Are you looking for the best marketing tools to increase your sales? You’re in the right place. Here I’ve found some of the best marketing tools that you can use as an entrepreneur or business owner to increase your income with little effort. At least, that’s my experience using them.
Google Analytics
Search for any website tracking tool, and I’ll bet Google Analytics shows up – and rightly so.
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google, that helps marketers track and report on what’s happening on their website. You can keep a close eye on key metrics such as:
- Average time on site
- Bounce rate
- Top referring channels
- Pageviews
- Unique visitors
- Conversion rate
You’re also able to create custom reports, and view detailed statistics about your audience – including where they’re being referred from, where they’re located, and what devices they’re using to access your website.
(There’s also paid version, named Google Analytics 360, where marketers can gain access to even more data. But if you’re a small to midsize business, the free version will suit you perfectly.)
Brennan Flentge, SEO Analyst at Investis Digital, is a huge Google Analytics fan. He says:
“Hands down, my favorite tool is Google Analytics. When properly set up, Google Analytics allows me to work in tandem with our other teams to make sure we are uniting performance marketing initiatives and amplifying meaningful communications with audiences across all digital channels.
We can track goal conversions, shopping behavior, Google Ads performance insights, and page performance, to name a few of the many use cases. Plus, the ability to create custom dashboards and reports means that our clients get crucial insights whenever they need them.
The bottom line: Without GA, I wouldn’t be able to create data-driven digital strategies and marketing recommendations that work harmoniously across all marketing channels.”
Free trial?: Yes
Pricing: Free.
Grammarly
Whether you’re typing an email to customers, drafting a quick social media post, or writing an entire ebook, don’t start without installing the Grammarly extension on your browser.
Grammarly is well-loved by marketers because it:
- Checks your grammar
- Offers accurate suggestions that fit within the context of your text
- Works on most places you write – like social media, WordPress, and Gmail
Free trial?: Yes.
Plans and pricing: Free, but $29.95 per month for the Premium version.
Campaign Monitor
Email marketing is a fantastic way to drive more sales for your business, and has an average ROI of 3,800%. Fancy getting in on the action?
Sign up for Campaign Monitor – an email software that helps marketers design, write, and deliver emails and newsletters. It also:
- Offers several email templates proven to get results
- Uses a drag-and-drop editor for those with limited coding knowledge
- Helps marketers send emails automatically based on a subscriber’s activity
- Includes sign-up forms as part of their service
Free trial?: Yes.
Plans and pricing: Between $9-$989 per month, depending on list size and features required.
ConvertKit
Similar to Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit is also an email marketing service provider. The only difference? It’s built by creators, for creators – making it a fantastic option for smaller, service-based businesses.
ConvertKit’s software:
- Has several customizable landing page and opt-in form templates
- Offers visual automations to easily view and understand your automation sequences
- Easily integrates with other digital marketing tools, including Teachable and Squarespace
- Has the option to tag and segment subscribers based on their behavior
Free trial?: Yes, 14 days.
Pricing: $29-$79 per month, depending on the number of subscribers you’ve got on your list.
MailChimp
If you’ve been searching high and low for cheap email marketing software, MailChimp is the perfect option. It’s similar to the other two tools we’ve mentioned (in the sense it manages email marketing campaigns), but it’s worth starting out on MailChimp’s free plan if you’re just dipping your toes into the water.
MailChimp allows marketers to:
- Create email advertisements, landing pages and newsletters to grow their business
- Retarget customers with information collected by Google and Facebook ads, via email
- Publish quick and easy automations–such as welcome series, cart abandonment emails, and birthday messages
Nate Masterson, CMO of Maple Holistics, recommends it to all businesses:
“MailChimp is a great tool that’ll help you build and maintain a subscriber list to be proud of. MailChimp allows you to create unique email campaigns, assess the analytics, and make adjustments accordingly. MailChimp is also a robust platform for Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google ads, landing pages, and even sign up forms. If you’re looking for a way to take your marketing to the next level, MailChimp could be it.”
