Media planning is a process that will define your strategy for your business. Therefore, every media planning tool available should be taken into account. The following list shows you the best media planning tools for this year.
HubSpot Media Planning Template [Featured Resource]
HubSpot’s paid media template will help you keep track of how much you’re spending on paid media, where your messages have gone out, and how much attributable revenue has been generated from each source.
You’ll also gain access to charts that automatically adjust when you add your spend and ROI. This resource is free
MailChimp
Get this: email marketing is used by eight out of ten marketers.
This isn’t something you should wait on. Instead, you should implement an email marketing strategy on day one.
With more than 12 million customers, MailChimp has claimed its spot as one of the top email marketing providers and digital marketing tools in the world.
While there are alternatives, this tool remains one of the best, for many reasons:
- History dating back to 2001, well before most companies began using email marketing
- Self-service support options, ensuring that you can quickly find answers to all of your questions
- Free plan for those with less than 2,000 subscribers and those who don’t send more than 12,000 emails per month
When starting a business, it’s not likely that you will have more than 2,000 subscribers. For this reason, you can get started with MailChimp early using the tool for free as you get your feet wet with email marketing and then move to a paid plan as you scale.
Kantar SRDS Media Planning Platform
The most valuable resource for media planners is data. To feel confident promoting media on a specific platform, media planners need to know who is on each channel, in addition to understanding their target audience. SRDS gives media planners access to extensive datasets on audience statistics and demographics so media planners can choose the right platform, message, and audience to target.
Trello
Trello is a digital marketing tool that helps you to manage projects and stay on the same page as your team–a sound digital marketing practice if you want to save time and frustration.
For example, you can share blog posts on Trello before you publish them. This gives others on your team the opportunity to review the post, weigh in with their thoughts and make changes that could strengthen the piece before it goes live.
In the past, before the days of Trello and similar programs, email was the best way to collaborate with your team. While this is still helpful, to a certain degree, it can lead to confusion, missed messages, and frustration.
With Trello, everything related to your online marketing strategy can be shared in the same place. It only takes a few minutes to set up a board. Even better, you can quickly invite your entire staff, all of whom can jump in on the action without delay.
Trello isn’t the only digital marketing tool of its kind, but it’s, by far, one of the best. When it comes to collaborating with others regarding marketing tasks, this tool is hard to beat.
BluHorn
Promising easy media planning and buying, BluHorn integrates with Nielsen and Comscore to provide users with instant access to data-rich insights. The tool is rich with useful features, such as post-buy, a vendor database, and data filters.
Google Analytics
As one of the top free tools from Google, Analytics should be part of your digital marketing strategy from the very start. In fact, I’d argue it’s one of the most powerful digital marketing tools out there.
It only takes a couple of minutes to add the Analytics code to your website, giving you the ability to track every action by every visitor.
This is considered by many to be nothing more than a traffic tool, but it can actually have a big impact on your marketing strategy, if you know what you’re doing.
Take, for example, the ability to see where your traffic comes from:
Maybe you realize that a particular social media campaign is driving tons of traffic to your website. With this data, you can adjust your future strategy, in an attempt to capture the same results.
Or, maybe you find that a particular set of keywords is doing wonders for your organic traffic. Again, you can turn your attention to these keywords, ensuring that you keep these in mind as you create content down the road.
Google Analytics isn’t one of those digital marketing tools you can ignore. Installing this early on is a key decision, in regards to your digital marketing strategy. The data you can collect is extremely valuable.
Basis by Centro
Rated the #1 demand-side platform on G2 Crowd, Basis “addresses your direct, programmatic, search & social through a single interface.” The software gives users access to 9,000 vendors and 11,000 publishers and informs them with more than 180 unique data points. It also contains a messaging tool for seamless team communication.
Followerwonk
Do you plan on spending a lot of time on social media marketing?
While this is a great way to engage your audience and send traffic to your website, it’ll only work in your favor if you have a solid plan in place.
Tools, such as Followerwonk, are designed to help you improve your social media marketing strategy, such as by digging into your Twitter analytics data.
I included this digital marketing tool on the list for two reasons: it’s easy to use and it’s extremely effective.
Followerwonk breaks down its service into three distinct categories:
- Find: Use the tool to search Twitter bios and compare accounts.
- Analyze: Breakdown your follower list by bio, location, who they follow, and many other criteria.
- Optimize: match your strategy to follower gains and losses, to understand what type of content performs best.
The only downside of Followerwonk is that it can’t be used with other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. However, if you have big plans for Twitter, this is a digital marketing tool you should use often.
Even though you may not use it on a daily basis, it can come in handy from time to time. After all, it’s imperative that you understand your audience.
Nielsen
A household name, Nielsen is synonymous with audience measurement. Known mostly for TV viewership metrics, Nielsen’s global strategy also provides users with metrics for podcasts, streaming services, and social media. This gives users an all-encompassing view of where their audience is. It’s no wonder media planners and sellers have relied on Nielsen for nearly a century.
Fun Fact: Nielsen is considered to be the first company to offer market research and is responsible for the term “market share.”
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a big deal for people who need to learn more about their market.
When you start a business, it’s safe to say you know a thing or two about your industry and primary competitors. But, once you dig around more, you’ll find that there is tons of data you can use to your advantage.
If you want to better understand your competition or if you want to learn what type of content performs best with search engines and your audience, you don’t need any other digital marketing tool by your side.
A BuzzSumo search results page looks something like this:
Additionally, there is high level data associated with each result:
This information can come in handy at many times, such as when you are creating content for your blog.
Why guess as to what is performing best in your niche? You can use BuzzSumo to answer this question with 100 percent accuracy.
With this search, you see that the top result has approximately 20k social shares. You now know what to strive for, if you want to achieve the same level of success.
As a big fan of BuzzSumo, this is a ditial marketing tool that I use on a regular basis. Even if you don’t do much with the data at first, each search will help you to better understand your competition and target audience.
Scarborough from Nielsen
Another appearance from Nielsen on this list, Scarborough is a media planning tool for companies hoping to get more local, hyper-focused audience insights. This tool is great for region-specific messaging or promotion and can facilitate a more systematic rollout of the word you want to spread.
Ubersuggest
Not only is keyword research a challenging task, but it can also get expensive with the price of premium keyword research tools. Your typical free software won’t offer you much but Ubersuggest isn’t your typical free software.
As a whole, this digital marketing tool is easy for beginners because the dashboard is simple to navigate so you can quickly find the data you want. You’ll start by entering a root keyword or domain that you want to research. You get up to three free searches per day on the free version and you can upgrade to a paid software as well.
Ubersuggest provides useful keyword information such as total search volume, difficulty, and paid difficulty if you’re thinking of running an ad campaign around that keyword.
As you work your way down you’ll see historical data that will show you how that keyword has trended over time. This is helpful for determining seasonal keywords or ones that are popular now but may die off over time.
You also get keyword ideas and suggestions that are relevant to the one you’re searching for so you can update older content or develop a content marketing plan.
Overall, Ubersuggest is an amazing free keyword research tool that is a great choice for beginners and has enough value as a paid tool for those who are scaling as well.
Conclusion:
No matter how competitive your industry is or how saturated your advertising space is, it’s possible to make a huge impact with the use of new media planning tools. By making use of social media, online video and online content, you can access a vast audience that will help to improve your brand recognition and increase sales. When dealing with different mediums on a daily basis, it helps to have the right media planning tools in place for easy organization and scheduling. Media planning tools can be used on a regular computer or tablet device, so you’re able to work from home on the weekend or while traveling.