through available emails as well.
Features
- Get a list of decision-makers with email pattern recognition
- Find emails of authors and creators from specific URLs
- Email verification
How to make the most of it?
After extracting the list of websites in your niche and peripheral niches that you could partner with, you need to use Hunter to get the contact information of decision-makers and highly influential people in your sphere.
Work on creating a list simultaneous to your market research as creating a list of emails for multiple websites in one work session gets boring.
FACT: I used hunter.io to find out the emails of marketers who gave me insights for this article 😉
3. SocialBee
SocialBee is a social media management tool that helps users get more exposure and leads from social media with less effort.
The app supports posting on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, TikTok, and Youtube.
In SocialBee, users can create, plan, publish, and analyze their content, as well as engage with their community.
Features:
- Create or add visuals for posts using the Canva, Unsplash, and Giphy integrations
- Get content ideas and generate captions with the AI assistant
- Create content schedules and automate posting
- Track performance across multiple platforms
- Monitor your inbox
How to make the most of it:
Consistency is what brings your content in front of your target audience. If this is what you want, SocialBee can help.
Use the bulk importing and editing features, as well as the ability to import content via RSS feeds. Make sure to recycle evergreen content and customize posts for each social media network individually.
By utilizing these features, you can streamline your social management process while maintaining a consistent and engaging presence across all platforms
4. Messente
Messente is a global SMS API platform and two-factor authentication (2FA) solution that helps businesses connect with their customers through secure, reliable, and scalable text messaging.
Features:
- SMS messaging: Send time-critical notifications, confirm transactions, and grow your business with highly converting SMS marketing campaigns.
- 2FA: Protect your users’ accounts with time-based one-time passwords (TOTP) and SMS PIN codes.
- Fraud prevention: Detect and prevent fraud with real-time SMS risk scoring.
How to make the most of it:
- Use Messente’s SMS messaging features to send timely and relevant notifications to their customers.
- Implement Messente’s 2FA features to protect their users’ accounts from unauthorized access.
- Use Messente’s fraud prevention features to detect and prevent fraud.
- Use Messente’s SMS verification service to verify phone numbers and identities, a secure and reliable method that is widely accepted by users.
5. Benchmarkemail
Benchmark Email (well they have many other services now) fits well with creative users as their email builder has features that help you craft a visually appealing email.
Gone are the days of traditional writing formats that more or less resembles your school assays.
Their machine learning reduces the number of emails that are sent to people who are not engaged.
Increases the overall quality of delivery and proves to mail servers that you’re an established sender.
Features
- Smart Sending technology (send emails at the right time)
- Smart content (AI tool to give a new twist to old content)
- A/B testing and Litmus checker (To test your emails in every environment)
- Marketing automation for B2C outreach.
How to make the most of it?
Use the drag-and-drop build feature (just like the one you used with your website) to trick out your content and shed light on CTAs.
If you actively publish content on your website, you can use the RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) feature to continuously promote your website.
Additionally, you could create a whole sales funnel from warming up leads through emails to dealing with abandoned carts.
Bear in Mind: Just know that you do not want to overindulge your prospects and overcook your mail servers. And always have a clear way for them to unsubscribe.
6. Buzzstream
Buzzstream takes email marketing to a whole new level and is highly advantageous if you are working with a team dedicated to email outreach and marketing.
Research, email, manage and report all emails with this tool.
Instantly quality a SERP (search engine result page) into a prospect list and let the tool gather all other information such as website metrics, social statistics and domain authority for you.
Measuring results, sharing notes and historical data and assigning tasks with/to your team boosts accountability and efficiency.
Features
- Plush contact lists that go beyond emails with smart segmentation.
- Automatic email and Twitter conversation tracking.
- Intelligent email effectiveness tracker.
- Customized reports with visual data representation.
How to make the most of it?
First, you need to evaluate your needs. If you are just starting with your outreach, and have little to no understanding of what works and what doesn’t, I suggest you use Hunter since they have a free plan.
