4 Tools Your Marketing Tech Stack Needs

Overview:

Sam walks through the 4 essential pieces of technology every Sales & Marketing Tech Stack needs, details what software and technology LaunchBay uses, and shares his favorite tools for streamlining marketing content creation.

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https://youtu.be/-BrEprb_J_c

Resources from Episode 32:

• Try LaunchBay for Free
• GA4 Tutorials - Analytics Mania
• GA4 Tutorials - Loves Data
• Descript
• Repurpose.io
• Unbounce
• Hubspot
• Hootsuite

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski:Business owners that I've spoken with try and use things like spreadsheets orjust emails and when they do I think that they're really missing out on a bigopportunity. Not only to minimize the amount of like manual work that they haveto do, but also if you aren't using a proper sales and marketing tech stack,it's gonna limit your ability to attract new clients and sell those clients.Whereas if you have these systems in place that automates things for you, thatdoesn't require a lot of manual work each week to keep up with, that's gonnareally help you get a lot more leads and new clients.

[00:00:32]Happy Thursday everybody, and welcome back to Designing Growth, the podcast forbusiness owners by business owners that provides tips, strategies, and advicefor creating the business of your dreams while digging into the hard-hittingreality about what it takes to start, grow, and scale a successful business.

[00:00:50] Myname is Sam Chlebowski, host of the Designing Growth Podcast.

[00:00:54] Iwas really excited to record this episode, it was actually inspired by a postthat I saw on where a business owner who had launched their business in thepast couple of month prior and basically made this post saying, “Hey, we havefinalized our sales and marketing tech stack. Here's what it is:”

[00:01:10] Andhe listed out all of the different technology tools that they were using to runthe sales and marketing side of their business as a Co-founder of a techstartup, you can probably imagine that I love new tools and new technology andwhat it can do for your business, and I'm kind of always on the hunt forinformation about what people are using and what's really working well withintheir businesses.

[00:01:33] Soa little bit of my background when it comes to sales and marketing technology.Over the course of my time at Brighter Vision, where I was working as adeveloper, and then I actually went on to lead our sales marketing customersuccess teams.

[00:01:45] Sowe used one set of tools there After we were acquired, and I went to go workfor the folks who acquired us I then actually worked. Five different companiesat one time, and all of them were using something different then from there Iworked for another startup and did a few consulting projects along the way.across all of these different experiences, I think what it gives me is a reallygood idea of the things that you must have and must be able to do with yourmarketing tech stack that are going to best facilitate your growth also helpyou save time so you can eliminate that kind of busy work that so often happenswith sales and marketing. things like having to send manual emails to leads.

[00:02:24]Trying to build reports without any centralized or automated reporting.

[00:02:29] Andalso enable you to get the most amount of reach out of the marketinginitiatives that you take on and the content that you're producing whileminimizing the amount of work that you have to do

[00:02:40] soI'm gonna talk about what I am using at Launchbay in just a little bit. Butfirst I want to talk about the things that I think every sales and marketingtech stack needs.

[00:02:51]Number one is customer relationship management software or a crm. The reasonwhy having a CRM is so important if you can't quickly understand what leadsyou've reached out to, what leads turned into customers, and what leads youmight need to nurture a little bit to get them to become customers, you aremissing out on a big opportu.

[00:03:12]What's more is that a CRM is incredibly useful for understanding how new leadsare finding you so you can get a better idea of the marketing initiatives thatare working really well and that you should double down on. the marketinginitiatives that you might want to kill off

[00:03:26]Many of them also enable you to do things like set automatic follow-ups andlead nurture sequences that are gonna help you increase your conversion rate.meaning the percentage of leads that come in that eventually turn intocustomers.

[00:03:39] Asyou can probably assume from the product that we are building@launchbay, I amhuge on eliminating this type of busy work,

[00:03:46]whether it be working with customers, whether it be leads, whether it bemarketing, because when you're able to free up that time and you're not doingthings manually, it gives you more time to do this kind of deep work witheither your customers or your business and spending time thinking aboutcreative ways to bring in more customers or expand your reach.

[00:04:06] Ithink A C R M is critical for that piece. It's gonna save you time. It's gonnamake everything that you do that much more efficient.

[00:04:13]some common examples of CRM technology that's out there includes HubSpotpipeline deals, close.io, Salesforce. and that's kind of just skimming thesurface. There's a huge range of CRMs out there that you can use. And they allcome at a slightly different price point. HubSpot, Salesforce are on the upperend of that spectrum where things like close and pipeline deals are muchcheaper, but may not have some of that robust functionality that you need.

