Today’s consumers are regularly consuming digital content. In fact, 87% of consumers always start their product search online. It is only natural that marketing professionals are trying real hard to switch and adapt to different digital marketing practices.
One thing you must already know by now about digital marketing is that it is always in a state of flux. If you want to thrive in this field, you must learn to keep up with constant change – and hard work alone won’t be enough. You are going to need some digital marketing tools to help you stay on top of your game. Ninety percent of professional marketers want to improve tracking, analysis, and statistics. You won’t be able to do all those without the right tools.
What are the tools for marketing?
In general, traditional marketing tools refer to all the materials and techniques used by professionals to promote services or products. Classified adverts, social media, internet marketing, and surveys are among the most common tools used for marketing.
What are the tools of online marketing?
Online marketing tools refer to free or paid services, apps, or platforms that are used for automation, content marketing research and analysis, graphic design or visual content creation, improving SEO or site speed, and more.
How can I perform online marketing?
There are tools out there that you can use for free, but most of them can only be used for a certain period. Others you can use for as long as you want but they come with very limited features. You can only do so much with what’s available for free. If you want your online marketing strategies to work, the best thing to do is choose paid tools that meet your needs carefully so you know you’re getting your money’s worth.
What are the different online marketing tools used today?
For a business to prosper, marketers need more than just one or two tools. There are different online tools available, but in general, you are going to need these for your business:
• Email Marketing Tools
• SEO Tools
• PPC Tools
• Social Media Tools
• Content Marketing Tools
What tools do digital marketers use?
The tools that digital marketers use vary depending on the features they need, their objectives, their budget, and the number of clients they have.
What are the best marketing tools for a small business?
The best marketing tools for a small business doesn’t always have to be free or the cheapest ones. Even if you have to pay to use a certain tool, if you’re getting features that make your job easier and it helps you achieve your marketing goals, then it’s worth it.
Here are some of the most popular online marketing tools that you should consider.
What to look for in a good email marketing tool
Remember that the reason you are using an online marketing tool is to make your job easier without compromising the quality of your output. The ideal email marketing tool should not only have a simple user interface but more importantly, it should allow you to create emails that will engage potential and existing customers.
When looking for an email marketing tool, check if it will allow you to send emails in bulk that are still personalized without requiring too much work. It should also make tasks like managing contacts, segmenting users, and tracking the progress of your email campaigns easier than if you would do them without the service. Also, a good email marketing tool should be able to keep your emails from ending up in the recipient’s spam folder.
What Tools Are Best for Email Campaigns?
Constant Contact
For more than 20 years now, Constant contact has been one of the top email marketing services worldwide. It is easy to use so beginners won’t have a problem figuring out how things work. It can help you with managing your contacts and email lists, creating email templates, and updating your marketing calendar.
Constant Contact offers triggered campaigns, abandoned cart campaigns, and autoresponders. Those are pretty good but if you’re looking for a service that can deliver advanced automation you might want to look elsewhere or consider other tools that cost less and provide the same level of automation as this one.
A Constant Contact account will also give you access to their social media sharing tools, Facebook ads integration, and Shopify store integration, as well as their image library.
Great for: Creating and managing tickets, invitations and event registrations (this comes with their Email Plus plan)
Not for: Advanced automation
What Users Say:
According to marketers who have used Constant Contact, it is easy to navigate but a little lacking in features, especially when it comes to styling. There are about 100 templates but some of them look a bit dated. The automation they provide is not as flexible as what other tools offer.
Pricing Plan:
Their basic plans start at $20 per month and their Email Plus plans start at $45. Prices increase depending on the number of contacts.
Drip
Drip is considered one of the best email marketing platforms out there, providing users with seamless integration for the most widely-used website builders like WooCommerce and WordPress, among others.
Drip email marketing works amazing for businesses with too many leads that are already quite challenging to follow up on as the tool can help in spotting the real prospects from those leads.
If you are only starting with marketing, you might find yourself a little lost when using this tool because Drip does not exactly hold your hand in guidance. Setting up funnels with Drip is not a walk in the park so you would need to invest your time in going through their training webinars.
Great for: Capturing and engaging leads for eCommerce sites.
Not for: Managing a small number of leads (as the price may not be justified) and resending non-opens and other advanced automation features.
What Users Say:
Users of this email marketing tool are pleased with their overall experience with Drip, especially with its autoresponder system, great segmentation options, and drag-and-drop campaign builders. Some say, though, that the support is quite lacking and it often takes days to get answers or guidance from their support team.
Pricing Plan:
You can try Drip for free for two weeks. After that, you can subscribe to their Basic plan that starts at $49 or their Pro plan that starts at $122 per month.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue is one of the most popular email marketing tools in Europe. This platform is beginner-friendly and comes with tools that allow you to create and send transactional emails and create workflows. With its AI algorithms, SendinBlue can also choose the best time to have your emails sent, ensuring optimal deliverability.
It’s a great tool for marketers looking for advanced automation, personalization, and segmentation even on a low budget.