Buzzsteam is a great tool for your link-building and PR outreach, whether you decide to collaborate with contacts and influencers in-house or outsource link building to a professional agency. Add contacts and influencer information to collaborate with them on multiple spectrums.
Don’t forget to use the “Send As You Go” feature when researching. Add a contact to your campaign seamlessly.
Tools that help with your content
This section features social media, ads and beautifying platforms all intending to help you promote your content.
7. Mix.com
Mix has a long and rich history. Mix is backed by the Expa family which was founded by Garred Camp. You might know him as the co-founder of Uber.
Mix was built on a platform called StumbleUpon and can be categorized more as a social media platform. It helps you to curate, share and remix the internet in highly specific niches.
This allows its users to dwell deeper into their interests and it helps us creators find the people who are highly curious already.
Features
- Discover and save all forms of content under a particular topic.
- Find creators in the same space as you to network with.
- Share your content with a link-minded audience.
How to make the most of it?
Everyone from solopreneurs to large-scale organisations will benefit from Mix. The platform learns from your browsing habits and helps you research as well.
Just like every social media platform. You need to diligently update your profile, capitalize on trends and post diligently to keep your community engaged.
It is a great gateway to channel traffic to your website where you can showcase your might.
8. Outbrain
Apart from advertising your brand and content on a plethora of media websites, Outbrain allows you to use its smartads technology to get 40% more engagement.
They provide you with recommendations on native ads. Native ads match the look, form and feel of the platform they appear on which does not hinder the user’s interaction and flow.
Their new contextual ad tech allows you to target your audience based on their contextual cues instead of third-party data.
Features
- Great onboarding kit that simplifies the journey.
- Complete control over your campaigns by choosing your platforms
- Carousel ads, out-stream video ads, click-to-watch video ads, mobile app install ads, native social ads and more.
How to make the most of it?
Use first and third-party data inputs with Outbrain to define the best course of action while factoring in your budget.
This allows you to touch base with a group of audience that, in many ways, behave similarly to your existing followers.
You could also retarget your previous traffic to increase your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).
If you are just starting and do not have a lot of first-hand data, use apps like Similarweb to fetch the data from your immediate competitors.
9. Beautiful.ai
At first glance, one might think Beautiful is an AI-powered presentation software for pitches but it could be used for so much more.
It is collaborative presentation software that enables you to capture the attention of your audience with smart slides that adapt to your brand.
They have hundreds of templates to choose from. Freeing up your time to let you focus on your core competence.
Features
- Access to millions of photos, videos and slide animations for free.
- Viewer analytics dashboard allows you to track and measure impressions.
- Visually pleasing marketing infographics generator.
How to make the most of it?
Synchronize all your content promotion and branding efforts with this tool if you are looking to increase your marketing productivity by up to 50%.
Integrate all your CRM and project management tools with beautiful.ai and have one centralized asset management system.
Consistent online presence in terms of frequency of posting and branding is the secret sauce of many creative brands out there.
10. Vista Create
Vista is a whole suite of services that help MSMEs with print, design and digital. In this section, we will be blurring out the other services and centring Vista Create.
Create helps bloggers, digital marketers and social media experts mould their creations to be social media-ready with the help of customizable templates.
Save time and say ‘hi’ to consistent branding on all of the mainstream social media platforms.
Features
- Ability to create brand kits.
- Background removal plus 70+ million free pictures.
- Animate with music and sound with a few clicks.
How to make the most of it?
Vista allows you to create a whole ecosystem of harmonious styling and you should invest time to create your kit.
Social media, websites, video and animation, covers and headers are the least of them.
It is always good to have SOPs when it comes to branding in place. If you are working alone now, in the future, when someone else takes over this aspect for you… there isn’t any change noticed by your viewers.
Working as a team? Vista allows you to invite up to 10 members under one account to work together.
11. Taggbox
Taggbox’s tagline is “Best UGC platform to Drive Engagement”. User-generated content or UGC is any created by consumers and posted on multiple channels of media.