[00:04:39] itkind of depends what stage your business is in and what type of functionalitythat you need.

[00:04:44] thenext thing that I think every sales and marketing tech stack.

[00:04:47] Cansometimes be included with the crm, but sometimes it can be separate.

[00:04:52]Number two is an email automation or sending tool that allows you to bothcreate a new. as well as a way to send bulk emails to leads, prospects andcurrent customers.

[00:05:01]some of the more expensive and robust CRMs out there actually have a way toboth send a newsletter and do bulk email But from my experience, most CRMstypically don't handle the newsletter portion. The reason why this is soimportant, even if you don't have a newsletter, Is because as your businessgrows, there are gonna be times where you want to send emails to all of yourcontacts, all of your previous customers, and all of your potential leads allat once. .

[00:05:28] Ifyou're wondering why you can't just use your regular email for this, basically,if you want to send 150, 200 emails, that is the same email copy to a bunch ofpeople through just your regular old inbox, what you're gonna very quickly runinto are spam violations. get a tool that allows you to send bulk emails andalso send newsletters in the future.

[00:05:48]When it comes to newsletters, there's tools like Constant Contact Mail. and mypersonal favorite drip when it comes to sending bulk emails or tools that aremore specifically for like that sales process and cold outreach most CRMs aregonna have this functionality, but there's also some standalone tools that canwork really well.

[00:06:07] twoof the tools that I've used recently specifically for cold outreach areApollo.io as well as Lemlist. What's cool about both of those tools is becausethey're specifically for cold outreach. you can actually do like lead researchin there and pull lists of folks that you want to reach out to and put them onan automated sequence in hopes that they are going to schedule a call with you.

[00:06:27]They're interested in your service. They wanna learn more.

[00:06:29] Thenext thing that I think every marketing tech stack needs may be a little bitsurprising to you,

[00:06:34] butit's something that when I have not had, was really challenging to get around.Number three is a way to create landing pages. if you're unfamiliar with theconcept of landing pages, the first thing you're probably gonna be wondering ishow is a landing page different from my website?

[00:06:50]What a landing page is? And the, the way that I typically defined it is astandalone webpage that is created to drive a specific audience, to take aspecific action.

[00:07:00] AndIt's different from a homepage because a homepage is basically the hub for yourbrand's website and your content, and includes multiple calls to action where alanding page that you create only has one call to action. You want somebody whois visiting that page to do a specific thing, it is filling out a lead form,whether it is entering their email so they can download some free resource, orwhether it is scheduling an initial consultation with you.

[00:07:26]Having a landing page tool is something you can probably get away with nothaving right away, but it is incredibly important, especially if you run abusiness where you plan on doing paid advertising. If you are doing ads onGoogle or Facebook or any of the other advertising platforms, if you're sendingthem to the homepage of your website where there's a bunch of different actionson that page, a ton of different stuff for them to read.

[00:07:49] Thechance that they are likely to take that action. You actually want them totake, fill out that form, schedule that call, enter their email to downloadsomething starts decreasing. And another great thing about landing pages isthat when you set up standalone landing pages, it's really easy to track thesource and where somebody came from.

[00:08:07] Whenit comes to a way to create landing pages, this is also something thatsometimes CRMs have the ability to do. And of course, if you want to create alanding page, you could always just build it on whatever tool you currently usefor your website. whether that's WordPress, or ShowIt or Squarespace.

[00:08:23] Ipersonally prefer using a standalone tool to create landing pages just becauseI think that they are more equipped out of the box and set up so that I cancreate a landing page quickly. I can also do things like duplicate landingpages to reuse them use things like Zapier integrations to connect my landingpages to my crm or some automated follow-up sequences in automations.

[00:08:47]When it comes to standalone landing page creation tools, my personal favoriteis Unbounds and I'll talk about why and a little bit. but there's also thingslike

[00:08:56]lead pages and get response that allow you to do that as.

[00:08:59]Onto the final thing that I think every sales and marketing tech stack needs.Number four is an analytics platform. I talked a little bit about tracking thesources of leads and how your new customers are finding you as a part of thecrm, because that is the tool that I think is best equipped for that.

[00:09:15]When it comes to an analytics platform, I specifically use that for measuringthings like website traffic.

[00:09:21] Andwhat an analytics platform is going to enable you to do is see how people arefinding you, how they're landing on your website, what buttons they'reclicking, what content, what blog posts they are engaging with.

[00:09:33] Theultimate reason why I think an analytics platform is so important as with allof these things, help you save time and get more results from the effort thatyou put in.

