Growth is top priority for all businesses and there are many powerful digital marketing tools to enable it. Learn all about the tools you can leverage to become a superstar digital marketer.
Digital marketing is essential for any organization that wants to succeed in today’s competitive commercial environment. E-commerce is a big thing, and digital marketing helps companies to establish and maintain a robust online presence. However, it’s quite a tall order for today’s marketers.
Fortunately, there are plenty of digital marketing tools available. However, there may be too many online marketing tools to choose from. The market is saturated. How can digital marketers know which tools are the best?
That’s why we have this article. We are about to launch into a digital marketing tool voyage of discovery, highlighting the essential digital marketing tools needed to keep your business growing. We will also touch upon digital marketing platforms and digital marketing analytics.
Defining Digital Marketing: A Refresher
Digital marketing, also called online marketing, uses the Internet and other digital communication to promote brands and connect with potential customers. Digital marketing includes social media, email, and web-based advertising and multimedia and text messages as a marketing channel.
If you’d like to learn additional information about digital marketing, check out this informative article.
The Types of Digital Marketing
Many digital marketing tools are categorized based on the type of digital marketing they work best with. So, here are some common types of digital marketing commonly used today, with brief descriptions. For more in-depth information on the kinds of digital marketing, read this article.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO digital marketing ensures that your website’s URL appears near the top of any search engine’s result page.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing covers marketing campaigns conducted on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, to name a few.
Content Marketing
Content marketing involves using high-quality content (blogs, videos, etc.) to attract and engage your audience.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
PPC marketing involves bidding on placing paid advertising at the top of a search engine result page (SERP).
Affiliate and Influencer Marketing
Affiliates are other businesses you partner with, while influencers are online personalities who can endorse your website and products.
Email Marketing
This form of marketing is the most popular and least expensive and involves conducting email campaigns to attract new customers and keep the current customers engaged.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile device use has skyrocketed, and this form of digital marketing uses social messaging apps, texting, and in-app advertising to target audiences, especially in the younger demographic.
Presenting 12 Essential Digital Marketing Tools
We took the vast field of digital marketing tools and whittled them down to 12 absolutely vital offerings that any business needs to grow in the e-commerce world.
HubSpot
Digital Marketing Specialty: Email marketing tool
Cost: Prices go from Starter $45/month to Enterprise $3600/month. There is also a free plan.
Description: HubSpot is an easy-to-use email marketing product that offers excellent deliverability and native integration with other HubSpot software, like CRM, inbound marketing, and many other popular marketing tools.
Ahrefs
Digital Marketing Specialty: SEO marketing tool
Cost: Tiered pricing system ranging from $99 to $399 per month.
Description: This SEO digital marketing tool is one of the most popular offerings. It’s a comprehensive tool perfect for competitive analysis, letting you check who is linking to the competition and what their top pages are. In addition, you can see where competing content ranks, backlink sources, and, using Ahref’s Content Gap tool, identify critical weaknesses in your content areas.
Ahrefs also has data for about 150 million keywords in the United States alone and many more for 150 other nations.
All-in-One SEO
Digital Marketing Specialty: SEO marketing tool
Cost: Begins free, pricing ranges from Basic $49.60/year to Elite $299.60/year.
Description: All-in-One SEO, also called AIOSEO, is a highly rated plug-in used for WordPress websites. The tool offers a variety of features designed to help businesses optimize their sites and content for search engines.
AIOSEO also provides an actionable checklist that helps businesses focus on correcting errors and making basic adjustments to maximize their click-through rates. Additionally, digital marketers can perform whole-site audits, optimize pages for WooCommerce, and improve their local SEO.
Trello
Digital Marketing Specialty: Content marketing and project management tool
Cost: Free for individuals and small teams; pricing ranges from Standard $5.00/month to Enterprise $17.50/month.
Description: Trello is an excellent content marketing tool that facilitates collaboration and tracks multiple projects in the pipeline. It’s an excellent resource for strategizing and brainstorming content and is a valuable tool for assigning editing, writing, and CTA tasks to different marketers. Trello is ideal for teams that are scattered worldwide.
Unbounce
Digital Marketing Specialty: Lead generation and PPC tool
Cost: Pricing ranges from Launch $90/month to Concierge $575
Description: Unbounce is a great tool for quickly building, adjusting, and publishing new landing pages to test. The app features drag-and-drop functionality, built-in A/B testing, and variant analytics, which quickly and directly show marketers which calls-to-action, creatives, and additional page elements are working and which aren’t.
Unbounce’s proven landing page templates are great as a jumping-off point for marketers whose design skills aren’t optimal. The templates can then be modified to fit the business’s style. Then, Unbounce’s analytics will clearly show which of those landing page variants performed best.
Semrush
Digital Marketing Specialty: SEO marketing tool
Cost: Free trial available. Pricing ranges from Pro $119.95/month to Business $499.95/month.
