What are digital tools in marketing? Digital tools are the electronic techniques used to connect with customers, generate ideas, collaborate internally, and analyze data.
Understanding how to use the digital tools in marketing is only one of the keys to create a good marketing mix. Keep reading to learn what are some digital tools in marketing you can exploit.
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.
HubSpot Marketing
Price: Free to $3,200/month for enterprises, depending on your plan
HubSpot has several tools to help you grow your business, no matter what stage you’re at.
Starting out, there are several tools available for free. You can set up web forms, popup forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then, you can send email marketing campaigns, pipe all of your data into the free CRM, and analyze site visitors’ behavior.
When you expand into the paid tiers, things get really sophisticated with advanced marketing automation.
From managing your content and social media to tracking emails and connecting with your leads, HubSpot is an all-in-one solution — although it works well with other point solutions you may use (Typeform, HotJar, etc.).
Ultimately, the tool allows you to:
- Grow your traffic, convert leads, and prove ROI for your inbound marketing campaigns.
- Shorten deal cycles and increase close rates with the provided sales tools.
Ahrefs
Price: Tiered pricing, ranging from $99 to $399
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool to help you punch up your website traffic. They have data for around 150 million keywords in the U.S., and even more for 150 other countries.
Ahrefs is great for competitive analysis, allowing you to check out who is linking to your competitors, what their top pages are, and more. You can see where their content ranks and, using the Content Gap tool, identify key weaknesses for your content areas.
The Top Pages tool lets you see which pages get the most traffic, and you can see the amount of traffic going to competitors’ sites.
Ahrefs is one of my favorite SEO tools. It constantly impresses me with features I use daily, and I learn about new features all the time. It’s easily the most robust product in this space.
All in One SEO
Price: Starts free, paid plans start at $49.50/year
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is a top-rated plugin for WordPress websites, with over 2 million installations. The tool includes a variety of features designed to help you optimize your site and your content for search engines.
This tool provides an actionable checklist that helps you focus on fixing errors and making common adjustments to maximize click-through rates. Additionally, with AIOSEO, you can complete a whole-site audit, optimize pages for WooCommerce, and even improve your local SEO.
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.
Conclusion
Here are some of the most popular digital tools in marketing. Online advertising, also known as digital marketing, is the use of the internet, mobile devices, search engines, blogs, social media, display advertising and other channels to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.