The quest for carving out a competitive edge and staying there is essential for the success of any business. The number of small businesses in the U.S.A., alone is about 28 million and every one of them is in pursuit of that singular goal of gaining a competitive edge for their respective businesses. In today’s fast-paced world, technology keeps evolving by the day and we have no means of predicting the best strategy for tomorrow. Therefore, we need to focus on the best digital marketing tools that are known today, to leverage our pursuit.
Marketing without the help of the internet is no more an option and therefore, every marketer should remain focused on all that impacts the digital world. To get the best out of this space, building a sound plan for online marketing leveraging the awesome power that social media brings should be put in place right at the start. The next step is to have a well thought out plan to garner all the traffic that you can to your product/service and put to use the advancements in media marketing at its optimal levels. There are many tools that will help marketers achieve their goals and it is essential that you know these tools and how they can serve your purpose. On that note, here is a selection of 6 of the best digital marketing tools that can leverage your efforts in 2019.
Moz
Moz is a great tool for SEO and it offers a paid as well as free version. They have an admirable site-crawler, backlink tools, page analysis tool, and keyword research tool. The chrome plugin MozBar makes things even more convenient with instant metrics for any given page.
HubSpot
This is another great marketing platform which you can use for free or be a partner offering a ton of benefits, and inbound marketers are bound to enjoy this offering to the hilt. HubSpot comes in extremely handy for social media, email marketing, blogging, and building landing pages. A built-in dashboard gives you instant access to vital KPIs making it a central hub for everything inbound. There is also a HubSpot Academy offering certification courses on a wide array of marketing strategies.
Trello
For those who are just stepping into content marketing, Trello may sound similar to another social network that has popped out overnight. The fact however is that this tool has been in existence for some time now and is pretty convenient as an organization tool for your online marketing teams. This tool helps you in managing projects staying on the same page with your team which is an excellent digital marketing practice when you are looking to save time as well as potential frustration.
As an example, your blog posts can be shared on Trello before you actually publish them. This enables your team to review the blog post, contribute their thoughts and effect changes that could add strength to the post before going live. Before the advent of Trello and comparable programs, email was the sole means of collaborating with teams. Though email is helpful to some extent, it can potentially create confusion, frustration and missed messages. Now, with Trello, you can share all that weighs on your strategy for online marketing in one place. Setting up a board takes just a couple of minutes and you can invite the entire team in minutes. Though you may find other identical tools, in our experience, it is difficult to beat Trello.
Hootsuite
Today, the success of your online marketing depends largely on the social media and no one can deny that. The size of your business can be anything, but to progress in the digital era, social media is inevitable. Hootsuite gives you the freedom to schedule your social media posts ahead of time and save significant amount of time. This tool comes with several features that can be useful, particularly when you are launching into a new business. For instance, you can use Hootsuite for:-
- Identifying influences for the marketing team and leads for the sales team
- Use the dashboard to respond to mentions and comments without visiting individual platform
- Benefit from pre-written responses
Social media marketing need not be as overwhelming as it may sound, particularly when you have helpful tools like Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to schedule social media profiles on as many as 30 different platforms and manage them. Think of doing this individually, you can be frustrated in just a few minutes. In other words, Hootsuite can well be your marketing manager for the social media.
Canva
Canva helps you create stunning images that look pretty professional. Creating infographics, social graphics and CTA buttons has now become a child’s play with Canva. With a wide range of templates, fonts and graphics, you can start everything from the scratch and all that you need to bring in is your imagination. Therefore, if you are not an expert on InDesign or Photoshop, there is nothing to worry and you can go ahead and get all those features via Canva. Understandably the popularity of Canva has grown manifold in the preceding months and is bound to stay that way in the future too.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an indispensable tool for digital marketers. However, when you are starting out with this tool, the experience can be somewhat daunting. But when you explore the full capabilities, it opens up a whole world of possibilities before you. This tool helps you in a close-up view of your customers. You can conveniently track how your customers engage with your website and examine their preferences. For those who want to dig deeper into Google Analytics there is a helpful Academy offering a free course for you to gain comprehensive knowledge of this program and use it to the hilt.
Remember though that these are only some of the top picks from the best digital marketing tools and you have a sea of other tools to put your business on a strong trajectory.
This article was written by Mayuran – [Content Marketing Manager, One Stop Media]