[00:09:43]because while you could certainly just produce new content by doing somekeyword research, if you know that there's a topic that your audiencespecifically resonates with, You can turn that into a YouTube video.

[00:09:54] Youcan expand on it in a slightly different, Through a new blog post, you couldeven put out a podcast episode or a ebook about that specific topic and youknow that there's a much higher likelihood that people are gonna engage withthat.

[00:10:07]When it comes to an analytics platform, and most of the time the one that Ionly see people use is Google We currently use Google Analytics four, becauseGoogle Analytics just did migrate from Universal Analytics, which is their oldanalytics platform to Google Analytics four, and they're actually forcingeverybody in, uh, July I think it is to switch to that, whether they want to ornot. there are a couple of a other analytics platforms you may want toconsider, if you want to track more specific things.

[00:10:36] Myco-founder really likes a company called Clicky that allows you to do a littlebit more of that granular, like who clicked on what on the website. there'salso tools like Hootsuite that allow you to build full reports on how yourcontent is performing, that can be immensely helpful as well.

[00:10:52] Sothat does it for the four things that I think every sales and marketing tax taxshould have. And now you're probably wondering, well Sam, what do you.

[00:11:00] Solet's dive in, and this is gonna be really fun for me. What I'll do is I'llfirst go in the order of that list of the four things that I think every salesand marketing tech stack needs To tell you what we've used at Launchbay for ourcrm, we currently use HubSpot for that. I will first give a warning here thatHubSpot is really expensive

[00:11:19]that said, I fell in love with HubSpot I was working for a larger company, wehad, you know, thousands of employees I've used a number of CRMs over theyears. pipeline deals, close

[00:11:30]Pipedrive. HubSpot though is by far my favorite. The reason why I love it isjust all of the functionality you need is built in there and it's also reallycustomizable because I can set these very specific automations that allow me toautomate parts of the sales and marketing process. So for example, like if alead comes in on our website, that gets piped into HubSpot and they're set aslead until they schedule a time to speak with us, or they sign up for a freetrial at which point it changes them to a qualified lead status, and that typeof automation makes it really easy. When I'm looking at a list of all of ourpotential customers, I can easily see, oh, great, okay.

[00:12:11]These three people filled out a form yesterday and today two of them havescheduled a call and they're qualified leads, they're ready to move forward.That one person who didn't take any action, in a week if I still don't hearfrom them or they don't sign up put them on a slightly different email sequencethat provides some more informational content

[00:12:28] Inaddition to the automations and workflows and sequences you can set up, is thatit is super quick for me to build reports that break down.

[00:12:35]Okay, out of the hundred people that contacted us in the last month, here isthe channel they came from, you know, 20% from social posts, 20% from Googlesearches,

[00:12:45]another 20% from YouTube ads, et cetera, et cetera. So out of just the leadsthat came to us from a YouTube ad,

[00:12:51]what percentage of those converted, who took an additional action? And it givesme that quick view into, this ad is either working or it's not based on howthese people are converting and how they're moving kind of through our salesand marketing funnel.

[00:13:05] Iwill give another kind of disclaimer that in addition to HubSpot beingexpensive, it does have a pretty steep learning curve. I've been using CRMs fora long time, so a lot of that functionality was pretty intuitive for me. but ifyou are just getting going and Switching away from spreadsheets and using a CRMfor the first time, there may be a better option for you. Something simple likea pipe drive or pipeline deals is a really easy way to keep track of, okay,here's how people are finding me. Here is the status of these people, whetherthey converted to a customer, they're still a lead in progress, and, allows youto still automate some of that

[00:13:41]what we do, send some emails through HubSpot for our newsletter. I actuallyhave been using Drip for that, the reason why I'm using Drip, even though we dohave some of that functionality within HubSpot, is because I'm just superfamiliar with the way that Drip works.

[00:13:55]What I really like about Drip is it has a powerful workflow builder, but italso allows you to very quickly build these kind of custom segments.

[00:14:03] Sofor example, if I wanna send a newsletter but exclude current customers fromreceiving that with Drip, I can do that in a couple seconds. I can tag peopleand put them into these buckets and very quickly control, okay, these peopledon't get emailed, these people get email A, these people get email C.

[00:14:18] Forour landing page tool. I use Unbounds for that this is another company I'vebeen using for a long time and I love Unbounce. the reason why I gravitate toUnbound for creating landing pages is number one, it is super, super easy toquickly duplicate a landing page, change just a couple of elements, and thenreuse it for a different campaign.