Free trial?: Yes.
Pricing: MailChimp is free for up to 2,000 subscribers (or 12,000 emails per month). If you have more subscribers, fees range between $10-$199 per month.
ClickFunnels
A sales funnel is the process you’ve got for taking someone from stranger to customer. In other words, they’re an essential part of any marketing strategy.
But if you need help managing your funnels, turn to ClickFunnels – a digital marketing tool that will help you market, sell and deliver your products online.
Their software:
- Has a simple drag-and-drop website editor to make design a breeze
- Enables marketers to upsell products with smart shopping carts
- Offers the ability to run and manage a successful affiliate program
- Runs email and Facebook marketing automations
Free trial?: Yes, 14 days.
Plans and pricing: $97-$297 per month thereafter.
Hotjar
Looking for a digital marketing tool that gives you a better understanding of how people are engaging with your website? How about one that helps you identify ways to improve user experience (which is a huge ranking factor in search)?
Look no further than Hotjar – an analysis and feedback tool that visualizes user engagement with heatmaps, and records how real people are interacting with your site.
It also:
- Displays conversion funnels, showing what routes people make to purchase
- Analyzes the performance of your web forms
- Surveys your audience for instant feedback you can use for web design improvements
Free trial?: Yes
Plans and pricing: Varies between $29 – $989 per month depending on daily pageviews.
LeadPages
Looking to design stunning landing pages that actually result in sign-ups to your email list? LeadPages does both of these things for you – no extensive coding knowledge needed.
LeadPages is a landing page design software that:
- Displays attractive, non-intrusive pop-ups on your website to encourage sales
- Uses checkout page templates proven to work
- Offers easy A/B testing to determine which landing page elements perform best
- Hosts landing pages on their server. You don’t need a website, or to take up too much space on your own servers
Free trial?: Yes, 14 days.
Plans and pricing: Monthly plans starting from $37-$321 per month.
Sumo
Every marketer wants to improve their ROI, right? You can do that, and impress your managers, by using Sumo – a tool that offers a variety of features to help you convert the traffic you’re driving to your eCommerce website.
With Sumo’s software, you can create:
- Share buttons: to encourage site visitors to share your content with their friends
- Welcome mats: to welcome new visitors
- Smart Bars: to show promotions, coupon codes or special messages that encourage a purchase
Free trial?: Yes.
Plans and pricing: Upgrade to a Pro account for $29-$79 per month.
OptinMonster
Did you know that 69% of online shopping carts are abandoned? That could equate to thousands of dollars in lost revenue! But you can use a tool like OptinMonster to drive those people back to your site and complete their order.
OptinMonster is a lead generation software that specializes in reducing abandoned carts. It allows digital marketers to:
- Create beautifully-designed lead capture forms
- Split-test their forms for maximum conversions
- Collect customer data, and give marketers the information they’ll need to send advanced retargeting emails
Free trial?: No, but a full refund if you don’t like the product within 14 days.
Plans and pricing: Between $19-$59 per month, depending on number of monthly pageviews, sites, and features required.
Mention
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could eavesdrop on the conversations people are having about your brand without manually sifting through the internet?
Mention does that for you. It’s an easy-to-use social media monitoring tool that allows you to track and keep up with who’s talking about your company online. It offers:
- Real-time monitoring to get live updates from brand mentions
- The chance to spy on your competitors, and listen-in on who’s talking about them (learn from their strategy!)
- An easy way to find influencers in your industry
Free trial?: No.
Plans and pricing: Between $29-$99 per month.
SparkToro
Don’t start searching for influencers you could work with before adding SparkToro to your digital marketing arsenal.
Created by Rand Fishkin (the co-founder of SEO giant Moz), SparkToro is an artificial intelligence tool that makes it easier to discover the websites, blogs, podcasts, and social media accounts your target audience follow.
