To run effective digital marketing campaigns, you need as much data on your audience, the results of your campaigns, and tools that automate as many marketing processes as possible. You can get all this and more with the following digital marketing tools.
1. Google Analytics
Unless you like working completely in the dark (analytically speaking), Google Analytics is a must-have tool. It gives you the following headline information: how many people have visited your website, where they come from, the bounce rate, and how long they tend to stay. You can also drill into much more detail by, for example, tracking conversions. This is a huge help in analyzing the success of your marketing campaigns.
2. MailChimp
Despite the new marketing channels that seem to become available on a constant basis, email marketing remains one of the most profitable. It should definitely be part of your online marketing strategy, and tool that can help you out with this is MailChimp. It’s free up to a certain number of subscribers and emails sent, so you don't even have to pay anything while you trial the program. It has excellent tools to help you create and send beautiful emails but, more importantly, it also has tools that can help you build your email list with engaged subscribers.
3. Canva
Creating professional graphics is an important part of online marketing. This includes images for your social media campaigns, infographics for your blog, or graphics to help illustrate a point on your website. Canva is one of the best tools available to help you create these images — as it requires no design experience whatsoever. The drag and drop interface is super easy to use and it has a lot of templates available to get you started (or to spark your creativity). Note that there are free and premium versions to choose from.
4. Mention
It is important you track mentions of your brand and products online. Doing so helps with market research, as it can spot potential negativity issues whilst increasing your brand awareness. This product makes it easy to monitor mentions of your brand online. You simply create alerts using the topics or words you want to track - such as your brand's name - and Mention will let you know when and where they appear on the web.
5. SEMrush
SEMrush is an SEO and search marketing tool. You can use it to give you a deeper analysis of your traffic than what you can currently get from Google Analytics. Crucially, you can also use it for keyword research to help you identify the best keywords to target. There are also tools to help you monitor backlinks to your website as well as tools that help you improve your paid advertising campaigns.
6. Copyscape
One of the most long-standing and important rules in SEO is to only publish unique copy on your website. While Google keeps most of its search engine algorithm a secret, it’s very focal about the fact it doesn't like duplicate content. Copying content from one source to another is a big no-no. You shouldn't even copy content on your own pages - everything should be unique. The problem is duplicate content can often happen without intent. Copyscape is a great tool to use to make sure your copy is unique. It will analyze your website to make sure there is no plagiarism.
7. Grammarly
Spelling and grammar mistakes are a big turn off for users. Furthermore, Google is getting much better at recognizing poorly produced content. The problem is that normal spell checkers are not very good at analyzing context and checking for grammar mistakes. This is why you need Grammarly. It won't catch everything and you’ll still need to proofread what you write, but it's a great tool to have nonetheless.
8. MailTester
MailTester is a tool you should use in addition to Mailchimp. It checks whether the email you're about to send resembles anything spam-like. This will help keep your emails out of your recipients’ spam folders.
9. Toggl
Toggl is all about improving your productivity and the productivity of your team. It does this by tracking and analyzing how you spend your time. When you know this, you can take steps to optimize it so you not only get more done, but have more time to concentrate on the things that will push your business forward and closer to your objectives.
10. Hootsuite
If you manage multiple social media accounts, Hootsuite is a must-have tool. It features an intuitive dashboard that shows all your main channels. You can post to multiple channels at once, monitor engagement, schedule posts to publish later, and more.
11. Buzzsumo
Coming up with ideas for interesting content is one of the challenges digital marketers face. Buzzsumo is a tool that can help you find trending content. It’s a premium tool with pricing that could possibly put it out of reach for some smaller business. However, it lets you do a handful of free searches per day. If you pick your keywords smartly, you can find the most popular content in your industry today, over the last week, for the past month, and for the past year. The results will generate ideas that you can plan into your own content schedule.
Did we miss any? Let us know in the comments below!
