What you have in your marketing toolkit impacts how well your campaigns perform.
There are an overwhelming amount of options to choose from. In this video, I’ll break
down the tools every marketer needs to hit their goals so you can use them to grow your business.
This list of tools includes five different categories:
Content research tools Content creation and design tools
Marketing automation tools
PR tools Analytics tools
I’ll go over both free and paid options in this video to make sure you have
plenty of choices when selecting your digital marketing tools.
If you’re searching for more in-depth tools videos that cover specific aspects of digital marketing —
like search engine optimization (SEO) — check out some of the other videos on our channel.
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Our list of 25 — yes,
25 — top digital marketing tools. We’re starting with content research tools.
Publishing content without first researching is like assembling a
piece of equipment without the directions.
You’re going to miss some important information and end up with something disappointing.
Diving into popular topics and keywords among your audience before you invest time
into the creative process can help you craft something that people truly enjoy.
Google Trends is a great resource for understanding what people are
searching for online. Just enter your topic into the tool and get a
deeper look into whatever you want your next piece of content to be.
If you want to narrow your topic to certain keywords, you’ll need to use a keyword tool.
Tools like LSI Graph, our KeywordsFX, and Ahrefs’ Keyword Generator give you
relevant keywords for free. Just enter your starting keyword and within seconds
you have a list of related terms you can incorporate into your content.
If you’re looking for a more comprehensive tool, I’d highly recommend digging into
Semrush or Ahrefs. Both paid tools can help with keyword research, competitor analysis,
and (on a somewhat related note) go as far as providing information about backlinks pointing
to your website. These tools might be a large investment depending on your needs,
but their robust nature makes them a great asset to your toolkit.
After you’re done researching, you’ll need digital marketing tools to create and design your content.
Let’s start with the stuff you definitely remember from school: Grammar and readability.
Is your content easy to understand?
First, run it through Grammarly to catch anything that would disappoint your high
school English teachers. You can copy and paste your text right into the Grammarly website, or
for edits as you type, install the app or Chrome extension on your devices.
Writing to your audience’s reading level matters just as much as grammar. With
our Readability Test Tool, you can easily get a score that tells you how complex your writing is.
Just enter your URL, copy and paste your text, or add a bit of code to your page to use the tool.
And I know content is more than just written words. Having the right visuals can turn
something drab into something fab. Finding those visuals doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive.
Both Pixabay and Pexels offer free images and videos to liven up your projects. Plus, many
of those visuals are able to be used commercially. Just double-check the license before you download.
If you’d rather have a paid stock library,
websites like Shutterstock and Storyblocks may have what you need.
You can also get your hands on royalty-free audio depending on the stock library you choose.
When you’re ready to put all of your visual assets together, tools like Canva and Kapwing
offer free plans to get you started. You can export images, gifs, and videos with both tools.
Something really cool about Kapwing is that you can add subtitles to your video
so everyone can enjoy it when it’s launched.
These next two freemium tools may seem kind of random, but they’re pretty neat.
Kraken.io is an image compressor that works magic on your photos and graphics.
Smaller file sizes help your website move faster, so Kraken should be essential to your toolkit.
And have you ever wanted a transparent image but didn’t
want to spend all that time manually removing the background? Introducing,
Remove.bg. Drop your image into the tool and it cuts the background out for you.
Next, we have your automation tools. This is where I plug our MarketingCloudFX platform
that offers automated email marketing, personalization, lead nurturing, and more.
To avoid being too sales-y,
I’ll move on to some additional automation tools not provided by our team of experts.
This one may seem simple, but it’s so effective. A social media scheduling tool is a game-changer if
you’re used to posting everything manually. There are a lot of social media scheduling
tools out there, but you may want to try out Buffer or Hootsuite first. With these tools,
you can manage your social media calendar, upload different content formats for scheduling,
track your analytics, and more. All starting at a whopping…zero…dollars.
If you get a lot of messages on social media, automate your responses with a chatbot. A tool
like ManyChat can save you tons of time responding to questions and simplify your social workflow.
We’re getting close to the end of this list of digital marketing tools,
but I still have a few up my sleeve. Not literally. In general, you want people to
talk about your business online, right? Having tools to track mentions of your
business and manage your brand will make a huge difference to your strategy.
A really easy and free thing you can set up is a Google Alert. Type in a topic (or even your
business name), choose your alert settings, and never miss a mention on someone else’s website.
BuzzSumo also offers a monitoring and alert feature in addition to a slew of other PR tools.
You can research influencers on different social media platforms to collaborate with,
find trending content ideas, review popular content, and more.
Another great tool for PR is Hunter.io. Whether you’re looking for someone to collaborate with,
want to send a press release, or request other information, Hunter can help direct
you to the right email address. And all it takes is having a website’s URL.
Once you’ve created your content and promoted it on the appropriate channels,
you need the tools to track its performance.
Two valuable tools are Google Analytics and Google Data Studio.
Analytics offers its Universal Analytics and GA4 tools for users.
Both provide insight into how well your digital marketing efforts are working
with details like conversions, top pages, and top traffic drivers to your website.
Data Studio is a great tool for visualizing the data you need to make your marketing decisions.
You can tie it in with different data sources, like Analytics, to customize a snazzy report.
And you don’t have to make everything from
scratch. Start with a template and tweak it to your standards.
So that was a list of twenty-five tools you can use in your strategy. I’ve tried not to be too
self-promotional, but I just want to tell you that WebFX offers a suite of free and
paid marketing tools. I’d recommend checking them out after you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
And don’t forget that we have our Revenue Weekly email newsletter you can sign up for.
You can find the link in the video description.
Happy marketing!