Content created by the people for the people. Reviews, testimonials and even podcasts can be considered great examples of UGC.
Taggbox allows you to integrate your website, digital displays, eCommerce stores, marketing campaigns and social ads with UGC.
Features
- Collect influential content from 15+ social media and review platforms
- Easy content rights management with Taggbox right feature.
- Convert UGC into social walls with insights. (Even for virtual events)
- Responsive themes and advanced moderation.
How to make the most of it?
Engage your community on social media platforms to collect as much content from them as you can. Displaying their trust in you only helps cold leads convert better.
Do keep collecting testimonials and reviews for every aspect of your offering and integrate them with your website, marketing campaigns and ads.
Use all the features to have a similar persona across all modes of contact.
Tools that help with your social media.
12. Sprout Social
Founded in 2010, Sproutsocial is one of the biggest names when it comes to everything social media.
This platform allows its users to integrate multiple software such as Google Analytics, Zendesk, and Google+ with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more.
Sprout Social helps you automate and manage all processes like data collection, publishing, engagement and even reporting.
Features
- Unified social inbox to eliminate the use of multiple apps.
- Scheduling social media content to ‘set and forget.
- Discover new trends by listening to the people.
How to make the most of it?
Do not think twice and integrate all your desired social media platforms with Sproutsocial to make your workflow as smooth as butter.
Sprout Social will demand you to be proactive and it might get a titbit overwhelming as well but it will change your whole outlook on social media marketing and promotion.
Since you have the ability now, build strong relationships even with cold leads and engage with your community to manage your reputation with effective social media ad copies.
13. Stencil
Stencil is a graphic design software that helps you create ‘ready to share’ images within minutes.
You can preview and post without having to spend thinking about how your post looks.
They have partnered with Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels for their Stock pictures.
Features
- 140+ presents and custom sizing options.
- 1300+ templates that can be customized as well.
- Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
How to make the most of it?
You get up to 10 free images and 50 uploads to play around with the free plan which should be plenty for a feel of the software.
After laying down a consistent brand image, using visual graphics to promote all content from your website on social media will soar your engagement rates.
14. Unboxsocial
Founded in 2018, Unboxsocial analyzes, tracks and reports everything you and your competitors are doing on four platforms. Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
In their words “Unbox Social is a trusted AI-powered Social Media suite that helps brands and agencies of all sizes with Influencer Marketing, Competition Tracking & Social Media Analytics”
Features
- Analyze the interests of your audience.
- Mention tracking to help you listen to your audience.
- Manage and report multiple accounts.
- Benchmarking for performance review.
How to make the most of it?
Looking for software that does justice to the big 4 social media platforms? Then Unboxsocial is the tool for you.
This is one of the only tools that will also help you find influencers in your niche to partner or network with. Hence, you should be using the feature.
15. Privyr
Privyr is a mobile tool that is built for sales enthusiasts who run their businesses from their phones. It works with WhatsApp, SMS, email, and other popular chat apps.
Privyr is a tool that helps you capture and culture leads from Facebook.
You can engage with the people interested in your product with auto-personalized content and follow-ups.
Features
- Instant alerts on new leads through email or app.
- One-touch quick response.
- Ease distribution of leads to the team and partners.
- Client notes and timelines with bulk sending features.
How to make the most of it?
One of those businesses that witnesses much better results with Facebook than any other social media platform? Privyr is for you.
Facebook is a huge marketplace that you must conquer and if you are already, streamline end-to-end processes with Privyr.
The fact that you can use your mobile phone to handle all the delicate details of CRM should help you garner better response rates as 50% of all replies are within 16 minutes.
Tools that help with distributing content in multiple formats.
16. Biteable
Biteable is a video maker. As simple as the job it does sounds… it is equally difficult to curate videos for marketing that are at par with your brand and enticing.
You can upload your brands’ details and automatically apply them to every video that you make.
88% of the people say that they would like to see more video content from their favourite brands. You should be accounting for that bigger group when promoting.
