Everyone knows that effective digital marketing strategies are important for acquiring and retaining customers. However, hiring a digital marketing agency can be challenging for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and startups. That’s where digital marketing tools enter the picture.
What are digital marketing tools?
Digital marketing tools are software and apps that help you plan, create, collaborate, execute, and measure your digital marketing tactics. These are exceptionally handy whether you are launching a marketing campaign or tracking the performance of existing social media content.
With the right digital marketing tools, you can automate several tasks and save time and costs. Moreover, you will significantly reduce errors and increase the efficiency of your digital marketing efforts.Â
Here are twelve digital marketing tools that you can start using today to increase the impact of your digital marketing.
12 digital marketing tools to grow your business
1. Google Ads
You want your prospective customers to find you and for that, your business should be on Google’s search result pages. Google Ads helps you promote your product to customers looking for answers to their queries. This is an effective way to drive traffic to your website.
Google Ads gives you Google Keyword Planner, which will help you research keywords that you can include in your ad and content. A business can also decide how much it wants to spend and set a cap on the budget. The payments are based on pay-per-click or pay-per-call.
2. Google Analytics
Tracking key metrics is a crucial part of any digital marketing campaign. Doing it manually will be cumbersome. That’s where Google Analytics comes in. It gives you information about the traffic to your website and its sources. This will reveal your tactics’ performance and the selected platforms.
For example, if you find out that one of your LinkedIn campaigns is driving a high amount of traffic to your website, you can invest more on that platform and cut back on Instagram or Facebook. The earlier you start using Google Analytics, the more time the software will have to study your traffic and give valuable insights.
3. Ahrefs
To be found by users, you need to invest in SEO or search engine optimization. If you don’t have the necessary resources, SEO can be a challenging task. But that won’t be a problem if you start using Ahrefs, a digital marketing tool designed to help you rank higher in search engine results.
Whether you are experienced in SEO or are a newcomer to it, Ahrefs makes it easy. You will learn how to optimize your website and know about your visitors, competitors, and the industry. The community around Ahrefs will also help you get queries to your questions.
4. Hubspot
Inbound marketing is the art of attracting customers to your target destinations. To do that, you should be in front of your prospective users, wherever they are. Hubspot has all the digital marketing tools you need to focus on your content and influence users to visit your website or social media handles.
The biggest advantage of Hubspot is that you get everything in one place. Whether you want to concentrate on SEO or manage your social media or blog, this is how you centralize your digital marketing tactics. If you use email marketing, the templates in the software will help you craft and track emails.
5. Slack
Slack has become synonymous with communication and collaboration in the startup world and across industries. The app gives you channels for specific conversations related to projects. Members can easily join and leave channels, making it an excellent networking venue.
With Slack, you can reduce the number of long-thread emails and meetings. The app also integrates with other commonly used project management tools. Excellent for both internal and external communication, Slack is also exceptionally easy to use.
6. MailChimp
Email marketing allows you to acquire and retain customers in an effective way. You can launch products, share detailed information about your services, offer exclusive discounts, and build a community of users. MailChimp makes email marketing easy and accessible to businesses of all sizes. Now, you can use the power of email to engage with users and grow your business regularly.
You can create, schedule, and automate email marketing with MailChimp. Businesses can also measure the traffic their campaigns would generate. Moreover, the service integrates well with other applications. If you are looking for email drip campaigns, this is the digital marketing tool you need.
7. Asana
While collaboration has always been key for businesses, remote and hybrid work models have placed a greater emphasis on it. Several apps are designed to make it easy, but Asana is one of the most comprehensive digital marketing tools you will ever find. It allows you to manage your workflow, enhance collaboration, and streamline communication between teams.
Asana makes it easy for employees to work towards their project goals. You can set deadlines, prioritize tasks, visualize and record projects, schedule tasks for team members, discover bottlenecks, and empower team members to easily share data. As a manager, you would know the status of every digital marketing task and the responsibilities and deliverables of the individuals working on them.
8. Canva
Graphic design used to be the exclusive domain of designers. If you needed anything to be designed, either you had to hire a designer on your team or outsource it to a digital marketing agency. Not anymore. Canva has made design accessible to all businesses and entrepreneurs.
With an easy-to-use drag-and-drop design, Canva allows you to create everything from logos to social media posts and banners to presentations to business cards. You can choose from a wide range of templates and use photos and graphic elements to create what you have in mind.
9. Hootsuite
Everyone knows the importance of social media but few have the resources to diligently create, schedule, and track campaigns. That’s until you discover Hootsuite. It’s a comprehensive social media marketing tool that can benefit businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to create content or schedule and track them, the app is there to help.
What’s more, you can also view your followers’ comments and respond to them. If you get DMs from prospective customers or clients, Hootsuite will display them for you. By automating social media management, it saves you both time and money. Plus, you will significantly improve the reach and effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
10. Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular social media marketing tools for businesses and entrepreneurs. It’s an all-in-one digital marketing tool that can take care of all aspects of your social media. The app is known for its simple and intuitive interface. You don’t need any technical know-how to use it.
You can create and schedule your social media content with Buffer. Importantly, businesses can also analyze the performance of their posts. This will show you what kind of content gets high engagement. From a single social media inbox, Buffer also lets you engage with your followers.
11. BuzzSumo
Merely creating content isn’t good enough. You need to know what kind of content works with your audience and then market it effectively. BuzzSumo, touted as the world’s number one content marketing platform, will take care of the job for you.
Trusted by over 500k marketers, BuzzSumo scans billions of articles and social media posts to tell you what’s more likely to work with your followers. You can easily generate content by browsing trends, topics, and forums. The app also allows you to measure your brand’s performance using content analytics.
12. Trello
Wondering how to create the right content strategy? Trello is the digital marketing tool you are looking for. Used by both large and small businesses for brainstorming and generating content ideas, it can work whether you have an on-site team or a fully remote workforce.
You can easily know which employee is in charge of writing, including CTA offers, or editing posts. By providing clarity on projects and facilitating collaboration, Trello will certainly improve your social media marketing.
In short
With these digital marketing tools, businesses and entrepreneurs can improve productivity, increase the effectiveness of their marketing, and save time and money in the process.