[00:14:39] Thesecond reason I love unbounced is their landing page builder itself is supereasy to use, kind of operates like Webflow. it's totally just like drag anddrop. It's really easy to make things responsive,

[00:14:51] andthen the final reason I love unbalanced is that it is dead simple to connect tomy CRM and also set up Zapier automations, where if a lead comes in from anunbalanced form, I can automatically do X, Y, or Z through a Zapier connection.

[00:15:07]Some of the things I've done in the past with unbalance is set up a Zapierconnection. If a lead comes in through an unbalanced page that Zappierconnection, sends them to a Google sheet, that kind of functionality I justfind is so incredibly useful for saving time and kind of eliminating that busywork

[00:15:24] forour analytics platform. What I use for that is I do use Google Analytics forGoogle Analytics for, there's a lot of people out there who don't really loveit.

[00:15:34] Iwill say it is harder to use than Universal Analytics was, but after you getthe hang of it, I'm really starting to come around. , the downside of GoogleAnalytics four is that you really have to spend a lot of time setting it up.

[00:15:47]Because with Google Analytics four, what I've found is like basically arequirement for it now is that you can't just set it up and have it work. Youreally need to spend some time in Google Tag Manager.

[00:15:57] Andwhat Google Tag Manager will allow you to do is tag parts of your website

[00:16:02] andtrack those specific actions that people are taking and then pipe those intoGoogle Analytics. Four.

[00:16:08] Ifyou are like in the process of setting up Google Analytics four right now,there are two awesome YouTube channels out there. The first is Analytics mania.Julius holy cow, he taught me everything I know about Google Analytics Four.And then there's also, uh, Benjamin from Benjamin loves data.

[00:16:24]Where I also learned a ton about the basic functionality of Google Analyticsfour and how it works, those two YouTube channels. if either of you two arelistening to this, thank you so much

[00:16:34]also with analytics. I did mention a little bit earlier, but I do use Hootsuiteto keep track of how our content's performing. With social content, I want tosee how that content's performing so I can understand, you know, the thingsthat people resonate with.

[00:16:48] AndI can do more things like that, whether it's repeating a similar format orwhether it's producing additional content about a similar topic. And I do havethose reports set up in Hootsuite that, pull all of our analytics inautomatically from TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram - all of those - andbuild these reports for me so I don't have to manually hunt those things downeach, individual reporting dashboards.

[00:17:13] Sothat makes up the bulk of our marketing tech stack here@launchbay. These arethings that I am using. Not saying that I recommend them for everybody outthere, but I do find that they work best for me. I also wanted to talk a littlebit about some of the other tools that I'm using because there are some reallycool things in here, specifically when it comes to content creation. So when Istarted this podcast, it took me a huge amount of time to edit new episodes andput them out. I knew I wanted to do a video podcast, but actually the firstcouple episodes didn't even have video because I just couldn't figure out howto do it quickly. I tried hiring a contractor. I wasn't super happy with thequality,

[00:17:51]Using the Adobe suite for my editing workflow was just taking so much time. Ihad tried to use Premier for the video section and then Audacity for the audiosection.

[00:18:03]Descript is what I use now for all of the editing of our podcasts and socialclips. And what I love about Descript is that I can edit audio and videosimultaneously

[00:18:13] andit makes it really easy. You basically edit a audio or video file, like you'reediting a text document. And then when I'm done editing, I can export a audioonly version to put out on Spotify, apple, et cetera.

[00:18:26]then a video version, which I'll go ahead and put out on YouTube.

[00:18:30] Andit's just super simple and it cuts my editing time down to, basically if it's a30 minute podcast episode, it takes me only about 45 minutes to edit.

[00:18:38] Butthe other reason why I love descript so much is that when I want to go aheadand pull out specific clips from a podcast episode or from a video that I'verecorded, I can do that in descript and apply those cool captions that you see.Descripts AI tool is amazing. And the way you are able to edit these audio andvideo files like a text document? is that when you import something into thescript, it automatically gives you a transcript and you can use that trans. Tocreate things like those fancy captions that you see people include when theypost a TikTok clip of a podcast episode.

[00:19:15]That is super easy with Descript. What I've even done is like build a template.originally I'll record my videos in the classic like YouTube landscape format,then I have a template that I can just apply to a specific clip that will turnthat clip into the portrait format for platforms like TikTok and Instagram andautomatically apply those really stylized captions for me.