Features
- Multiple purpose-driven templates that do specific jobs
- ‘Click to add’ feature that makes it super simple.
- Messages and logo animation.
How to make the most of it?
Create personalized video content like ads and promos for all channels of communication with your audience.
Use it on your website to explain your edge and why should your traffic become a patron of your work. You could also use it to report.
You can also share your culture, ethics and other peripherals through video for stronger brand perception.
17. Integrate
Integrate helps you generate demand, measure and govern cross-platform media campaigns while treating the masses as individuals.
We will be looking at their Precision Digital tool which allows you to target, connect and measure your efforts across all digital touch points.
The agenda is to redefine the experience of a customer right from discovery to becoming a lifetime client.
Features
- Centralized demand channels for better campaign management.
- Technographic and firmographic data.
- Cross-channel insights to track buyer and account activity.
How to make the most of it?
Clearly define your target market, account personas and titles that best fit a campaign type and let Integrate do the rest.
You should also try out multiple campaign types since this tool allows you to compare data from multiple campaigns to see which one is a hit and which one is a miss.
Make your buyer the centre of the mandala.
18. Bl.ink
BL.INK is a link management tool that helps you monitor and measure all data when it comes to promoting your website through clickable links.
Shortening and personalizing links allows you to fit more characters in a character-limited message like on Twitter or SMS marketing.
As a marketer, this platform allows you to automate and standardize your linking practices.
Features
- Link Management to measure every point of your recipients’ engagement.
- Real-time analytics across key metrics.
- Integration with thousands of tools concerning data privacy
How to make the most of it?
Promoting your home page isn’t the best option in every scenario. You might have personalized pages that fit perfectly well with a given message but those lengthy URLs are ugly and space-consuming.
Use Bl.ink to brand your URLs and also monitor who clicks on what and when.
19. Prezi
Prezi is a non-linear presentation tool that aids in making a one-way conversation, semi-interactive.
Prezi Video and Design are of extra importance to us since it helps you add a whole new dimension to the mundane by adding details like footers to create a much more immersive experience.
This allows you to propagate a story (your story) in an unfamiliar yet exciting manner.
Features
- Prezi brand kits for non-designers.
- Video makers for social media and outreach.
- Integrate content and video for presentations and conferences.
How to make the most of it?
Use Prezi if you want to target an audience (business or individual) that generally is very busy or just has a lower attention span.
Bringing a twist to traditional form factors to boost your creativity and make promoting your website a two-way street.
You could also integrate Prezi on your website and internal communication.
Stack of tools for marketing automation
20. Tray.io
Tray helps you take advantage of API integrations to help you automate multiple streams of tasks which beg you to use a sundry of tools.
It is a General Automation Platform where you could use clicks or code to craft a bespoke marketing process that improves efficiency and in turn helps you scale.
Tray works with businesses of all sizes and across all channels.
Features
- Drag and drop — multiple-step workflows.
- Data exchanges through marketing platforms.
- Account-based marketing for personalized deliverables.
How to make the most of it?
Once you got your skin in the game long enough, SOPs and ‘for promotion’ workflows are going to come naturally to you.
It is then that you could leverage Tray to automate these operations.
You can build a seamless customer experience at every stage of their journey that increases your CTRs through consistent first or third-party marketing data.
Conclusion
Whether you are just starting your journey with a new creative website or are a veteran, knowing where you stand and what your biggest hurdle is should be your first actionable step towards promoting your website.
A few tangential questions you should consider asking yourself are:
What is my budget?
How much time do I have to invest in promoting my website?
How did other successful entities in my niche do it?
Asking yourself the above will give you a clear objective and, thus a strategy. Then you can pick up a tool or a stack of tools that best suits your requirements.
When it comes to marketing, no one solution fits all. So A/B testing your strategies (instead of going all out) will safeguard your investment.
Author:
Himaan Chatterji (Founder: Perpetual Media) is a common man by day and a superhuman by night. His true superpower is his ability to orchestrate sweet poetic SaaS justice (:P). He is a firm believer in “All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy”