Great for: Sending one-on-one campaigns and creating dedicated transactional messages like password resets and sign-up confirmations.
Not for: Multiple log-ins and varied access levels (Unless you can sign up for a Premium or Enterprise account)
What Users Say:
Marketers who have used SaveinBlue say that even with a free account, it’s easy to create email marketing campaigns. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to use, even for beginners. However, some find its reporting feature to be a bit behind its competitors as it is not as comprehensive as the other platforms.
Pricing Plan:
SendinBlue’s pricing plans are not like the others because this one bases the prices on the number of emails you send instead of the number of contacts. As mentioned, they have a free plan that allows you to send 300 emails per day. They also have their Lite Plan, which according to them is for new marketers. This is priced at $25 per month. The Essential Plan which is perfect for growing businesses at $39 per month, the Premium plan at $66 per month, meanwhile, is ideal for pro marketers. They also offer the Enterprise plan for those who need more features with a price that depends on the features added to the plan.
Mailjet
Mailjet is an email marketing tool that you can use to create dynamic and personalized content. You can integrate Mailjet into your CRM so you’ll only have to use a single dashboard for managing your mailing list.
Great for: Collaborative work as it has features that allow real-time collaboration for teams.
Not for: Advanced segmentation and automation as it has limited automation conditions.
What Users Say:
Some users report that Mailjet needs some improvement on the deliverability department as a lot of emails ended up either in the junk folder or the Promotions tab. Many found the email marketing tool easy to use with an easy-to-use dashboard. Users rave about the collaboration feature, especially the page design locking feature that allows the assignment of specific editing rights to different users.
Pricing Plan:
Mailjet offers a free plan that allows up to 6,000 emails sent per month with no limit to the number of contacts. You can subscribe to their paid plans for as low as $8.69.
Keap
Keap is what’s formerly known as Infusionsoft. This tool is not just for email marketing but an all-in-one tool that can also be used for your CRM and more. You can build customer profiles using this platform and launch more targeted campaigns. Infusionsoft is one of the first email marketing tools that came with a drag-and-drop automation builder. Some of its best features include appointment scheduling, campaign management, as well as billing and invoicing contact management.
Keap is a beast, feature-wise. This makes it a great tool for tech-savvy marketers who don’t mind a steep learning curve to fully enjoy the capabilities of this platform. A beginner could easily get lost when using this platform for the first few times. Compared to other tools, Keap is more expensive, too. So if you are on a budget, this might not be the right tool for you.
Great for: CRM and email marketing in one tool.
Not for: Simple email marketing needs (unless you’re utilizing all its features for the price, you might as well go for cheaper options with the basic features you need).
What Users Say:
Marketers who have used Keap say that this platform has a great interface and an excellent tool for creating and sending mass emails, as well as keeping track of all their contacts. They say that you get your money’s worth with this tool because it delivers what is needed. Some say that it would have been even better if it offered split-testing because the lack of it means they couldn’t test their campaigns to find out how they can better improve open rates.
Pricing Plan:
The cheapest plan for Keap is $99 per month for up to 500 contacts and the highest is at $299 for up to 10,000 contacts. Extra features like the sales pipeline or the eCommerce functionality come at an extra $59 for each.
MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools for smaller websites and bloggers mainly because it offers a free plan. MailChimp is used to send more than 1 billion emails every day. This platform continues to evolve and adds new features regularly.
MailChimp has a decent-sized collection of customizable templates for you to use. They even offer social media integration, as well as features like A/B testing, app integrations, autoresponders, contact segmenting, and time-zone based sending, among others. If you want to use those features without hurting your pocket, MailChimp is for you.
If you have used other email marketing tools before, you might find Mailchimp a bit clunky. It could take longer to create, design, and complete more sophisticated campaigns. So if you are thinking about trying MailChimp for high volume use, you might want to consider this.
Great for: Easy email building and integration with Shopify, WordPress, Magento, and more.
Not for: Sophisticated designing for high-volume use.
What Users Say:
Users like how MailChimp gives them access to features like scheduling and testing which greatly help increase their open rates. Being able to track your own analytics and even having the ability to compare your metrics to other users are great perks, too. The customizable templates are not as attractive as what other platforms offer so they require time to change or you would have to import your forms.
Pricing Plan:
MailChimp offers a free plan that you can enjoy forever as long as you are limited to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails. The paid plans start at $10 per month and limited to 500 subscribers. The price increases for every 500 additional subscribers.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is yet another powerful email marketing tool preferred by marketers, as well as authors and bloggers. You can offer incentives and content upgrades easily thanks to their email signup forms. Their auto-responders are also simple and easy to use.
If you are serious about targeting, you’ll appreciate its comprehensive segmentation feature that will allow you to separate subscribers into existing customers and prospects. This may seem simple but it can increase conversions because you can send automated emails that are more tailored to where your subscribers are in the sales funnel.
Great for: Targeted emails for creators, authors, and professional bloggers
Not for: List-based email marketing and designing opt-in forms creatively
What Users Say:
ConverKit users are happy with this email marketing platform and its powerful features. Specifically, the Visual Automations, which is a graphical way of setting automation that is said to be so convenient to use. Some users find their pricing to be a bit high when compared to similar tools.
