Why Your Agency Needs a Tech Stack

Creating a properly built tech stack starts requires thought and intention to ensure all the apps you use work well together. If you haven’t ever thought about the apps that your agency uses in terms of a “tech stack,” then there’s a chance a lot of those apps don’t work together efficiently. Therefore, your marketing agency needs a properly built tech stack to ensure your workflow runs smoothly.

• Tech stack: The set of apps and tools that a company uses as part of their daily workflow to help build, market, or sell their product as well as engaging with customers.

The Problem With Poorly Built Tech Stacks

Since a poorly built tech stack is very likely to be disorganized, it means that your marketing agency will waste time on busy work, including switching between apps, searching for information, setting up new projects, or organizing your agency’s workflow. Solve this problem by reading our guide below on the best apps to choose for each aspect of your marketing agency—including reporting, email, video communication, and so many more.

Project Management: awork

The #1 project management tool for marketing agencies, awork Your project management app is your most important tool since it will be the heart of your agency’s tech stack. You can view tasks either in a to-do list form or through boards. What sets awork apart from other project management apps is the ability to create flexible If/Then automations for tasks and projects. Plus, you can sort your project by client, which makes it easy to see at a glance which task goes with which client—a huge time saver if your agency has a lot on the go at once.

Messaging: Slack

Everyone needs a way to communicate efficiently both with clients and internally with your team. Slack is the best team chat app for working with a variety of external clients since you can easily switch between multiple different workspaces. Separating conversations according to topic in different channels within a Slack workspace also helps to keep things organized. Finally, there is also the ability to private message and video call other Slack users. 

Analytics: Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to track website visitors and return on ad spend for your clients’ websites. It provides critical feedback for determining the success of advertising campaigns. Google Analytics also provides an enormous amount of other detail, including information on site visitors, bounce rate, user acquisition, page views, and much more.

Landing Pages: Leadpages

Easily build web pages for your agency without knowing how to code by using prebuilt templates from Leadpages. You can build full websites as well as landing pages and pop-ups with Leadpages without having to hire designers or coders. Leadpages is also more than just a webpage builder; it also comes with built-in performance tracking and analytics.

Video Conferencing: Zoom

Zoom is ubiquitous–and for a good reason. It’s one of the easiest to use video chat apps available. Whether you’re calling someone for a one-on-one or holding your team’s daily standup, Zoom is the best app to choose for your marketing agency.

CRM: HubSpot

Choosing the right customer relationship management app is essential for ensuring your marketing agency runs smoothly. HubSpot is a fantastic choice for agencies looking to streamline the way they manage sales and clients. This app lets you track and manage sales, productivity, and the performance of everyone working for your agency. As an added bonus, HubSpot CRM is totally free!

SEO/Rank Tracking: SEMRush

SEMRush helps you manage your SEO (search engine optimization) and SMM (social media marketing) through detailed analytics and reporting tools. For agencies, SEMRush can specifically help you with prospecting and finding leads. Some of the tools available also include daily rankings, analyzing backlinks, and researching keywords.

Paid Search: WordStream

If you’re looking for a better way to manage paid ads with Facebook and Google, then Wordstream is the solution. Their Advisor for Agencies service can also help you to build and scale your agency. Other services offered by WordStream include WordStream Advisor, LOCALiQ Marketing Services, as well as several free tools to help you enhance the performance of your digital marketing strategy. 

Email Marketing: Customer.io

Seamlessly manage all of your email marketing campaigns through Customer.io. By automating the creation of audience segments and sending logic, you can save valuable time by getting the right messages to your audience at the right time without having to write code. With this app, you can also create and schedule newsletters and campaigns for your clients. 

Social Media Management: Hootsuite

If your agency manages multiple social media accounts for clients, then a good social media management app is essential. You can add Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts to Hootsuite and then manage them all in one place. With Hootsuite, it’s easy to schedule posts across all of your social media platforms. As a bonus, with Shift, you can log into multiple Hootsuite accounts at once.

Reporting: Klipfolio

Create beautiful dashboards, reports, and metrics through their easy to use app. Klipfolio offers three different products: Klips, PowerMetrics, and MetricHQ. Klips allow you to create reports automatically. PowerMetrics enable you to bring all of your metrics together in one place so you can analyze and track them. MetricHQ is a learning tool for key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. 

Graphics: Visme

Visme is more than just a visual content creation app; it’s also a collaboration platform that allows you to easily work together on presentations and visual content without having extensive design skills. Whether you need to mock up a design or present a polished pitch to a client, Visme has the tools you need to get the job done.

Email: Gmail in Google Workspace

Formerly known as G Suite, Google Workspace makes it easy to set up Gmail as your agency’s business email account. Gmail is an effective and easy to use option for business email. Plus, all Google Workspace pricing levels also come with a custom email for your agency and 2-step verification for added security. 

Review Management: Trustpilot

Trustpilot allows you to manage reviews for your clients to ensure that prospective customers get the best information possible. Customers also pay a lot of attention to reviews before purchasing a product, making reviews a critical factor in conversion rates. Help ensure your clients don’t lose out on potential customers due to poorly managed reviews by implementing Trustpilot in your tech stack.

Visitor Tracking: HotJar

Finally–an app that will tell you how visitors are really interacting with your website without having to pour over complex data and analytics all day. You can visualize user behavior with heatmaps that show you where visitors click and scroll on your website. This feature makes it incredibly easy to see which parts of your website users find most valuable. In addition, with HotJar, you can build in user surveys as well as instant visual feedback to make it as easy as possible to get feedback from visitors to your website. 

A/B Testing: Optimizely

In order to optimize UI/UX for clients, you’ll need to have a streamlined and reliable way to do A/B split testing. Optimizely is the best way to experiment with different website and mobile app designs to discover which one performs best for your clients. It also doesn’t require any knowledge of coding in order to run effective split tests.

Link Building Outreach: Respona

Build your organic growth and content marketing engine by building up your backlinks and automating much of the process along the way. Respona allows you to search for email addresses, create templates for email copy, and automatically send outreach emails. Organic and content marketing is more important than ever, and Respona can help you stay ahead of the curve.

Outsourcing: Upwork

Sometimes working for a marketing agency can get so busy you need some extra help to ensure your clients get the best results possible. Upwork connects your agency with the best freelance talent in development, design and creative, writing, sales and marketing, administrative support, customer service, data science and analytics, as well as engineering and architecture. With all of these resources available to you through Upwork, you won’t ever be late on a project or have to say no to a client because everyone else working for your agency is too busy.

Bring All Your Tools Together

Trying to manage all of the tools you need to run a marketing agency is a huge headache. Even once you’ve optimized your tech stack, the problem of how to juggle all of the apps still isn’t solved. That’s where Shift comes in. Think of Shift as a toolbox for your tools. Shift ensures you won’t lose track of any of the apps, email accounts, or information that you use on a daily basis, so they’re always available at your fingertips when you need them most. Also, Shift allows you to log into multiple different accounts in a single app at one time. This makes it easier to handle multiple different clients who use the same app. If your marketing agency is looking for a better way to organize your tech stack, then download Shift now.