[00:19:36] Theother cool thing about it Is it, It has something called Studio Sound wherebasically you just click a button and it automatically balances your track. Itremoves some of the background noise. It makes it sound super professionalwithout you having to worry about adding all sorts of effects like compressors,limiters,

[00:19:53] eq.You don't have to do any of that manually. You literally just click this buttonand it makes your voice sound super professional in literally a single click.So I love DS script. probably one of my favorite tools on this list,

[00:20:04]when it comes to posting that content, especially Clips. Another tool that I'vereally loved lately is repurpose.io. That is a cool tool because basically whatit does, You can create these workflows where if you post a video or a clip onone social media platform, it'll automatically send it to all of the other kindof social accounts you have.

[00:20:25] Sofor example, I have a workflow set up that if I post a video on TikTok, itautomatically sends that video to LinkedIn, YouTube shorts, Facebook reels,Instagram and Pinterest. All I have to do is post that clip one time on TikTok,it also removes the watermark from the original TikTok post, which is really,really helpful.

[00:20:44] SoI love that. That saves me tons of hours of time each.

[00:20:48] Andin addition to those two tools that I use for the content production itself,just generally like to use Grammarly. I have a mild case of dyslexia. So if I'mtrying to get something out quickly, oftentimes I'll like mix words up or movea letter from the end of a word to the beginning of a word.

[00:21:03] AndI like Grammarly for a second check to do things, especially for stuff likeblog posts. I use it all the time. It honestly saves my life and makes it so Ijust don't have to worry about having to correct something after I send it out.

[00:21:15] Ido use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop for some things, but honestly lately,now that most of our big like marketing pieces are put together, I've beenusing Canva a ton just to quickly like have these templates within Canva. Andall I have to do is drop a new headshot of a podcast guest or a new screenshotof a feature we've added to launchbay into one of these pre-created templatesthat I've set up.

[00:21:40] Andit takes you. A single minute to get a new image for a YouTube thumbnail or ablog post. So that's something that saves me a ton of time

[00:21:49] andan honorable mention for my marketing tech stack is definitely gonna be Zapier.Zapier has been just an absolute lifesaver for me over the years. I love theway that it can connect two pieces of software that don't normally worktogether and make that connection smooth and make it happen so I don't have todo some of this manual stuff.

[00:22:07]Because I have used CRMs that were set up for me in the past that I wasn'ttotally in control of. where if somebody expressed interest in our service, Ihad to go manually fill in their email, their name, their company, how theyheard about us, how to do that manually every time. And with something likeZapier, I can have all of that done for me and I just don't even have to worryabout it. And so that does it. That is my marketing tech stack. It's somethingthat I am really happy with the point to where we've gotten it. As with any newtechnology, you know, it does take some setup and refinement to get thingsright.

[00:22:40] butI feel like we're at a really good place with ours. I will put links to thetools that I use in the show notes of this episode. So if you are interested,you can learn more about them. Not saying that they're the perfect fit foreveryone, but these are things that I have found work especially well for meafter nearly a decade of sales and marketing and running sales and marketingdepartments.

[00:22:59] Ihope that you enjoyed this episode and found the information that I covered.And maybe it even inspires you to add on one of these pieces of technology thatyou may be missing so that you can not only eliminate busy work, but so thatyou can scale and grow your marketing initiatives over time and build a moreprofitable business.

[00:23:18]Speaking of eliminating busy work, in just about a week, we are going to bereleasing a powerful new form builder into launchbay. We are super, superexcited to release this form builder. It's been months in development what it'sgoing to allow you to do things like send your new clients custom onboardingforms where you ask about information about their business, what their goalsfor the project are, and get them to provide more details about the services orproducts that they offer, and have that all streamlined and automated

[00:23:49] soyou don't need to follow up with them to ask them to complete their onboardingform. Motion audio takes care of the follow up and you're able to track whatforms people have filled out, what you're still waiting on in a simple admindashboard. So we're really excited to release that in just about a week,

[00:24:05]What it really means is that it's a better time than ever to get started with launchbaythroughout our early access period. You can sign up for launchbay totally forfree and try it out and let us know what you think.

[00:24:17] Sohead to our website at Launchbay. Sign up for a free account. Like I said,totally free, no credit card, no commitment required. you literally just haveto enter your name and email along with your business name, and you canimmediately start using Launchbay.

[00:24:32]With that, my name is Sam Chlebowski. Hope you enjoyed another episode ofDesigning Growth.

[00:24:37] Wereleased new episodes every Thursday. And if you are enjoying the informationwe cover on this podcast, would love for you to leave us a five star review onApple or Spotify. It really helps us out and it gets the podcast in front ofmore people.

[00:24:50]Until next time, everybody. Have fun, good luck, and go crush it.

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