At the MarTech conference in London, contributor Ian Cleary recaps a
talk by Matt Lerner of 500 Startups, who reveals the top tools used by
his team of marketing growth hackers.
Are you looking for free or low-cost tools that will dramatically change how you market online?
This week at MarTech Europe,
Matt Lerner,
Distro partner for 500 Startups in London, shared 10 of the best tools
that his organization’s growth hackers use for marketing.
500 Startups is
a Silicon Valley-based venture firm and accelerator for technology
startups. Over the last five years, it’s invested in more than 1,200
companies across 50-plus countries.
One
of the secrets behind the company’s success is its team of marketing
growth hackers who help startups gain traction through smart tools and
techniques. These same tools could potentially be applied to your own
online marketing projects to help get results faster and within budget.
Matt Lerner of 500 Startups.
The following is a rundown of the tools that Lerner discussed:
1. BuiltWith
BuiltWith analyzes websites and displays a list of the technologies used.
They have a database of more than 250 million websites.
You can enter in one website name or run a filtered report on a group of them.
Understanding
what technology your potential customers or competitors are using is
very useful. You can generate some potential leads, and you can also
analyze trends in terms of typical technology used.
2. Import.io
Import.io is a free tool for scraping content from websites.
For
example, if you wanted to grab a group of Twitter addresses, instead of
typing them in, you could use Import.io to grab them as a CSV.
No coding skills are required.
3. AdEspresso
Facebook has quite a good advanced ads tool called Power Editor.
But…
If you want a more advanced tool for Facebook ads,
AdEspresso is an excellent tool. It allows you to do very advanced multivariate testing and automated design.
You can also do advanced testing in creative, audience demographics, time of day and ad location (mobile, Web and more).
4.Monitor Backlink
If
you are doing link-building campaigns to help with ranking on Google,
you’ll need to monitor the status of backlinks — for example, new
backlinks you gained, what you lost, which ones are good/bad and so on.
5. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a really useful content research tool.
When
you’re creating content based on a topic, you can research to find
similar content based around the same theme. You can find the most
shared content related to that topic and use this information to help
you produce the best content, headlines and so on.
6. Hotjar
Hotjar is website-tracking tool that can track activity such as:
- Heatmaps
- Individual session recordings
- Funnel and exit tracking
- Form analytics
- Polls and Surveys
7. UserTesting
UserTesting provides a community of people willing to test out your software based on your instruction.
This independent view from someone who probably has never seen your product before is extremely valuable.
8. Unbounce
Unbounce is a fantastic tool for quickly creating landing pages. You select a template, customize it and publish.
You can also easily set up split testing on the different variations of the tool and adjust based on results.
9. Kickbox.io
Drag your list of emails into
Kickbox, and it validates your emails.
By
sending approved emails, you’ll improve open rates, reduce bounce
rates, have fewer chances of getting blocked and experience many other
benefits.
10. Mail-tester.com
Send
Mail-tester.com a
copy of your email, and they’ll let you know if it’s likely to get
flagged as spam and will provide recommendations to improve.
Summary
Being
smart about the tools you use for marketing can make a massive
difference to your results. Lerner shared 10 great tools — which ones
are you going to try out? What tools do you use?