Top 10 Marketing Tools The Pros Use for 2022

Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based, subscription software with different plans aimed at business owners and corporate users.  

Office 365 provides a suite of app versions of traditional Microsoft office applications we all know, such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and MS Editor.  I use all of these applications for my work, and I use Microsoft Outlook for my agency-wide email. 

A notable thing I LOVE about Office 365 is that they have fantastic customer support! 

 For many years, Microsoft Outlook has been my go-to email solution for my agency. It's easy to set up group inboxes for my different teams, such as copy, design, and even "client requests." 

The Admin panel is intuitive and makes it really easy to control adding users, removing them, creating group emails and handling billing. 

Microsoft Outlook also seamlessly integrates with HubSpot, so all emails can be synced with your CRM. More on HubSpot later in this article! 

My agency has also recently started using the cloud-based SharePoint platform that is a part of Microsoft 365. We use it to securely store, organize, share and access project files and assets between team members and our clients. Below is a short, high-level overview of SharePoint. 

Slack is a workspace and chat room that makes communication so. much. simpler.  

When it comes to team communication, it's the best (especially if you're remote). You can send private messages to individuals, but you can also create open channels for specific projects, clients, and departments, to keep topics and discussions organized.

Also, several different software can integrate with Slack, including CRMs (such as HubSpot), Project Management Systems (such as Trello), Google Drive, and Zoom. 

Loom is a fantastic work communication tool that helps get your message across through instantly shareable video. 

The recorder comes with options: desktop app, mobile app, and an easy-to-use and convenient browser extension. It also easily integrates with Slack and now Google Workspaces, too.   

You can use it to capture and show your screen as it records just your voice; and, you can also use it with your webcam. When you're done recording, you can easily share your video in an instant with a link.

Loom will also let you know when your video has been viewed. If it's a time-sensitive message or you're waiting for a response, this can let you know if you need to give the recipient of the video a nudge. 

Loom "Starter" version is free, and allows you to record videos up to 5 minutes long. Any longer than that and you'll have to upgrade to one of their paid versions, Loom "Business" or Loom "Enterprise." 

At the time of writing, Loom Business is about $8/month for unlimited videos, screenshots and recording length. "Enterprise" provides advanced admin and security features. If interested in that version, you will need to talk to their sales team. 

Marketing Tool Pro Tip:

With my team, I use Loom to provide feedback and edits on work, to explain a new process, and to onboard new team members.  

With clients, I use it for everything! It is great for explaining a step-by-step process, showing them how to troubleshoot, as well as training videos or just to provide a little bit of guidance or insight.  

Because my agency team is remote and many of my clients are across the country and the world, I've been a big fan of zoom for many years. 

Starting in 2020 with the pandemic, the entire world started loving zoom, too!  If you haven't made the move to this web-based conference, live video, screen share and messaging platform, yet, I recommend you do for a few reasons...

1.  The free version is stout, and you can try it out with no cost to you.
2. It's so simple to launch an online conference call and invite someone to it; plus being able to share your screen and record the meeting means all the important details can be saved. For complex meetings with a lot of information flying back and forth, this ensures nothing gets lost. 
3.  Zoom can integrate with your email and calendar and most meeting scheduling tools, like HubSpot. (More on that in the HubSpot section!) 

I use Zoom for ALL of my meetings. I also use it for when I host webinars and trainings. For big webinars, you can utilize something called "breakout rooms," which allows you to split your Zoom meeting into smaller separate sessions. So, if you want to split up participants into small groups for discussion or to work through a "problem" you give them as part of your webinar, breakout rooms make it easy. 

We also integrate Zoom with our Slack channel. That means if I'm chatting with a team member, and we decide it'd be easier to talk it out, I just type "/zoom" into our private channel and press enter. It launches the meeting and invites the other person to join with one click. Hassle-free! 

Below is a 1-minute video summarizing all that Zoom has to offer aside from its well-known meeting function. 

Clockify is a completely free time tracking software that comes with an easy-to-use browser extension. 

Employees and contractors alike can track their time using a browser timer or they can log hours manually into a timesheet It easily integrates with more than 50 project management and productivity applications, like Asana, Trello, TeamWork, Google Calendar, Outlook, Airtable, and HubSpot, just to name a few. 

It also has excellent reporting that can be filtered by client, team, project, billable hours and by week, month, or annually. 

Marketing Tool Pro Tip:

All my agency team members use Clockify to track their time on projects for clients.

It's great for ensuring we are on-track and on-budget, for our retainer clients and project clients. The reporting features make it a cinch to see where any outliers might be.

LastPass is the most robust free password management software I've come across.

It stores encrypted log-in details, like usernames and passwords and has great organizational options. LastPass can also store credit card payment details, so it's ready to auto populate at check out. 

The free version is perfect for individuals, and the paid version is great for business. It comes with a mobile app, multi-device password sharing, encrypted file storage, as well as 4-tiered business plans.

Marketing Tool Pro Tip:

We use LastPass as our agency password vault. It's where we house all passwords to the software we use, and how I share login details (while keeping my passwords private!) with team members, contractors, and clients for no-hassle sharing. It also gives you one-click control to pull back shares, too.

I recommend using the browser extension. It makes it incredibly easy to safely auto-fill your passwords and payment details anywhere you go online. 

While the free version is fantastic, I opted for the premium version. This includes mobile access to all of the same features, which is great for the person-on-the-go, which I often am! 

I've mentioned HubSpot a number of times throughout this article thus far. Its integrations are endless AND it is my preferred CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, bar none. All CRMs should seamlessly manage your company's interactions with prospects and customers to improve relationships and make growing your business easier.

HubSpot does that and more. With HubSpot Marketing and Hubspot Sales, you can integrate marketing, sales, and services so everyone on your team is working off the same system record. HubSpot makes it easy to track actions taken with forms, emails, calls or virtually any other communication with clients.

The meeting tool is a life-saver.

Gone are the days of going back and forth about each person's availability!  You can brand it to your company, integrate it with your calendar and Zoom, and it will automatically scan and sync with your calendar. All you have to do is send your contact your meeting link, they select a meeting time that works for them, and it will automatically send them the invite and then add the booked meeting to the lead’s contact record and your calendar.

To see what a branded scheduling calendar looks like, click here!

ThriveThemes is a visual editor in WordPress for website building. It comes with nearly everything you need for a marketing-based website right out of the box. It's also mobile responsive, which is an absolute requirement these days. 

Thrive overwrites the entire structure of how you typically edit a WordPress page and provides you with an incredibly easy to use drag-and-drop builder. It comes with templates built for its platform and all the necessary marketing plug-ins, too. You'll rarely need to grab random plug-ins, which can sometimes "break" your site! They also have plugins that will target content to your audience and create more calls to action.  

Marketing Tool Pro Tip:  

My agency uses Thrive for all website design work we do. Clients love it because they get a beautiful website that's incredibly easy for them to manage. I love it for that and for all the reasons mentioned above. In fact, the site you are on right now is built in ThriveThemes. 

If you'd like to learn more about how to use ThriveThemes, check out my Ultimate ThriveThemes review here.

The video below is a stout walkthrough tutorial. It's also divided up into sections so you can skip around to see what you're interested in.