Most digital marketers have multiple irons in the fire at all times! They’re creating strategies, running campaigns, and managing vital communications channels. Luckily, there are a litany helpful digital marketing tools available to help keep you at the forge and out of the fire. Here, we’ve curated our 7 favorite digital marketing tools we think every marketer should be using.
Even if you already have a well-developed funnel and marketing execution/analysis process, take a look at these tools and tell us what you think!
1. Google Analytics:
If you’ve done any research on tracking data on your website, you’ve probably heard about Google Analytics. But what exactly does Google Analytics do?
Google Analytics is a free website analytics service offered by Google that gives you insights into how users find and use your website. With Google Analytics, you can track ROI for your online marketing.
Google Analytics is touted as one of the world’s most popular web-analytics tool but how popular is it?
- Google Analytics is installed on over 10 million websites
- 60% of the top 10,000 websites use Google Analytics
- 50% of the top 1 million websites use Google Analytics
The best thing about Google Analytics is that it is absolutely free to use. No sign up fees, monthly fees or hidden fees whatsoever!
2. Google Keyword Planner:
There are so many different options available for keyword research, ranging from free tools with basic capabilities to sophisticated solutions with a high price tag. Somewhere in between is Google’s Keyword Planner, a tool that replaced Google Keyword Tool and changed the way SEOs and marketers use Google’s services for keyword research.
This free AdWords tool helps you search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, create new key phrases by multiplying several keyword lists together, as well as help you choose competitive bids and budgets that you can use in your campaigns.
- Researching keywords and crafting suitable SEO and online marketing strategies are not easy tasks. These require careful analysis and understanding of the target market in order to be successful, which is why it is a godsend that Google’s Keyword Planner tool is so easy to use. First of all, its sleek and manageable interface is laudable, making it feel like a one stop shop for campaign creation with the way elements like keyword suggestions, traffic estimations, and the like, all work together to form a cohesive environment. In addition, the simple step by step process makes adding new ad groups quite effortless.
- This keyword research tool lets you easily and quickly export data either by downloading the entire keyword list or by selecting keyword phrases individually and exporting the custom list to Excel format. This is an incredibly convenient way of saving keyword lists for further analysis.
- One of the more unique features that Google’s Keyword Planner tool offers is its ability to multiply your keyword lists with one another. What this means is that it basically combines two or more of your keyword lists in order to produce new unique phrases. This could be potentially useful for discovering and testing new keywords for your optimization efforts.
- Another thing that users will definitely appreciate about this keyword research tool is the fact that it provides alternatives to your keywords and phrases. More than that, this tool provides hundreds of possible alternatives which should present you lots of opportunities.
Like Google Analytics, Keyword Planner is also completely free!
3. Google Search Console:
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Google Search Console is a must have account for owners of blogs and websites. It is critical for SEO because it helps webmasters understand Google’s view of their website or blog. And the great tools inside Google Search Console don’t stop at reporting. Google also provides multiple data points and suggestions for resolving issues you may not have even known existed.
- For starters, it informs Google about your online content. Without Search Console, you’d likely have a website that nobody could find with a simple search.
- Next, Search Console enables you to remove content from Google’s search index that you’ve taken down from your website. That way, people won’t find broken links to your site in the search results.
- Third, Search Console shows you which search terms are drawing people to your website. That will give you the knowledge you need to optimize your site for relevant keywords.
- Search Console will also advise you about malware or spam issues on your site. Google might just save the life of your business with that kind of warning.
- Next, Search Console will inform you if your product detail is making it into the rich results. If not, you can take corrective to ensure a better user experience.
- If you’re an accelerated mobile pages (AMP) fan (and you should be if you aren’t), Search Console also gives you warnings about pages that are non-compliant.
- Also, Search Console will show you which websites are linking to your site. That will give you some insight as to your popularity online.
- If any mobile users are having problems accessing your site, Search Console will issue a notification to that effect. That way, you can make design changes to ensure a mobile-friendly experience.
- Finally, if you want to put some of your web pages in the search index immediately, Search Console offers you a tool to do just that.
In short, Google Search Console is an indispensable aid when it comes to optimizing your site for search results.