Description: If you’re interested in your keyword performance, you want SEMrush. This tool lets you track your priority keywords and allows you to explore new terms to rank for. In addition, SEMRish is an excellent aid for brainstorming ideas and content because it breaks down keyword attributes such as difficulty and variations.
Pointerpro
Digital Marketing Specialty: Lead generation tool
Cost: Free trial available. Pricing begins at $33/month.
Description: Pointerpro is a robust lead-generation tool. It includes features like the ReportR pack, which provides respondents with a personalized PDF report based on their answers. It also smoothly integrates with existing marketing stacks through Integromat, webhooks, or Zapier. In addition, ReportR lets you easily transport leads to your CRM or email marketing tools, making it easier for you to begin building productive campaigns quickly.
Hotjar
Digital Marketing Specialty: Digital marketing analytics tool
Cost: Pricing ranges from Basic (free) to Business $80/month. They can also negotiate a scaled pricing plan.
Description: Do you want to know how visitors to your website behave, including what they are clicking on (and most tellingly, what they’re not clicking on)? Hotjar helps you get answers thanks to features such as screen recordings, site heatmaps, and feedback polls and surveys. In addition, Hotjar helps remove site design guesswork by showing you what’s working and what needs improvement, allowing you to adjust rapidly.
Google Analytics
Digital Marketing Specialty: Digital marketing analytics tool
Cost: Free
Description: You knew that Google would be represented on this list somewhere, right? Google Analytics is practically mandatory for digital marketers since it’s the finest example of website analytics. Google Analytics shows you who is visiting your website, where they came from, and on which of your website’s pages they’re spending most of their time. Additionally, you can establish goals to track conversions, construct an enhanced e-commerce setup, and learn more about user engagement by tracking events.
Hootsuite
Digital Marketing Specialty: Social media marketing tool
Cost: There’s a free 30-day trial. Pricing ranges from Professional $49/month to Business $739/month. There’s also a customizable Enterprise level.
Description: Like Google Analytics, Hootsuite is another well-known, respected entry in the digital marketing industry. This powerful and popular tool monitors all your social media platforms simultaneously, providing post updates, review responses, and connecting with all your customer’s platforms. In addition, you can track your social media content’s performance, calculate ROI and conversions, and track public discussion regarding your brand or specific subjects. The software also lets you easily share information via a plug-in which you can use to share through all your social media platforms simultaneously. Just like Google Analytics, Hootsuite is a must-have.
Clearbit
Digital Marketing Specialty: Lead generation tool
Cost: Pricing is based on monthly web traffic, total ad spend, database size, and growth.
Description: Clearbit gives organizations a comprehensive view of the market, prospects, and customers. The software allows marketers to reach and engage their target audiences, create personalized buyer journeys, and instantly react to intent signals throughout the customer’s lifecycle.
Clearbit uses over 100 sources, including Salesforce and additional marketing platform data, to create an up-to-date profile of a business’s leads, making outreach efforts go more smoothly. The details Clearbit gathers include companies, their sizes and roles, and much more.
Canva
Digital Marketing Specialty: Social media design tool
Cost: There is a free option. Pricing ranges from Canva Pro $119.99/year per person and Canva for Teams $149.90/year for the first 5 people.
Description: Canva is a drag-and-drop design platform that lets users create images using custom icons, shapes, pictures, and fonts from the Canva catalog. This tool is great for the budget-minded organization, offering an easy, aesthetically-pleasing way to design images, logos, presentations, or graphs, depending on the marketing team’s needs.
How Do I Know Which Digital Marketing Tools Are Best for My Organization?
You must have a good understanding of your organization’s mission, products, and services and knowledge of digital marketing tools. Luckily, you’ve arrived at the right place for the latter! But when you are figuring out which digital marketing platforms are best for your business, ask yourself these questions:
1) What’s my target audience?
2) Where can they be found online?
3) What products and services am I offering?
4) What’s my budget?
5) How much time and personnel can I allocate to digital marketing?
If you answer these questions, you can better understand which tools fit best. For example, suppose you’re a small business with a limited budget. In that case, you’d better focus on email and social media marketing, as these forms of digital marketing are inexpensive.
So, choosing the best tools depends heavily on your business and its unique circumstances.
Do You Want to Master Digital Marketing Skills?
Digital marketing is a hot property in today’s fast-paced online world. Any business that wants to attract people’s attention these days needs a solid digital marketing strategy, and they need professionals who know their way around the process.
If you’re interested in a career as a digital marketer, we have just the thing to get you started. This Digital Marketing Bootcamp, deivered by Simpilearn in collaboration with UMass Amherst, will turn you into a digital marketing specialist in just six months. You will master the most in-demand digital marketing skills and fast-track your marketing career as you learn how to attract customers, boost engagement, and generate leads