SparkToro also:
- Displays key metrics to accurately view engagement and reach levels
- Offers a fake followers audit to see what percentage of Twitter followers are fake
- Lets you view what’s trending in your industry
- Monitors a specific list of accounts (including competitors) to analyze their marketing strategy
- Gives a SparkScore – the true level of influence of any Twitter profile (like domain authority for Twitter accounts)
Pricing: Free.
Buffer
You’re dead on the money if you recognize social media marketing is a powerful tool you should be using in your digital marketing plan. But if you don’t fancy setting 10 reminders to post on Twitter or Facebook each day, Buffer can help.
Buffer is a social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts for later. It also:
- Works with a variety of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest
- Allows marketers to view analytics for their scheduled content
- Supports a variety of multimedia, including photos, video, and text-only posts
- Gives you the chance to re-share popular content with the press of a button
Lidia Varesco Racoma, Art Director and Designer at Lidia Varesco Design, told me how Buffer is a staple of her digital marketing toolkit:
“My favorite digital marketing tool is Buffer. I have a branding and marketing design studio and am a mom of two, so my time is limited. I love the fact that I can schedule content for all my social media outlets at once—as well as share curated content on the fly.”
Free trial?: Yes.
Plans and pricing: Upgrade to Pro for $15 per month, or Business for $399 per month.
Quuu
Quuu is similar to Buffer in the sense you can schedule content for social media, but Quuu also helps with content curation.
There’s no need to trawl through the internet and source interesting content to share. Quuu’s team of experts do that for you. It’s just up to you to choose which pre-made tweets you want to add to your queue!
Quuu also:
- Posts content to your social media profiles automatically
- Recycles top-performing content, and creates variations of the same post to share in future
- Lets you choose pre-made posts in over 500 categories
Free trial?: Yes, 30 days.
Plans and pricing: $15-$99 per month thereafter.
Ahrefs
If you’re in the market for a new SEO tool that’ll help you track the success of your strategy, you can’t go wrong with Ahrefs.
This digital marketing tool allows you to audit your website, research (and track) keywords you want to rank for, monitor your backlink profile, and explore competitors.
The Ahrefs software also includes:
- Backlink data: to track who’s linking to your site, with the world’s largest index of live backlinks
- Organic search report: to analyze your competitors’ SEO strategy
- Rank tracker: to monitor which keywords you’re ranking for
- Content explorer: to discover which type of content performs best in your industry
- Keywords explorer: to unveil thousands of keyword ideas you can target
I spoke to Rich Staats, Founder at Secret Stache, who recommends Ahrefs to any marketer:
“My top marketing tools is Ahrefs. The reason I like Ahrefs is that it not only shows me how many backlinks I have, it breaks down which ones I’m losing, so then I can hit up those sites and try to get them to link back to me again. But it also shows how many links my competitors have.
SEMRush is very similar to Ahrefs in terms of finding the top rated pages and finding those keyword rankings or finding what a site ranks for, but the icing on the cake is that it can see the search words that a specific website is running – search ads, display ads and it’s also starting to show video ads as well.”
Free trial?: No.
Plans and pricing: Start a 7-day trial for $7, and pay between $99-$999 per month thereafter.
SEMRush
If you’re looking for an alternative to Ahrefs, SEMRush is a fantastic choice.
This digital marketing tool is a powerful and versatile AI-based software. It provides reports on all elements of your strategy – including SEO, PPC, video, content, and social media.
The SEMRush software will help you to:
- Discover competitors you’re trying to beat on your quest to position #1
- View which keywords those competitors are ranking for
- Analyze each backlink pointing to your website
- Research advertising campaigns, and uncover your competitors’ ad strategies, budgets, and target keywords
- Gain extra insight into your product listing ads
David Alexander – a designer, developer and digital marketer – is a fan of SEMRush, too:
“SEMRush is the best tool available to those looking to increase their content output and find popular and relevant content ideas as well as being able to track the performance of existing content and reverse engineer the success of competitors through competitor analysis.
