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6 Types of Tools Ad Agencies Need
1. Design Tools
For advertising agencies this is a an obvious one, but it would be odd not to mention it. Depending on what types of advertising you are doing you’ll require different types of tool. There are plenty of tools for graphic design, video advertising, HTML5 banner design – the list goes on.
2. Resource Management
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An overview of the 10,000 Feet platform. The clean design lets you clearly see what’s going on in your projects.
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The Float platform has been designed with agencies in mind.
3. Project Management & Collaboration Tools
Basecamp is an incredibly popular project management tool which is versatile and make collaborative work within teams manageable.
Teamwork is an alternative to Basecamp allowing advertising agencies to manage projects and work collaboratively.
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4. Social Media
Whether you’re a full-time social media manager, or you team takes turn managing your agency’s social media account there are a whole host of tool that can help you out.
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Buffer is pretty much the Holy Grail of social media scheduling tools.
Buffer is perfect for those who simply don’t have the time to Tweet in real-time and want to schedule content. By keeping your scheduled tweets topped up, you’ll never need to worry about going silent on Twitter. There is also helpful suggested content (although I would always recommend reading it first, and of course use your own content too) that you can share, and in-depth analytics in the paid version. Anyone who is social media savvy is using this tool already, but if you’re just going to have one social media tool for Twitter, then Buffer is the one.
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IFTT, a simple tool that lets you automate almost anything
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Overview of the Social Sprout platform dashboard
If you’re looking to seriously get your social media growing then Social Sprout might be for you. Social Sprout lets you measure and manage anything and everything on social media. It’s a particularly great tool for those who are managing teams of social media accounts in your agency and want to set tasks.
5. Marketing Automation
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Hubspot is only one of many marketing automation tools that are on the market
Marketing automation has gathered an almost cult-like following during the past couple of years, and understandably so. Huge powerful software tools allow you make marketing more effective through personalisation. Marketing automation tools are heavy duty and are a whole job within itself, but it allows you to do more in less time with better results. You can do everything from creating workflows, sending out emails with dynamic content and tracking prospects as they visit your site. Agencies can use this software to market better to potential clients and close deals faster.
There are quite a few marketing automation players on the market including Pardot, Hubspot, Marketo etc. Marketing automation is effective but not for the faint-hearted.
Additionally, consider MobileMonkey, which as well as being a respected chatbot platform is also a great for a range of tasks, such as social media and sms messaging. Today combining tasks through automation is a ket driver of improving productivity.
6. CRM
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Salesforce is a popular CRM that makes customer relation management manageable
You probably know that you need a CRM tool, but choosing one that will actually work for advertising agency will be the bigger challenge. Whilst Salesforce is the industry leader, there are plenty of other options on the market, and everyone has their own opinion.
Final Thoughts
When looking to implement new tools into advertising agency there are a lot of things to balance such as cost, usability, scalability and need. Whilst many tools will really transform the way your advertising agency works for the better, an overload or use of similar or duplicate tools might not make you life any easier. Remember that upon deciding to start using a tool it should be implemented into your team’s workflow and that some company standards and best practises should be set up to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
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