With thousands of marketing tools available in the marketing technology (MarTech) space, it is challenging to discern the need-to-haves from the nice-to-haves.

Looking to make your content more interactive? There is a tool for that. Want to enhance your lead database? There are tools for that, too.

The world of MarTech has extended far beyond basic marketing automation. And not a day goes by without a new tool popping up in your inbox.

So, where do you begin? If you are starting to build out your MarTech stack, we recommend tools that will help you automate your marketing efforts and amplify your return on investment.

But first, considering the following:

• If you are using a marketing agency or consultant, you may be able to leverage some of their MarTech stack. Marketing professionals typically have an arsenal of tools for email, search engine optimization (SEO), social media management, and more to deliver higher output and manage more customers. The cost of these tools is generally reflected in their price.
• No amount of MarTech tools makeup for a lack of marketing strategy. If there were a tool that could magically transform your marketing, we would all be rich. Make sure you nail down your strategy first and then acquire tools that will help you support and enhance that strategy.

With so many marketing tools to choose from, it is a daunting task to understand which platforms you need and what will provide the best return on your investment. Below, we explore the top four tools for your marketing arsenal:

1. CMS: Make Updating Your Website a Breeze

In the past, an IT person or a developer was required to develop even the most basic websites. But now, with the advent of the content management system (CMS), even your grandmother could make edits to your site!

Building your site on a user-friendly CMS like WordPress will allow you to add content and make updates to your site without HTML knowledge. This frees you from the expense and delay of relying on an IT person to make changes.

Adding valuable content to your site is a great way to not only attract search engine traffic but also to establish your company as an authority in your industry and pre-qualify your site visitors as potential leads.

WordPress also offers the ability to choose from seemingly endless options of plugins, enabling you to integrate easily with many other MarTech tools such as MailChimp, WooCommerce, and Google Analytics.

2. Track Your Marketing Efforts With Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that will help you determine which channels are driving traffic to your website while providing valuable behavior insights for actions users are taking after they arrive.

To take analytics a step further, you can set up custom events and goals to track content downloads, form fills, video views, and other desired user actions.

3. Expand Your Workforce With Marketing Automation Tools

For companies with small business development teams, automating your lead nurturing process is hugely valuable. Marketing automation tools like InfusionSoft allow you to set up workflows to automate web form responses, lead nurturing email drips, and more. You can even set up a lead scoring model to alert you when a visitor becomes a “hot” lead. This frees up time to focus on only the most qualified leads while still providing nurturing efforts to residents who are not quite ready to lease.

4. Use a CRM to Improve Conversion Rate

A customer relationship manager (CRM) probably does not immediately come to mind when thinking about MarTech tools, but it should. After all, a huge function of your marketing efforts is to drive leads for your sales team. A CRM operating in sync with your website and marketing automation tool will help streamline your lead nurturing.

Limited by budget? A tool like HubSpot serves as both a CRM and marketing automation tool in one.