10 Digital Marketing Tools You Must Have for Successful Campaigns
There’s no shortage of digital marketing tools, but which ones do you really need to set up and manage successful online marketing campaigns – find out here.
Small businesses don’t have time to sift through every app or tool online, so if you’re an entrepreneur looking for the best digital marketing tools; we’ve taken the time to list them here for you.
Digital marketing tools are essential for modern day online marketers. They have to wear many hats, doing everything from data mining and analysis to social media marketing, all happening at the same time. Digital marketing tools make it possible for marketers to keep their sanity. Without the right digital marketing tools, it’s impossible to handle day to day tasks for one campaign let alone multiple campaigns.
While a simple Google search will lead you to a vast array of digital marketing tools with various functions this article will help you weed out the must haves for the serious digital marketer.
Here are 10 digital marketing tools you must have for successful campaigns.
1. Sprout Social
We need to start with a social media tool because billions of people spend more time on social networks than they do eating.
With so much rapt attention spent on various social platforms, you want to make sure you are front and center. You can do this with a social media management tool like Sprout Social. This tool offers a plethora of solutions for the individual or collaborative team for social media engagement and management of your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn campaigns. It integrates with Google Analytics for easy-read data analysis, and has clever publishing and curation tools built into the system. The best thing about it is it is simple and easy to use.
SproutSocial has a 30-day free trial for all plans, and offers a standard $59 a month plan for those just getting started in social media marketing. The plan includes all the basic features such as the social inbox, reporting, and publishing tools.
2. MailChimp
Some marketers feel that e-mail campaigns are passé. While email is certainly an old technology, it is by no means past its prime as a marketing strategy for some very good reasons. It is still one of the most cost-effective, no matter the size of your business. MailChimp is a tool you definitely want to explore if you are new to e-mail marketing because it is affordable and simple to use. It is not overly sophisticated, but it is a good way to get your feet wet.
MailChimp offers basic automation for email campaigns, from welcoming new subscribers to announcing promotions. It also collects and reports data so you can improve your emails for better conversions. While it has a “forever free” plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month (ideal for new users), templates, comparative reports, analytics, and other neat marketing tools only come with the paid plans, which start at $9 a month.
3. AdRoll
Have you ever visited a website, and for days after, ads of their products seem to follow you around? This is a relatively recent strategy called retargeting ads, and it is very effective for keeping brands and products top of mind, and converting bounce traffic into leads.
AdRoll is one of the more popular tools used for retargeting strategies using all devices, with access to major social networks and more than 500 ad exchange platforms. Users see their sales increase by as much as 265% using retargeting ads. You can get similar results with AdRoll by setting up your own campaigns, or getting the AdRoll staff to help you.
4. Essay Scholaradvisor
All of the tools above have one thing in common: copy. Whether it is welcome email for new subscribers, or scripts for your video, you need someone to write the copy. Unfortunately, no tool can do this for you automatically.
In most cases, you will not have the time or skills to make convincing copy yourself. Instead of a tool, you need a professional writing service like Essay Scholaradvisor. You can engage this writing service to make any type of copy at any time, and you only pay for what you need. This frees you up to do core tasks. You can also get them to edit and proofread existing copy, just to make sure you look and sound professional.
5. Unbounce
Digital marketers hate it when visitors bounce (leave without engaging) from the site. That means hours of work and other resources spent down the drain. You can prevent that by making your landing pages conversion-friendly using Unbounce. It is a tool for the design- and coding-challenged for creating awesome and custom landing pages quickly and easily. The tool has many cool features such as Convertables and Parallax Scrolling to drive conversions.
6. Albacross
Apart from generating traffic, the biggest concern for every online business owner is:
“How do I get more people to convert on my site?”
An average website lets 98% of its visitors slip through the cracks, and out of every 1000 visitors that you get, only 20 people end up converting.
The lack of data on the people who visited a particular website is evidence enough that businesses are missing out on most of their potential customers.
So, in this case, what should you do?
Well, you can track your visitors and reach out to them even after they’ve left your page.
Even better, you can get to do this with the help of outstanding lead generation tools like Albacross.
Albacross is a simple-to-use tool that allows B2B marketers to automatically generate leads from their company’s website. You’ll get an overview of which companies are visiting your site, and how they interact with it. Once you’ve determined who you want to reach out to, simply obtain their contact information (provided by Albacross), and have your sales team get in touch.
The cool thing about Albacross is that it’s free to use, and you don’t need a credit card to sign up.
7. Kissmetrics
No matter how cool you think your landing pages are, you still have to check if it actually gets the clicks and conversions you want. Kissmetrics is a tracking tool for gathering and analyzing site traffic and other data throughout the sales funnel. This is to help you understand what is working for you, and what needs improvement to drive better conversions and increase sales.
The cool thing about Kissmetrics is it shows you what people are actually doing on your site, as opposed to just getting a page views report. It takes a while to set it up, but it has an onboarding service to help you through the worst of the bumps.
8. Wistia
Currently, 73% of all web traffic is video, and that is slated to grow to 82% by 2021.
It just makes a lot of sense to include video content creation as part of your digital marketing strategy.
However, putting them on your site is not a good way to get the attention you want.
Enter Wistia, a video hosting site particularly useful for selling online. YouTube is more popular, but Wistia has much better support for businesses looking to convert through video.
Aside from video analytics, heat mapping and a video site map, you can include a customized call-to-action (register, subscribe, etc.) in the video itself, driving your viewers to the landing pages you want. Wistia has a free plan for up to three videos (with watermark), and paid plans starting from $99 per month.
9. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a really useful content marketing research tool.
When you’re creating content based on a topic, you can research to find similar content based around the same theme. You can find the most shared content related to that topic and use this information to help you produce the best content, headlines and so on.
Researching shared content really is the core of BuzzSumo.
That being said, this tool provides great insight into how you should market your niche, who the key influencers are and more importantly what your competitors are doing right with their online marketing.
10. HubSpot
HubSpot is truly a great tool. It honestly covers every aspect of online marketing from publishing content to converting visitors.
HubSpot pretty much has a tool for everything:
- Blogging
- SEO
- Social Media
- Website
- Lead Management
- Landing Pages
- Calls-to-Action
- Marketing Automation
- Analytics
There are a lot of upsides to using HubSpot, the main one being that you have everything you need in one place.
The downside is
Conclusion
Digital marketing is a multi-faceted undertaking, and no marketer can do all of the required tasks simultaneously without assistance. You must have at least these 10 digital marketing tools to ensure a successful campaign without stressing out completely.
