In the world of business, more and more people are turning to inbound marketing as a way to attract customers and grow their brands. Inbound marketing is the process of drawing customers in through interesting and valuable content instead of bombarding them with ads. It can be a very effective way to reach your target audience, but it takes time and effort to create quality content that will keep people coming back for more.
Fortunately, there are a number of tools available that can help make the process a little easier. Here are five of the best inbound marketing tools out there.
What is an Inbound Marketing Strategy Tool?
An inbound strategy tool is a piece of software that helps you plan, implement, and track your inbound marketing campaigns. It can be used to create and publish content, manage your social media multiple channels, track who’s visiting your website and how they found you, and much more.
5 Best Inbound Marketing Software
Now that we’ve answered the question, “What is an effective inbound marketing strategy tool?” it’s time to take a look at some of the best ones on the market.
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is a powerful inbound marketing tool that can help businesses of all sizes to attract more visitors and convert more leads. With SEMrush, businesses can track their competitors' search engine rankings, advertising spending, and organic traffic. Additionally, businesses can use SEMrush SEO tools to optimize their own website for better search engine visibility.
By improving their website's search engine ranking, businesses can increase their traffic and leads. SEMrush is an essential tool for any business that wants to improve its inbound marketing efforts.
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Pricing:
The pricing for SEMrush starts at $199.95 per month. However, businesses can save 20% by signing up for an annual plan. There is also a free 14-day trial available.
Corey's insight: SEMRush is our go to tool for discovering keyword opportunities and tracking positions of our keyword rankings.
2. Yoast SEO
For any business that wants to succeed online, inbound marketing is essential. And one of the most important analytics tools for inbound marketing is Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO helps you to optimize your website for search engines so that people who are searching for products or services like yours can easily find your site.
But Yoast SEO is more than just a tool for improving your search engine ranking. It also helps you in creating valuable content. Yoast SEO analyzes your content and gives you suggestions for improving it so that it is more likely to rank well in search results and attract and engage readers.
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Pricing:
Yoast SEO is a free plugin for WordPress. There is also a premium version that starts at $99 per year (totally worth it).
Corey's insight: Yoast SEO is my go to plugin for search engine optimization on all the WordPress websites of my small businesses. It's the most intuitive and effective WordPress SEO plugin that I have tested and doesn't cost much.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a powerful inbound marketing tool that helps businesses attract, engage, and convert more leads. With ActiveCampaign, businesses can create beautiful email newsletters, landing pages, and lead magnets to capture leads. They can then use automated email drip campaigns to nurture and engage those inbound leads, ultimately converting them into paying customers.
ActiveCampaign also offers a robust CRM system to manage qualified leads and potential customers, as well as advanced segmentation and reporting features to help businesses track their marketing ROI. In short, ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one solution for businesses that want to grow their top line through inbound marketing. And best of all, it's affordable for businesses of all sizes. (Related: ActiveCampaign vs. Mailerlite: Which One is Best for Infopreneurs)
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Pricing:
ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial, after which it has four pricing tiers: Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise. The Lite plan starts at $29/month and includes all the essential features businesses need to get started with inbound marketing.
The Plus plan starts at $49/month and adds advanced features like lead scoring, contact tagging, and split testing. The Professional plan starts at $149/month and gives businesses access to ActiveCampaign's powerful email automation features.
Corey's insight: ActiveCampaign is used the default email marketing software used in my performance marketing firm QuantConvert. It can do damn near anything. My personal favorite is using it to trigger automation activities based on user interaction with our websites. That said it is a very complex software, so you may consider alternatives like Mailchimp or Mailerlite. Both of those programs are easy to learn and operate, and are highly effective for nurturing leads or maintaining contact with your list!
4. Hotjar
Hotjar is a powerful inbound marketing tool that can help you to better understand your website visitors. By tracking their movements and interactions, you can gain valuable insights into what they are looking for and how they interact with your site.
This information can then be used to improve your website design and user experience. In addition, Hotjar can also help you to track conversions and other key metrics. By understanding how your visitors interact with your site, you can make changes that will improve your overall marketing efforts.
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Pricing:
Hotjar offers a free plan for up to 1,050 sessions/month. Paid plans start at $39/month for up to up to 3,000 sessions/month.
Corey's insight: We use this program at my performance marketing firm to assess user behavior on our landing pages. Seeing how users interact and browse our landing pages give the conversion optimization team insight into what to test next to increase conversions!
5. Thrive Themes
If you're looking for an inbound marketing tool that can help you grow your online business, Thrive Themes is a great option. With its hundreds of pre-designed templates and full design freedom, you can easily create high-converting opt-in forms.
Moreover, its advanced features make it easy to segment your leads and connect with multiple services. And if you're worried about GDPR compliance, Thrive Themes has you covered. With its one-click signup and easy data collection, you can be sure you're compliant without any headaches.
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Pricing:
Starts at $299/year for a single-site license
Corey's insight: I can't imagine running websites without Thrive Themes at this point. I have been a paying user for years. Occasionally I test new WordPress Themes but ultimately end up back at Thrive themes. Their theme and page builder make it easy for anyone to get a website up and running and looking sharp, but deeper than that they've got an incredible suite of inbound marketing tools built in which eliminates plugin bloat and interactivity problems. If I need to set up a lead generation form quickly; Thrive can do it. If I want to split test landing pages; easy peasy with Thrive. The list goes on!
