Top 10 Digital Marketing Tools For Your Business

If you are searching for digital marketing tools to promote your business, check out my top 10 list below which I’ve found to be most effective for digital strategy management and implementation. Of course there are many others that I’ve found very helpful with positive results, however the following have been the most useful for both my marketing and my client’s marketing plans.

1. Google Adwords

It is the number 1 Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform and you can create an account in minutes and start receiving highly targeted visitors to your site within a few hours.

However, Adwords has many features and tools and it will take you some time to master them all. So if you can afford it, hire a Certified Google Adwords expert initially and then bring it in-house when you are ready to manage it yourself.

2. Twitter

Twitter is the right digital marketing tool to build a large following quickly and promote your book, products, services and engage with your audiences too. Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter limits your posts to 140 characters and this has its disadvantages and advantages.

In 2015, Twitter removed the 140 character for Direct Messages and this was seen as a tactic to encourage more use by its members, due to falling numbers.

3. Bing Ads

Bing Ads is the second most popular Pay Per Click program after Google Adwords. It has had a significant boost when it acquired Yahoo, which is now part of its network

One feature I like about Bing Ads is the option to import your adwords campaigns into your account. So you don’t have to create new campaigns from scratch and if you are starting out in PPC advertising, then its best to setup an adwords account and then import it to Bing Ads, because that will save you a lot of time.

4. Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is one of the best online surveying tools and one that I’ve used effectively to learn more about customers’ needs. You can setup your surveys in minutes and for free and you have many options to send it to your target audience including embedding on your site and emailing it.

5. Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool

Wordtracker is one of the best keyword research tools on the market because:
• It provides you with greater insight into the competitiveness of your keywords
• It helps you to build your site around your keywords and ensure that it is optimised for the search engines
• Helps find long tail keywords
• It is packed with resources and videos that teach you how to promote your site with your keywords
• It has a link building feature that helps you find quality backlinks

However, Wordtracker is not the cheapest keyword research tool and the basic subscription price is $27 per month.

6. Alexa

Want to keep an eye on your competitors and see what they are up to? Then Alexa is the tool for you. Alexa is a competitor analysis tool that collects data on browsing behaviour and transmits it to Alexa.

With alexa you can see the ranking of your site globally and by country and you can see your visitor demographics and then compare this with your competitors’. By signing up for an account, you can compare 3 or 4 of your competitors on many key metrics and benchmark your progress towards achieving your objectives.

7. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is my favourite tool for scheduling, tweeting and keeping an eye on mentions and retweets. It comes with a 30 day free trial and that’s longer than other Twitter tools.

It has an easy to use interface that is simple to navigate and as a novice user you won’t find it difficult to master because it doesn’t have a steep learning curve.

So if you want to save yourself a lot of time and not have to be on twitter all day posting and retweeting, then this is the tool for you.

8. Merge Words

If you want to build a long list of long tail keywords that you will bid on in Adwords or Bing Ads, then www.mergewords.com is the tool for you. It offers you three boxes that you use to merge words fast and easily and you can build thousands of keywords to bid on. It’s also useful for domain name ideas.

9. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the web’s number 1 reporting tool. What makes it unique is the huge number of features and reports that it provides and best of all is that it is free. There is a premium version for extremely high volume sites that receive over 10 million sessions, pageviews etc per month.

Some things you can achieve with Google Analytics include:
• Measuring your ROI and improving it
• Greater insight into how your campaigns are performing
• Hundreds of Segmentation variables on traffic and actions on your website
• Setting goals and ecommerce tracking
• Setting up remarketing/retargeting campaigns
• Insight into which channels are contributing to most conversions
• Track and measure key metrics such as bounce rates, page views, time on site etc.
• And hundreds of other examples

10. YouTube

YouTube is now the second largest search engine and is catching up fast with Google Search, so it can’t be ignored. This tool is effective at increasing brand awareness and if you have a product or service you are launching or just need to educate your target market on your products, then this is the place to be. It’s now much cheaper to create professional videos and there are freelancers on sites like Fiverr and People Per Hour that can create your videos for a low fee and upload them to YouTube.

You can also create a video campaign in Adwords and promote your video to any or all audiences.

Summary

My top 10 list of digital marketing tools reveals how important Google is to your online marketing strategy, however it is only one out of the many hundreds of options you have to promote your business online.
If you have any tools that you have found effective to your online campaigns, please comment below and subscribe