Whether you are just starting or have an established business, knowing how to use the right marketing tools will help your business grow. This book focuses on how to properly apply these types of marketing tools to three different areas of running a successful business: Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Integrated Marketing.
Marketing is an important part of running a business. Without the proper tools, the marketing department may not be able to effectively spread the word about your business or products. The days of flyers, pamphlets, and newspaper ads are long gone. Video presentations, banner advertisements, electronic billboards, even social media like Facebook and Twitter are now standard tools for advertising. This chapter will explore different types of marketing tools used to reach different types of consumers.
Ahrefs
While old-school SEO was all about building backlinks, modern SEO practices are focused on understanding the search intent of keywords you can actually rank for, and building relevant and organic backlinks from authority sites.
With quality links leading to your content, search engines will know how authoritative and trustworthy your website is. That’s why off-page backlink analysis is the backbone of your digital marketing strategy.
Now, even with a plethora of amazing tools, Ahrefs is the one and only for many digital marketers.
With Ahrefs, you can do competitive analysis and see the keywords your competitors rank for in organic search results, find the best keywords ideas, access your backlink data instantly, find content relevant to your niche, keep track of your desktop and mobile keyword rankings, and get alerted whenever one of your competitors gets or loses a backlink.
Ahrefs has improved much over the years, now offering comprehensive tools for:
- Website analysis and backlink profiles
- Keyword research
- Website auditing for keyword gaps and performance issues
- Rank tracking to follow your performance over time
- Content explorer to stay on top of your niche
Yoast
What use are all the hours you spend researching keywords and topics worth if you don’t properly optimize your content? Even the best of us forget things once in a while.
Yoast is one of the best digital marketing tools for optimizing content for SEO because they offer an awesome free version. Yoast will tell you where to place your keyword, how to improve readability, and perhaps most importantly, let you know what you’re doing wrong so you can improve.
With the paid versions, you can add related keywords, search for semantic keywords within the plugin, get instant internal link suggestions, insights, and more.
Try the free version of Yoast for a while to familiarize yourself with the features and audit your site’s content. When you’re comfortable, upgrade to the paid version to boost your content even further.
Canva
A drag-and-drop design studio for folks who can’t afford professional graphic design.
Price: Free – $9.95/month.
Pros:
- Easy for beginners with no design background.
Cons:
- Finished designs can feel generic (because they are).
Mailchimp
A great platform for getting started with email marketing, whether you need a simple digital marketing tool or advanced solution.
Price: Pricing plans vary. You have the choice of monthly billing or credits, depending on your use. A limited free plan is available if you have under 2,000 subscribers.
Pros:
- Easy to use.
- Great email templates
- The Freemium version is excellent.
Cons:
- Limited marketing automation features.
Zoom
We all know Zoom as the video conferencing software used to bring people together no matter where they are on the planet. We’re all facing our own unique remote working situation but we still need to connect sometimes and Zoom allows that to happen. The best digital marketing tools help bring businesses together.
You can share your screen, draw on the screen, record meetings, and invite others to join in as well. Zoom offers free video conferencing for up to 100 participants for up to 40 minutes.
If you’re holding a one-on-one meeting that runs longer than 40 minutes, I’ve found in the past that Zoom will often extend the meeting for free with no time limit.
HubSpot
When it comes to marketing, sales, and CRM software, HubSpot has become one of the top players.
For the sake of this post, let’s focus on its marketing software solutions. The company has this to say about this digital marketing tool:
From attracting visitors to closing customers, HubSpot brings your entire marketing funnel together.
You know just how important it is for your marketing funnel to be in good working order. With this software, you have access to tools that help with:
- blogging
- SEO
- social Media
- website
- lead management
- landing pages
- calls-to-action
- marketing automation
- analytics
There is no stone left unturned, when you rely on HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software.That’s why it’s a top choice for those who are starting a business.
With everything you need in one place, you don’t have to pull yourself in many different directions. This will help you to find success in the early days and help you as you grow.
MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a must-have chat marketing automation tool that gives customers a way to chat with you, and you with them automatically.
With 75% of customers reporting that chatting or texting with a business is a better way to connect than email or phone, getting your customer chat up and running can’t be ignored by any business.
MobileMonkey is a great choice for marketing and support because it connects to all your customers’ favorite messaging channels including:
- Instagram DMs
- SMS text messaging
- Live chat
- Facebook Messenger
With MobileMonkey, everything you need for customer chat from Instagram marketing tools to Facebook messaging lead ads to live chat is available in a single platform.
Not only can you use one inbox to view and respond to the incoming messages from all your messaging accounts, MobileMonkey makes it easy to set up automations to respond, collect lead info, and send leads straight into your other marketing systems.
I’m using MobileMonkey Instagram marketing tools to automatically reply to Instagram post comments and story mentions. It improves my Instagram engagement rate and boosts my content reach to gain more followers.
Conclusion
Marketing Tools in Business is an authoritative resource for marketing students, professionals and business people who want to build successful marketing strategies and campaigns. It puts contemporary marketing into context by focusing on the essential marketing skills and techniques that matter. This book describes each tool and/or technique and provides a worked example of how it might be applied in practice.