Welcome to my Favorite Marketing Tools section. I invest in countless tools that will help my business and make me more money online.
Below is a curated list of tools that I'm personally using right now that have turned SmartBusinessTrends into a six figure a year business.
Keep in mind that most of the links below are affiliate links, which means if you click on any of them, I will earn a commission.
Recommended Tools That I'm Using
Best Tool For Creating Landing Pages & Sales Funnels
ClickFunnels is the tool I use to build the squeeze and sales pages for all my offers.
I've tested lots of landing page/funnel builders, but ClickFunnels to me is still the easiest one to use.
It also has one of the best affiliate programs I've seen and I qualified to win the Dream Car in 2019!
So if you are interested in getting free mentoring from a ClickFunnels Dream Car winner, take a look at my amazing ClickFunnels bonus offer or read the Dream Car Secrets guide I put together.
Best Email Service Provider
There are a lot of good email services out there, but I've found that ActiveCampaign has the best combination of power and cost.
Their marketing automation editor is one of the most flexible ones on the market and it enables you to do some pretty cool email segmentation.
The Lite plan is perfect for solo entrepreneurs, but as your email marketing needs expand, their higher level plans can cater to those needs as well.
Best Web Hosting
I've been hosting SmartBusinessTrends with WPX Hosting for the last few years now and I am really happy with them.
They are a managed Wordpress host and I haven't had any problems with them whatsoever.
Support is super fast, and they have lots of great features like automatic backups, staging areas, free SSL.
Best Lead Generation Software
Thrive Leads is the best wordpress plugin for collecting email leads.
You can use it to create lightbox popups, ribbon, slide in, welcome mats and more.
It also comes with good looking templates, and it has a great editor for customizing your forms how you want them.
I really like the reporting as well, as it shows you what posts on my site are generating the most leads.
Best Link Tracking Software
I've now switched to ClickMagick to track all my links, and I'm so happy I did.
Previously I was using a Wordpress plugin for each of my sites, but I like being able to see all my link stats in a single dashboard.
The other killer feature of ClickMagick is the ability to dynamically add subids to any link.
And if the affiliate program supports subids as well, it can pass it through so I know exactly where my commissions are coming from.
Read my ClickMagick tutorial to see exactly how this all works.
Best Place To Buy Domains
After starting with GoDaddy, I've switched to Namecheap several years ago, and I haven't looked back.
Their prices are reasonable, they offer free WhoisGuard for the first year and they have a nice interface.