It doesn’t matter how amazing your product or service is if no one knows about it. And the fastest way to spread the word? Digital Marketing.
Investing in your marketing budget is essentially an investment in the future of your business. And you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to tools to make marketing easier.
But with so many online tools available, how do you know where to start? Have no fear, we’ve got you covered.
Read on for our list of digital marketing tools to help make marketing a cinch!
Social Media Scheduling Tools
Social media offers a powerful platform for connecting with customers. It’s not the best place to spam followers with links. But it’s great for building relationships, especially on Twitter.
We’re not going to pretend social media isn’t a potential time trap. It’s important to spend some time there, responding to customers or engaging with prospects, influencers and hashtags.
But it’s also good to schedule posts to go out in different time zones. You can space out your content without having to be present 24/7.
Hootsuite is one affordable option. And the free version of Twitter’s Tweetdeck browser offering lets you schedule tweets in advance. You can even schedule posts on your Facebook Page.
PRO TIP: Batch your time scheduling posts to avoid getting sucked into the social media rabbit hole.
Email Marketing Automation Tools
People have been proclaiming the death of email for a while. But with a predicted 5.6 million active email accounts by 2019, you can’t ignore email marketing.
Thanks to the changes brought in with GDPR, you can’t just add customers to a mailing list. They have to opt-in to receive your messages.
You don’t have time to keep checking for new subscribers so you can manually send welcome, sales and follow up emails. Enter email marketing automation.
Simply write the emails in advance, then the software sends them in a timely fashion when customers sign up, make a purchase or request a brochure etc . In an ideal world, they’ll pass through a series of emails from ‘welcome’ to ‘click here to buy now’.
It’s so easy to set up and maintain and there are several platforms to choose from, with one of the most affordable being Mailchimp. You can’t afford to ignore email marketing automation.
PRO TIP: Consistently test different variations of your emails, some will convert better than others!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tools
SEO is basically how you get organic traffic to your website. In other words, how do you get people to find your website in search engine results and pay you a visit?
It’s largely free, compared to paid advertising like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. It doesn’t give immediate returns but it’s a great, passive form of marketing in the long term.
But how do you set it up? You need to identify search phrases to target, alerting search engines to your content on those topics. Then the search engines pair a user’s search query with your content.
Answer The Public is a good place to start. So too is Keywords Everywhere if you want to find out the estimated search traffic potential. Simply plug in potential keywords and see how they may fare in the search engine results.
Another method is to pinpoint what your customers are searching for. Pop the search term into Google and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look for the ‘Searches related to’ list of alternative search terms.
Now you can sprinkle your content, and META tags with those additional terms for extra marketing power.
PRO TIP: Generally speaking, the greater the search volume of a given keyword the more difficult it is to secure first page Google rankings. Look for keyphrases with three or more keywords in them (known as long-tail keywords). For example, ‘marketing tools‘ would be much harder to rank for than ‘list of digital marketing tools‘.
Content Planning
You’ll need to know how popular topics are right now. It shows your customers how current you are.
But you’ll also need to predict what topics are coming up. That way, you can start the bandwagon instead of just jumping on an existing one.
Using Google Trends is a great way to plan your content. Plug in a topic and see how well it’s been trending. If it’s decreasing, maybe give it a miss. But if its popularity goes up? Time to start talking about it.
Or see what topics are upvoted or downvoted on Reddit. Combine Google Trends and Reddit to plan what you’ll talk about.
PRO TIP: Create an editorial calendar in Google Calendar to plan what you’ll talk about, and when.
Content Curation
You might think content planning and curation are the same. Yet they’re not.
Planning refers to the content you’ll create. Curation is about what third-party content (by other people) you’ll share on social media.
Curation is important because it shows how well you know your industry. And you save other people time by finding them the best content to consume. They’ll appreciate it.
Drip feed this content across your social media accounts using your chosen scheduling tool. This will help to engage your audience without actively selling to them. Winner!
One way to build up a database of content is using a service like Pocket. Add articles to your account while you find them, then pull links out of it when you need to share on social or create a newsletter.
Even Pinterest can help you keep content in one place. Add videos, podcasts, and articles to themed boards, ready for scheduling later.
PRO TIP: Not sure what to say in your emails? Set up a curated content newsletter. Send subscribers the best content you’ve found on your topic and slip in one or two links to your own content to help show what an authority you are.
Video Marketing
Having a video marketing strategy has become an important element of the marketing mix. It should be considered as central to your outreach and campaign efforts, especially when it comes to your social media strategy.
If you aren’t creating amazing videos to engage your audience, promote your business, and maximise sales, you’re likely falling behind your competitors.
Creating videos may sound overwhelming, but don’t worry. Amateur, homemade videos will suffice. In fact, the more simple and raw they are, the more authentic they seem, and the more your audience will relate to them.
Not sure where to start with creating videos for your business? We like Lumen5.
The Lumen5 tool turns text into stunning social media videos in minutes. It does this automatically by analysing the text through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and putting the best music, video, and images together accordingly. Give it a try!
Analytics
All these digital marketing tools and techniques are great. But they mean nothing if you don’t track your performance. That means using analytics.
Many of these marketing tools offer analytics within the platform. For example, Facebook Pages come equipped with analytics about the performance of your posts, and Mailchimp details how well your email marketing campaigns are doing.
Alternatively, install Google Analytics on your website. Track which pages get the most engagement. Then create more content within those topics.
Also use Google Analytics to check where your traffic is coming from. If most of your social media traffic comes from Twitter, you can either ease off on Facebook use or put more effort into it if that’s where your target audience spend their time online. Or if most of your traffic is organic, redouble your SEO efforts.
Knowing the effect these marketing tools have is partly what makes them so powerful, don’t ignore them!
Arm Yourself with this List of Digital Marketing Tools
You don’t need to use this list of marketing tools like an immediate shopping list. Try out a few and then add the next one when you start seeing a return.
That way, you’ll be able to measure which ones work best for your business. Focus on those and hit the next level faster than you thought possible.
But we realise that’s a lot of information to take in. Do you want more help getting started with your digital marketing? Get in touch and we’ll get you up and running!
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