At most large companies, the marketing department—along with a CMO and several strategists—works almost full time to develop and implement successful marketing strategies. However, there are many more tasks that a marketing team must complete besides creating marketing tactics. So what do you do when you must run a full-time business, but still need a viable marketing and audience development strategy?

Though marketing can be successful, it can also be very costly. There are several budget-friendly apps and websites you can use to bring your marketing ideas to life, all while saving a big chunk of change.

For Generating Ideas

Quora 

Quora is basically one big Q&A platform. It's marketed as “your best source for knowledge.” Quora is a tech forum where users post questions and get tips from the website's community.

When you create an account on Quora, you're asked to select about eight to 10 subjects of interest. Choose topics related to your field to see relevant results. When your dashboard appears, it'll be full of questions and answers regarding your areas of interest. You can also use it to search for related content and marketing ideas.  

Pinterest 

For any business with an online base, visual appeal plays a significant role in marketing. Pinterest is a free platform that allows you to search and look at infographics and color schemes. You can also use it to find marketing tips that are visually appealing and aesthetically pleasing.

Believe it or not, Pinterest drivers a ton of social media traffic, and turns browsers into buyers because of its reduced amount of steps to the original source.

Evernote 

Evernote is your virtual notebook. Users can track and organize business ideas, and save web pages in their notepad. All content stays online, so you never have to sync copies between devices. Users can also retrieve all your notes at later dates, and share them with friends and colleagues. Evernote keeps your notes safe so you're able to recall specific details when talking to customers and create stronger relationships as a result.

Another feature of Evernote is its sophisticated organization system. It can be used to sort notes into different notebooks or combine them to create "stacks." Its tagging option allows you to create multiple tags so you can easily search for data in the future.

For Organization

Google Calendar 

Google Calendar helps you stay on task with meetings, goals, and appointments. They also have several add-ons for small businesses. Users can even share your calendar with anyone.

Its simplified scheduling helps you better manage yourself, your co-workers, and your appointments with customers. It makes organizing your schedule pretty hassle-free.

Asana 

Asana is an app that provides organization and clarity for all team members. Basically, it lets each person know what his tasks are and why.

The app is split into three shells: Workspaces, projects, and tasks. In the workspace, you group various projects. The projects area is where you can find all the tasks at hand that are grouped and prioritized. The tasks bar has information on a specific task, such as due dates or responsibilities and sub-tasks.

Asana paints a very clear picture of what needs to be accomplished by the team or company. Establishing a clear list of tasks for each team member can increase all around productivity. This will ultimately produce better results.

For Spreading the Word

Tweetdeck 

Tweetdeck allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts at once. With it, you can view multiple timelines as separate columns but on a single user interface. It also lets you create searches to track original hashtags, topics, or events.

Tweetdeck even has a scheduling tool that gives you a way to set times and dates for your posts to publish. One way to really reap the benefits of Tweetdeck is creating a column for followers and mentions. This way, you're able to track them and then engage with followers easily.

Hootsuite 

Hootsuite is great for catering to all your social media management needs. It lets you run multiple social media platforms all from one location, making it easy to track all your posts and profiles.

When you open Hootsuite, a dashboard with tabs for all your connected profiles appears. It can be used to schedule messages, posts, and tweets ahead of time. You can then track and analyze social media traffic.

For Tracking

Google Analytics 

You want stronger analytical results for your website. Google Analytics can provide you with optimal results and suggestions for areas of improvement. It will check bounce rates, conversion rates, page views, and other key insights that help drive your product knowledge.

With these reports, you can mark what is and isn't working for your website. In the end, it will bring you more qualified leads and more website traffic in the future.

Lander App 

Lander lets you create landing pages. These pages can be for social media, email, and online marketing campaigns. What's great about Lander is how simple and relatively straightforward it is.

It has multiple features that let you test out and design the ideal landing page for your website. Its visual editor makes designing a landing page easy. You can also use its A/B Test Tool to confirm which landing page produces better conversion rates. And if you use the landing page in ads you run, make sure to use Google Analytics to see which visitors went to your page after seeing that information.

Using any of these apps can help improve office productivity as well as inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Your business needs apps and tools that provide clarity and organization in order to be successful.

If your team uses any of the apps to its fullest potential, it is very likely to bring good results. In the meantime, your marketing costs will lessen because these tools cost almost nothing and are free! Either way, you'll save time and money by putting energy into using any one of these marketing tools.

Have you tried any of these tools? What has been your experience? Would you recommend any others?