What's in Your Startup Marketing Stack?

When it comes to software for startups, there’s a lot of noise out there. There’s marketing automation options, countless email solutions, landing page tools, etc. As a startup founder or owner, you can lose hours evaluating all of the different options. I know I’ve personally sat through over 100 hours of demos trying to find the next best solution.  

For startups, there are three important things to consider for marketing software tools: function, scalability, cost.  

Below are the tools that I recommend based on those criteria. 

MixMax 

MixMax is a tool to enhance the way that you email prospects and your internal team. I’ve found that, regardless of what you use as a greater email marketing tool, it always pays to use MixMax as well. The reason why? It has one of the slickest calendaring features, which makes setting up meetings with prospects a breeze. You can also preschedule follow-ups, and check how many times someone has opened your email. This works very well when you’ve sent out a proposal or a highly-targeted prospecting email. You check how many times they’ve opened, and can follow-up accordingly. 

Mailchimp 

Mailchimp has become a fairly standard email marketing tool that I recommend to most startups. It allows you to easily send large-scale campaign emails, provides some levels of automation, and good tracking. They’ve also recently released Facebook advertising features. 

Wordpress 

Everyone has a personal preference for website platforms. I always recommend building in Wordpress. It’s flexible, customizable, and easy to use. I don’t think there’s another CMS that holds a candle to Wordpress. 

Autopilot 

This is my latest go-to tool. I used to be a big evangelist for Hubspot, and then I found myself using other platforms to substitute for some functionality that I didn’t care for in Hubspot. Eventually, I found myself leveraging so many other tools that it seemed pointless to pay the price for Hubspot, when it couldn’t even get the job done. Autopilot is, by far, my favorite marketing automation tool. Creating multichannel nurture campaigns is simple enough with Autopilot where any level of technical expertise can manage it. The platform can also easily scale with your needs and has direct integrations with Salesforce and can Zap into several other CRMs. The Salesforce integration makes this an awesome choice for businesses moving away from dated marketing automation platforms. 

Instapage 

Another one of the major reasons why I dropped Hubspot. I’ve always felt Hubspot’s landing page tool was lacking, and once I tried Instapage, it was obvious that it was. Instapage takes what used to be complex and makes it simple for people of all skill levels. The drag and drop functionality makes it easy to make high converting, and aesthetically pleasing landing pages. 

Evernote 

I rely on Evernote to write and store all of my content, as well as share with specific contacts. I even use it to store all of my meeting notes, and notes pertaining to specific projects. The level of organization and tagging make this an incredibly valuable tool for my team. 

Grammarly 

When it comes to posting content or writing emails, there will be times when you are in a rush or miss errors. Grammarly works in the background and highlights any issues in your content. I love tools that run in the background and solve my problems. 

Asana 

The problem with recommending project management software is that everyone has a different taste. I like the functionality found in Asana, other people may prefer Trello. P.S. I hate Basecamp and would recommend either Asana or Trello.  

Pipedrive 

Tastes in CRM also vary depending on the business. I’ve seen several businesses automatically choose Salesforce thinking it’s the best option, but that’s not necessarily true. Salesforce can be absolute overkill depending on your situation. For startups, especially in the B2B sector, I recommend using Pipedrive. It’s a simple CRM, focused on managing your pipeline as efficiently as possible. On login, you get a clear view of each account and the stage in the funnel. It’s simple and functional. 

HelloSign 

This may not seem like an obvious part of your marketing stack, but if you provide service agreements or contracts, you’ll want to use HelloSign to make it all electronic and to easily store the documents.  

Buffer 

Depending on your business and industry, social media can be a big deal. I recommend using Buffer to help automate your processes until you can get a dedicated strategy behind social media.  

What do you think of these tools? Did I miss any? Are there any others you’d recommend for startup businesses?