Digital marketing is changing at a rapid pace. New tactics and tools are constantly launching on the market, and that makes it difficult for even the savviest marketers to keep up.
According to one survey, 76% of people think marketing has changed more in the past two years than it did over the previous fifty. And with the industry evolving at a breakneck pace, it’s crucial to allocate your time and resources effectively to meet your objectives.
One major factor in achieving that is to ensure you’re using the right tools. Regardless of your brand’s niche, accessing the right digital marketing tools can make all the difference between failure and success.
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But with dozens of apps and software programs available, how do you decipher which is right for your needs? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. We’ve done the legwork to round up the top digital marketing tools based on feedback from marketers in the field. These tools cover a spectrum of marketing functions, so whatever your goal, you’ll likely find a tool on this list to meet your needs.
MailChimp
How to use it: E-mail marketing
Access to the inboxes of your current and prospective customers is gold. Email marketing is one of the digital marketing channels that offers a massive return on investment. According to some reports, you can expect a return of $38 for every dollar you spend on email marketing efforts.
Considering the importance of email marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy, it’s integral to have a solid tool to help you send sleek, branded emails in a flash. MailChimp continues to lead the industry as one of the top e-mail marketing tools. Create custom e-mails, upload and segment your lists, complete automated A/B testing, and get detailed reports on the impact of your campaigns.
Unbounce
How to use it: Build great landing pages
When it comes to helping web browsers turn into buyers, landing pages are still a digital marketer’s best bet. While many marketers still see building landing pages as one of their top challenges, companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15.
And that’s where a tool like Unbounce comes in. It’s simple to use this tool to build, customize, and test out landing pages for your brand. Marketers can use Unbounce’s drag-and-drop tool to create high-converting landing pages for their upcoming campaigns — no coding knowledge necessary.
Buffer
How to use it: Schedule social media marketing posts
By now, most marketers are well aware that social media marketing is a crucial component for your overarching digital marketing strategy. According to a report from Deloitte, when social media is part of their buyer’s journey, customers tend to convert at a 129% higher rate. They are also four times as likely to spend significantly more than those without any social media exposure.
Managing multiple branded social channels can often require some serious juggling — unless you take advantage of a tool like Buffer. Integrate your brand’s social channels into the Buffer, and manage all those accounts from one platform. And here’s our favourite feature: set up the Chrome extension to automatically schedule whatever website or quote you’re viewing to all your channels. Simply click a button and the tool uploads a highlighted quote or the URL into a formatted post for Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or Facebook. This feature takes most of the pain out of curating content.
Ahrefs
How to use it: SEO and keyword research
Whether you’re creating a blog with advice for your customers or writing up a new product description, it’s necessary to optimize your content for SEO. More than two-thirds (72%) of marketers worldwide said relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic.
But doing relevant keyword research can often be tedious and take a fair chunk of time out of your day. However, a tool like Ahrefs can help you speed up the research process. Not only can you explore relevant keywords, but Ahrefs also checks backlinks to your pages, pulls up related keywords based on your searches, and also allows you to analyze SEO for your competitors. Their SEO toolset is one of the best on the web, and offers most of the features you’d need to optimize your content all on one platform.
Stocksy
How to use it: For reasonably priced stock images
When building landing pages, web pages, or other digital marketing assets, you often need to rely on stock images to complete your collateral. While there are some great free stock image sites out there (like Pexels), sometimes they don’t quite have the right image to suit your needs.
That’s where a subscription to a stock image aggregator like Stocksy can help out stretched-thin marketers. With a wide variety of high-resolution images and B-roll video available for as low as $15, you’ll easily find non-cheesy visual assets to polish off your project.
Moving Forward With Digital Marketing Tools
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