The main way most SaaS start-ups grow is through inbound marketing, that's why we have focused on 3 tools that are at the core of inbound marketing and can help you lay the foundations for growth.
Ok so HubSpot can become expensive when you start to scale, but there is also a free version which when you are just starting out can be super useful for a simple CRM with forms you can embed into your website.
The reason this tool is so good for start-ups is that it grows with you. You can add functionality and complexity as you grow and HubSpot has everything you need even at enterprise levels. Many B2B SaaS scale-ups and unicorns use HubSpot as their central CRM and Marketing Automation tool. You can also build your website on it if you would like.
HubSpot is the original inbound marketing tool and so it should definitely be one of the first tools you look into when thinking about getting started to grow.
Even some tech unicorns still use Google Analytics for their marketing website analytics. It does everything you need from an analytics tool and for being free it is pretty decent. We recommend installing Google Analytics using Google Tag Manager because it makes things a lot easier in the long run as you scale the company.
Google Analytics installed on your website will show you the progress of your inbound marketing efforts. Without some form of website analytics tool you are basically in the dark and you cannot measure your progress.
GA is also really useful for when you want to start running some PPC ads on something like Google Ads. This is because you can create conversions in Google Analytics and then import them into Google Ads to use to optimise your PPC campaigns.
Google Search Console is essentially a free SEO tool. It's widely used by SEO professionals and lots of SEO agencies to help them analyse their progress. Google Search Console (once configured, which is pretty easy) shows you how many impressions and clicks you are getting from the Google Search Engine. The impressions bit is really useful because this happens before someone visits your website, this means you get a leading indicator as to if you are going to see more traffic in the future.
Google Search Console also shows you the 'search queries' your website ranks for and which page. Beyond that it shows you the average position your website ranks for a specific query too. It is really powerful and even though lots of B2B SaaS SEO Agencies have expensive SEO tools like SEMRush, they still use Google Search Console for their work too.
There are so many digital marketing tools around its possible to go through them all. We've picked out some of our favourites for some core use cases like landing pages and creating awesome videos.
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