Marketing has become increasingly important with the growth of new media. Online marketing is no longer just reaching customers at their desk, in their inbox or popping up through ads popping out at them while they are trying to enjoy a song on Youtube. The process of marketing your business online is quite extensive and has many aspects to it. Today’s marketers must master the art of growing an email list, paying per click, along with social media networking skills also. This leads into the most important aspect of online marketing, then- digital marketing tools.
One of the best things about starting or running a business is that you get to decide exactly how to promote your products or services. The choices are endless – print marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, online marketing, SEO, email marketing…
Sprout Social
Hey, you can’t blame us for putting ourselves on the top of the list!
That’s because Sprout Social is the ultimate control center for any business looking to translate its social presence into actual results.
As a social media management platform, Sprout helps businesses organize their content calendar and assets in one place. This allows you to publish and schedule your content across multiple platforms, all timed to perfection based on when your followers are most active.
Beyond social media management features, Sprout makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues and customers alike. Our Smart Inbox gives you a bird’s-eye view of all of your social messages so you can respond thoughtfully and in a timely manner.
Oh, and don’t forget about Sprout’s full suite of social analytics.
Optimizing your content’s performance doesn’t have to be a guessing game as Sprout identifies your top-performing posts and the success of your social campaigns. Coupled with robust social listening features, you can uncover trends, hashtags and opportunities to engage with new customers.
Loomly
Loomly’s self-described “brand success platform” is a tool that’s ideal for smaller social teams looking to organize and collaborate on content.
Built-in calendars, deadlines and workflows make both scheduling and brainstorming content a breeze. As an added bonus, Loomly actually curates fresh content ideas for users based on trending topics and Twitter conversations.
The clean, no-frills interface is easy to navigate and friendly to users who might not be the most tech-savvy. The affordability of the platform is enticing for solo businesses and smaller agencies looking to wrangle their social presence.
Audiense
We’ve talked time and time again about the importance of social listening for identifying trends and potential customers.
Tools like Audiense take listening to the next level by helping companies both identify and segment their social media audiences. Doing so makes it easier to run laser-targeted ad campaigns and likewise dive deeper into your customer personas. Digging into demographics, personality straights and beyond, you’d be surprised at what you can learn from social alone.
Audiense’s platform focuses primarily on Twitter, making it great for B2B brands interested in prospecting and B2C companies looking to understand more about their target audience.
Email marketing tools
Email represents arguably the most tried-and-tested, scalable marketing channel available to modern companies. As such, email solutions are a staple of Internet marketing software for businesses big and small.
From list-building and improving deliverability to coming up with awesome offer campaigns, let’s look at some tools that can break down your customer data and put a good chunk of your marketing efforts on autopilot.
SendGrid
SendGrid offers a full suite of email marketing services, many of which are totally friendly to novices and email veterans alike.
For example, the platform offers flexible design options via visual, drag-and-drop editing, coding or a combination of both. In-depth deliverability and performance analytics are also built into SendGrid, cluing marketers in on which messages are performing and what needs work.
We know: there are more email marketing solutions out there than we can count. That said, a big upside of SendGrid is the forever-free plan for up-and-coming businesses as well as scalable pricing that matches your needs as you grow your list.
lemlist
lemlist is unique among our email marketing tools because the platform is primarily focused on deliverability. Emphasizing the best times to send your messages (and how often) for the sake of more opens and clicks, lemlist is awesome for optimizing your existing campaigns.
Rather than second-guessing your marketing pushes, lemlist can be an eye-opener in terms of how to warm up your list.
Additional features include personalization tools to make your outreach emails sound less spammy and follow-up email sequences to encourage more replies from cold prospects.
Moosend
Moosend is among the most user-friendly and affordable of our digital marketing tools, representing a surprisingly robust email solution for those just beginning to build their list.
Codeless campaigns, simple automations and easy-to-read reporting are all built into the platform. Paid users can also take advantage of landing page features, including mobile popups and countdown timers.
SEO (search engine optimization) tools
Fact: over half of all website traffic comes from search queries.
As the digital landscape becomes increasingly competitive, anything companies can do to increase their search presence is a plus. Although SEO might be daunting, especially to up-and-coming businesses, there are plenty of online marketing tools to help you uncover search opportunities and optimize your existing search engine efforts.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the gold standard when it comes to brainstorming keyword ideas and opportunities to rank.
The platform’s site explorer lets you check any URL’s top organic keywords, while also estimating how much traffic a competitor receives for any given search term. You can also identify a site’s top-performing content and sources of backlinks.
In short, Ahrefs is a fantastic tool not only for competitive analysis but also for making sure that your existing content is up to snuff for search.
Clearscope
Now, let’s say you’re interested in capitalizing on keyword opportunities and optimizing your existing content. That’s where Clearscope comes in.
Particularly useful for content writing, the platform provides a detailed editor to recommend keywords, headers and readability to help you write (or rewrite) high-ranking, well-balanced blog posts.
Whether you’re creating a content strategy from scratch or refreshing your existing blogs, Clearscope covers every nook and cranny of search optimization.
SEMrush
Another staple SEO tool, SEMrush allows you to track the position of your priority keywords and likewise explore new terms to rank for.
The tool’s breakdown of keyword ideas, difficulty and variations are great for brainstorming content ideas and identifying search intent, too.
Conversion optimization tools
The smallest changes can make the biggest difference when it comes to getting people to convert on-site.
Just changing the color of your call-to-action button can spell the difference between scoring a free trial sign-up and someone bouncing. Among the digital marketing tools in your toolbox, conversion optimization software can clue you in on low-hanging opportunities to increase your revenue.
Unbounce
Unbounce is an amazing tool for quickly building, tweaking and publishing new landing pages to test. Built-in A/B testing and variant analytics can answer directly which creatives, calls-to-action and additional page elements are working (and which aren’t).
Even if you’re not much of a designer, you can use Unbounce’s proven landing page templates as a jumping-off point and then modify them to fit your style. The platform’s analytics spell out clearly which landing page variants are your top performers.
Optimizely
Emphasizing landing page experiments, Optimizely combines tools for visual creation and audience targeting to quickly run tests on different segments of your audience.
A no-code platform that allows you to test both major and minor edits to your pages, fine-tuning your site for performance doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking.
Conclusion
Marketing tools for business. Tools for digital marketing. Marketers need to stay on top of the latest tools and trends in order to outgrow their competition. With new tools all the time, it can be hard to decide which ones are worth your time and which ones aren’t.