Essential Growth Marketing Apps You Need For Success

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Managing growth marketing can be really hectic – there is just so much to keep tabs on. Doing everything manually and using Google Sheets for everything is old-school and plain stupid.

There are hundreds of SaaS solutions and other software out there that can help ease the overwhelming burden. These apps add value to your workflow from project management to process automation, record keeping, and analytics.

Here are the top free and paid apps that I use and recommend to unlock your growth.

nTask

With a very powerful free plan, nTask gives you everything you need for project management. The highlight of the app is that it is easy to use. You just cannot go wrong with it. You get task management, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and time management making your life easier.

Put your growth goals and projects in there, create milestones, assign tasks to your team and get things going. You can plan meetings, share agendas and minutes, and manage timesheets as well. It is literally the easiest project management software you will find. Plus, the free plan gives you a lot of features and 5 team members.

1. Unlimited Tasks
2. Unlimited Timesheets
3. Unlimited Issue Tracking
4. Unlimited Meeting Management (including integrations with Microsoft Teams and Google Meet)

And, if you ever find yourself wanting to upgrade to a paid plan, their pricing is mind-blowing! $4 a month for the Premium Plan, that’s cheaper than a cup of coffee!

HubSpot

HubSpot is, without a doubt, an all-encompassing CRM, which covers a lot of requirements for startups to enterprise-level companies. The biggest advantage you get with HubSpot is integrations – it connects with almost everything out there.

HubSpot has modules, and you can pick and choose from the ones you want to use, make a custom plan, or just subscribe to one of them. The pricing is smart, but it can get a bit expensive at times too.

My recommendation to every early-stage startup is to implement HubSpot as much as they can. Even if you decide to diversify your portfolio of software later, migrations and integrations are extremely easy with HubSpot. You will always have complete data on your customers, subscribers, or prospects.

From automated email sequences to campaigns, managing paid Google Ads, and social media platforms, HubSpot covers everything. Take a deeper look at what they have to offer on HubSpot’s Get Started page.

Reporting with HubSpot is as powerful as you can wish. You can connect your data across your modules and even from the integrations that you are using for a crystal-clear and comprehensive view of your performance.

Implementing HubSpot completely can be challenging at times too. If you are looking to get their Pro plans, a great tip to save onboarding costs is to complete the relevant certifications from the HubSpot Academy.

If you are still hitting roadblocks in implementing HubSpot and making the most out of it, you can always reach out to me and I can help get you set up.

Heap Analytics

I can’t tell you how much I love this one. It is the easiest analytics application out there. You just need to plug in a tiny script to your app or website and analyze anything and everything about user behavior.

Heap tracks every event and action on your app out of the box. You heard that right, no need to configure events in Google Analytics and tell it what to track. It is that simple!

You can define events with your own names, merge events together, define events with multiple events, track funnels, and even analyze complete sessions from visitors.

Heap gives you deep insight into how your users are behaving in your app or on your website. Understanding how your funnels are working, where users are spending the most time, and tracking your growth experiments is why you need Heap in your tech stack.

Headline Studio

The most important part of content anywhere is the headline. Get it right and you have the attention of your user. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer does just that. The tool is rated 5 stars on almost every review forum. Works inside WordPress as well as a standalone app.

The free version gives you plenty of features to get the headline written and is the better option for most users. Just write in a headline and it will provide a score from 0-100. It tells you how you can improve it by analyzing character counts, words used, the type of headline, and the nature of words.

I use it for almost everything I write, from emails to blog posts. The headline for this blog was analyzed by it (got a score of 88/100, not bad eh?). The paid plan gives you a couple of more superpowers and does help you create headlines quickly, but in my opinion, the free version should suffice in most cases.

ZoomInfo SalesOS

Okay, hear me out here. This is not your run-of-the-mill app. And it does not have a free plan, but trust me, you cannot find an alternative to ZoomInfo. Sure, Lusha and Hunter are good options, but those are just ‘contact databases’. ZoomInfo is a data powerhouse.

The amount of time you can save with this tool and the insights that you can get on prospects, leads, and current customers is truly amazing. Their crown jewel is information about companies looking for different solutions for their needs. They call it ‘intent data’, and well, it is intent data.

But that’s not all, ZoomInfo has evolved into a full-scale data platform with so much information on people that it is almost creepy. They have inside information on companies, individuals, industries, and a lot more.

The pricing, of course, is a lot! You need $10,000 just to get started, and that is assuming that you negotiated a great deal with them. You can, however, get a free list of prospects from them, and also get a trial once you get in touch with one of their salespeople.

If you have the kind of product or service that would benefit from strong outbound campaigns, then this is your best bet. ZoomInfo will shorten your sales cycle by a margin and will allow you to target prospects so precisely, that is almost scary!

Rank Math

Gone are the days when Yoast ruled the SEO market. Rank Math is the new leader. They have the widest portfolio of features among every SEO plugin out there. The team behind the tool is extremely helpful, I have never seen such a strong support team behind a WordPress plugin.

Features like instant indexing, schema markup, and FAQ blocks, are what make it a must-have. They have a built-in Content AI feature as well that advises you on how to structure your content and which keywords to use for better search engine rankings.

The plugin is pretty easy to use, and everything is divided into separate modules with their own settings. You can customize everything according to your requirements. With every function, there is a definitive help article that explains why it is important and what the best practices to use are.

I specifically liked their News SEO and Video SEO feature, which helps you optimize your site for videos and news articles. It also generates separate sitemaps for the same and puts you in control of how you want to be visible on the search engines. Overall, this is a one-stop shop for your SEO plugin needs.

UberSuggest by Neil Patel

If you have been in the content marketing business then I am sure you have heard of a charming man named Neil Patel. He is a thought leader and a guru when it comes to marketing and especially with SEO.

Neil has created a solid SEO tool called UberSuggest to compete with the likes of SEMRUSH and AHREFS – although I agree that these tools are much more powerful than what Neil is offering but there are some things that he does really well.

The lifetime deal is what really makes it worth it for larger teams and the generous pricing is the sweet spot for small businesses. It has everything you need to get started with SEO and make sure that you are hitting the right notes for your website’s growth.

For larger teams that have a full stack of SEO applications, I recommend UberSuggest because of its usability and research features. Neil has really worked on the experience of using SEO tools – you can do your keyword research in minutes and start writing a blog post.

The audit functionalities are also quite advanced and you will even find metrics like backlink spam scores, etc. (which is awesome considering the price you get it for). Another neat trick he does is explain what it will take for you to rank for a keyword in terms of Domain Authority and Backlinks. It doesn’t really give a clear roadmap of what to do but is a good measure of how competitive the keywords are.

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