SEMRush isn’t limited to just content marketing, though, as it also includes a full feature set for backlink analysis and monitoring and traffic analytics giving you one of the most comprehensive all in one tools for digital marketing.”
Free trial?: Yes, 7 days.
Pricing: Between $99.95-$399.95 per month, depending on the features needed.
Answer the Public
Finding a keyword research tool that doesn’t throw up a ton of irrelevant, low search volume keywords can be tricky. However, Answer the Public can solve your problem.
This digital marketing tool is a free visual keyword research tool you can use to generate tons of great content ideas. Simply enter your primary keyword, and find several long-tail variations that your target audience are searching for.
Pricing: Free.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a fantastic keyword research tool that gives you an overview of the phrases you’re looking to target. Recently acquired by Neil Patel, Ubersuggest:
- Recommends related keywords to target for Google’s LSI algorithm
- Shows monthly search volume, competition levels, and seasonal trends for each phrase
- Displays how difficult or expensive a keyword will be to target and rank for organically
- View competitor’s ad copy for keywords you also want to target
Pricing: Free
Google PageSpeed Insights
Page speed is known to be a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm.
But if you aren’t sure whether you’re meeting the 2.9 second guidelines, head over to the free PageSpeed Insights tool, offered by Google themselves.
This API reports on the performance of a URL, both on desktop and mobile devices. The best part? If you aren’t up to Google’s standards, they’ll detail a list of suggestions you can improve on to boost your organic rankings.
Pricing: Free.
Google Search Console
If you hadn’t realized by now, Google offers several awesome free digital marketing tools that give marketers more control over how they rank in the world’s biggest search engine.
Search Console is one of them.
This SEO tool helps you to measure your site’s organic traffic and SEO performance. It also highlights key issues that could prevent you from ranking highly.
Search Console:
- Allows you to submit content and sitemaps to Google for faster crawling
- Sends email notifications whenever a problem has been spotted
- Helps marketers to understand how Google’s spiders view their pages, and gives guidance to optimize appropriately
Hung Nguyen, Marketing Manager at SmallPDF, swears by this free tool. He says:
“My favorite tool for content marketing is actually within Google Search Console – the *’Fetch as Google’ function*. It’s not even that obscure, people just don’t know what it does and often overlook it.
Whenever you push out content, you should fetch and render new pages to ensure that they are crawled and indexed on SERPs ASAP. The faster they rank on search results, the quicker you will gain traffic to your platform. This tool is essential to those that curate and optimizes content to drive search traffic.”
Pricing: Free.
Yoast
If your website runs on WordPress or WooCommerce, you need to install the Yoast plugin – a tool that helps you optimize your entire website, and recommends areas for improvement to reach Google’s top spots.
On each page, the Yoast plugin measures key SEO ranking factors, including:
- Internal links
- Keyword density
- Related keywords
- Readability
- Meta titles and descriptions
Here’s Chris Williams, Founder and Digital Marketing Strategist at Clock In Marketing, explaining how he uses Yoast:
“My favorite marketing tool is Yoast SEO. SEO can seem like intimidating task for any business, but Yoast makes it easy to understand and put your sites content in a position to be seen.
Yoast analyzes your page and posts to be more readable and SEO friendly. From headlines and tags, to the number times your key phrase appears, it helps you create the best post from all angles.
We use it on every site we write for, including our own. If we were to recommend one site for SEO or content creation, Yoast SEO would be the one.”
Free trial?: Yes.
Plans and pricing: Upgrade to Premium for $89 plus tax per year.
Conclusion
Are you ready to master your marketing plan?
With these digital marketing tools, there’s no reason why you can’t see success – whether you’re focusing on social media, SEO, content, or another marketing strategy.
Now, it’s up to you to browse through and see which tools you’re going to use to get there!