6. Hootsuite Insights
Hootsuite Insights is a great social media management software for understanding what people are saying about your brand online. It gives inbound marketers the ability to track mentions of your company across different social media platforms, as well as see what kind of sentiment is associated with those mentions. This information can be very valuable in fine-tuning your inbound marketing strategies.
With Hootsuite Insights, you can track your brand’s social media posts, and new or old blog post, and get real-time insights into how people are feeling about your company.
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Pricing:
Hootsuite Insights starts at $49/month for the Pro plan, which includes up to 10 social media accounts and 30 days of data history. The Business plan includes up to 35 social media accounts and starts at $739/month.
7. MailChimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms out there, and for good reason. Not only does it make it easy to create beautiful emails, but it also makes it easy to segment your list, automate your emails, and track your results.
From growing your list to getting more clicks and conversions, Mailchimp can help you boost your inbound marketing efforts as well as outbound marketing and get more website traffic.
And best of all, Mailchimp is a free standalone email marketing tool for lists of up to 2,000 subscribers. So if you’re just getting started with email marketing, it’s a great platform to use. From there, you can upgrade to a paid plan if you need more features or want to send more emails. (Related: Mailerlite vs. Mailchimp: Best Lightweight Email Marketing Software)
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Pricing:
Mailchimp is free for lists of up to 500 subscribers. Paid plans start at $11/month. And if you’re an eCommerce business, the sales team can use Mailchimp’s automation and integrations to send abandoned cart emails, product recommendations, and more.
8. Moz
Moz is a great all-in-one tool for boosting your website’s traffic. It offers a number of features that can help with everything from keyword research to link building to on-page optimization.
One of the most useful features of Moz is its Keyword Explorer, which not only helps you find the right keywords to target but also shows you how difficult it will be to rank for those keywords. This information can be very valuable in determining which keywords are worth targeting and which ones you should avoid.
Moz also offers a number of other features that can help with your inbound marketing, including a link-building tool, an on-page optimization tool, and more.
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Pricing:
Moz Pro starts at $99/month for the Standard plan, which includes up to 10 projects and 5 tracked keywords. The Moz Premium plan starts at $599/month and includes up to 50 projects and 25 tracked keywords.
9. SumoMe
If you're not familiar with SumoMe, it's an inbound marketing tool that allows you to collect email subscribers and grow your audience. You can add SumoMe to your website or blog in just a few minutes, and it's easy to use. SumoMe includes a number of features that make it a valuable tool for inbound marketing.
For example, you can add a pop-up opt-in form to your website to collect email addresses from visitors. You can also use SumoMe to create social media share buttons, which makes it easy for visitors to share your content creation on their favorite social media platforms.
In addition, SumoMe includes an analytics tool that lets you track the number of subscribers you've collected and see how many people are sharing your content. If you're looking for an easy way to grow your audience and get more leads, then you should definitely check out SumoMe.
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Pricing:
SumoMe offers a free plan for beginners and then costs $39/month for the pro version.
10. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that helps you measure your inbound marketing efforts. It gives you insights into how people find your website, what they do when they get there, and how you can keep them coming back. Google Analytics is essential for any business that wants to grow its online presence.
With Google Analytics, you can track where your website traffic is coming from, what landing pages are most popular, and how people are interacting with your site. You can also use it to measure the effectiveness of your inbound marketing campaign and see which ones are driving the most traffic from different search engines and conversions. It's a fundamental tool for small businesses that want to expand their presence with an effective SEO strategy.
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Like Google Keyword Planner, Google Analytics is also a free tool.
11. Beacon
Beacon is an inbound marketing tool that helps you to create content that is both informative and visually appealing. With Beacon, you have the ability to choose from pre-made templates or build your own using the drag-and-drop template builder. You can also customize the look and feel of your content with Beacon's brand styles feature.
And if you're short on time, Beacon's blog post recycle feature allows you to quickly repurpose existing content. Plus, with helper content, multiple formats, and a traditional PDF or smart PDF option, Beacon makes it easy to create content that meets your specific needs. And best of all, you can password protect your Beacon content to keep your information safe and secure.
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Pricing:
Beacon offers a free 14-day trial. After the trial, plans start at $49/month.
12. Drift
If you're looking for a tool to help you with inbound marketing, Drift is definitely worth checking out. Drift Live Chat allows you to start real-time conversations with every website visitor, and Drift Conversational AI uses AI-powered chatbots to guide visitors to the right outcome.
You can also use Drift Meetings to schedule sales meetings with website visitors 24/7, and Drift Custom Chatbots to tailor customer conversations and deliver the right message 24/7. In addition, Drift Email allows you to surface new opportunities, track responses, and improve contact data, while Drift Intel gives you visibility into target accounts and contacts.
And if you want to stand out from the crowd, Drift Video lets you send short and personalized videos. Finally, Drift Audiences allows you to understand your site visitors so you can deliver the right experiences, and Drift Deal Room lets you manage your entire sales cycle in one place.
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Pricing:
Drift is free to use for live chat and one seat only. After that, prices start at $600/month for up to 10 seats.
Final Thoughts
If you want to grow your website traffic and get more leads, then you need to use inbound marketing tools. These five lead generation tools are essential for any business that wants to engage in inbound marketing.
With these project management tools, you can attract new visitors, grow your audience, and track your progress. So what are you waiting for? Start using these digital marketing tools today and see the results for yourself.