4. Google Alerts:
This is the last one from Google but I promise, it’s absolutely worth it!
How can you easily monitor mentions of you and your business on the internet? The answer is Google Alerts. It’s super simple to use. All you need to do is create an alert for a desired keyword. Google will send you an email update if any new mentions of you on the internet pop up. If another blog is talking about your product, you can discover it via this alert and promote the article on your social media. If you find a customer venting about you, you can reach out and rectify the situation. It’s a great beginner tool for public relations management.
First, you have to figure out what you want to Google track, and what you’re hoping to achieve. Your goals might include:
- Simple keyword monitoring. You’ll be able to track any keyword on the sources that Google tracks. That means blogs, forums, news sites, and the wider web. It also includes YouTube, since Google owns that platform.
- Online Reputation. Watching for negative mentions of your brand to react quickly
- Monitor Competitors. Seeing what major blogs and news sites say about your competitors, and get them to say the same about you
- Mentions delivered to your inbox. GA will send every mention of these keywords to your email inbox. You can also view them at google.com/alert any time.
- In real(ish) time. Google lets you choose the frequency at which you’ll receive them. One option is to get them as they happen. So as soon as your keywords are mentioned online, you’ll be notified (by email). You can also elect to receive all your mentions once per day, or once per week.
I told you it would be worth it!
5. Crazy Egg:
Crazy Egg is a heatmapping tool that visually displays where your users have clicked and displays how far down the page they’ve scrolled. It helps you understand how visitors browse your website, which links they click more often, how much of your long copy do they read and more.
- Among other things, Crazy Egg’s most popular feature is a Heatmap that is generated by determining where your guests are interacting with your website. The brighter the area, the more popular it is. The darker the area, the less popular it is.
- They also offer a feature called Scrollmaps which tells you how far down on the page people are scrolling and at what point they leave or abandon your page. This allows you to make changes to your website based on actual customer trends.
WAYS TO USE A HEATMAP TOOL
- Compare how visitors browse your website on mobile versus desktop and make changes to boost mobile conversions.
- Learn reasons that visitors are abandoning your site and make modifications that boost your conversions and sales.
- Perform more informed A/B testing to see how visitors are engaging with various parts of your site in order to boost conversions.
Pricing starts at $9/month for the Basic option that includes 10 pages and goes up to $99/month for 100 pages.
6. Pingdom:
Your customers want information fast. They don’t have time to wait for a website to load or else, they’ll just hop over to your competitor’s site. Great user experience starts with a user actually being able to experience your site. Page load time greatly affects conversion rates. In fact, if your page load time increases from one to only three seconds, you could see your bounce rate increase by 32%
This is why it’s vitally important to have a tool in your pocket to measure your website’s speed on a regular basis. If you’re noticing drops in traffic, or increases in bounce rate – your page speed could be the cause. Our favorite tool for diagnosing these issues is Pingdom’s website speed test.
Pingdom is an easy-to-use monitoring service that helps companies ensure that their online services are available, and highly performant.
Although Pingdom is likely overkill for those just looking for a basic uptime monitor, this product delivers high-quality, customizable synthetic monitoring and real user monitoring capabilities that can be a worthwhile investment for companies that need to ensure the ongoing availability and performance of their websites.
Pingdom can get expensive with prices starting at $9 per month but even just their free front page speed test can be a vital tool on your digital marketing toolbox!
7. Hootsuite:
From personal accounts to enterprise-wide management, Hootsuite is universally regarded as one of the most utilized social media management tools, mainly because they provide a complete package for any organization regardless of the size.
Through a single intuitive dashboard, you can engage with your subscribers, listen to your audience, analyze your efforts, and collaborate with your team.
- Hootsuite works with more than 35 social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
- You can track campaigns’ performance across various indicators, schedule messages, target key demographics, and more.
- You can expand Hootsuite’s functionality by integrating Google Drive, Foursquare, or any others from the 150+ apps available.
Hootsuite definitely isn’t the cheapest option on the market with packages starting at $19/month but they do have a 30 day free trial. So give it a try and see how much time and energy you can save!