Pricing Plan:
ConvertKit’s plans start at $29 for 0-1,000 subscribers. You can have 1,001 – 3,000 subscribers for $49, 3,001 to 5,000 subscribers for $79. Anything higher than 5,000 subscribers will get custom pricing.
SEO
What to look for in a good SEO tool
Having a good SEO tool is essential to any SEO marketing strategy. But with all the SEO tools popping up, knowing what you should look for will save you the trouble of having to try them all. An SEO tool should help you with keyword generation and help you see which existing ones are ranking for your competition. It should be able to do audits for you, track your KPIs and SEO progress, help you keep and present data easily, and more.
What are the tools for marketing if you’re doing an SEO campaign?
Google Trends
This useful tool from the search engine giant can compare keywords and help you understand how your audience uses them when searching on Google. If your business or your client needs to know where their products or services are being searched, Google Trends can help with that. You can use it to create more targeted campaigns or to come up with in-person marketing events and know in what areas you need to build brand awareness.
Great for: Finding relevant queries by location.
Not for: In-depth data gathering and organization.
What Users Say:
Users say Google Trends is useful for estimating seasonality, determining potential competition, and giving insights into what specific keywords are popular at a given time.
Analytics
If you want to truly understand how your website is doing, Google Analytics can provide you with in-depth data. From page views to how users are reaching your website, Google Analytics can give you the information that you need.
As a marketer, you need to be able to track your campaigns all the time. You also need to help your clients understand all the data presented and how that translates to business. Google Analytics allows you to do both.
Great for: Tracking campaigns in real-time and creating custom reports.
Not for: Interpreting the data presented.
What Users Say:
Marketers and business owners who use Google Analytics agree that it is a must-have. They like how it helps them find the channels and pages that deliver the most, as well as the valuable insight it gives about their website’s visitors.
Search Console
Google Search Console is what you need if you want your client’s business to be discovered on Google. It can help you improve your SEO efforts in ways Analytics cannot. In a way, it is what ties Analytics and Ads together to provide a more comprehensible picture of what marketers are working on.
Through Search Console, Google can check your site’s map to see if there are errors that need fixing. It also answers what Analytics cannot – search engine behavior.
Great for: Ensuring you have a searchable website.
Not for: One-stop-shop SEO solution.
What Users Say:
Most, if not all marketers will tell you that Google Search Console is a necessity whether you are a beginner or a seasoned marketing agency. It’s integral to understanding how your websites are performing in Google and what changes or improvements are needed.
PageSpeed Insights
As the name suggests, this tool from Google helps you analyze how fast your page is. Speed affects a website’s performance in a big way and this tool can help you monitor how your website is performing.
Great for: Determining website speed and monitoring performance on Google.
Not for: Implementing speed improvement suggestions.
What Users Say:
Users say it is a valuable tool for marketers, specifically for their website management and development departments. It’s a great tool to use if you want to provide a better user experience.
SEMRush
Founded in 2008, SEMRush has grown to become one of the top competitive research services. It also provides marketers with a useful SEO toolkit and a loaded dashboard that can be used to manage SEO campaigns.
This tool offers packages that include an intuitive interface for SEO tracking, SEO analysis, a marketing calendar, link profile audits, keyword research, monitoring, and more. However,as robust in features as it is, it lacks in terms of keyword list organization and management. You cannot save searches for future use and you cannot add to your list either. Your options are to either export your list and do the organization manually or to use an additional tool.
Great for: All-in-one SEO tracking and management.
Not for: Keyword list organization.
What Users Say:
Users consider SEMRush a staple for marketing. It is a bit pricey but marketers agree that you do get what you pay for. It does a great job of making tasks easier, be it monitoring changes, coming up with keywords, or finding opportunities to get relevant backlinks.
Pricing Plan:
SEMRush plans are priced at $99, $199, and $399. You can also have customized pricing if you’re going to need more than what their Business plan offers.
Optimizely
This A/B testing tool can help marketers and businesses in improving their websites. The method of A/B testing has been used by digital marketing pros to analyze and compare two landing pages or websites.
Optimizely might be a little too expensive for smaller businesses, especially those that are still in the early stages of their marketing campaigns.
Great for: Comprehensive A/B testing.
Not for: Free (or affordable) cross-channel experimenting.
What Users Say:
Users of Optimizely appreciate its intuitive interface and the features that come with it. They like how it’s so easy to set up and the fact that it offers support for third-party integrations. One downside is how much you pay for their plans.
Pricing Plan:
Optimizely offers three plans – Essential, Business, and Enterprise. You can subscribe to their cheapest plan at $17 per month for only one project.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is considered an all-in-one SEO tool that can be used to analyze your website and your competitor’s SEO plan, help you plan your keyword strategy, and more.
Great for: Tracking rankings, finding keywords, link building, and crawling sites for errors.
Not for: Efficient backlink detection.
What Users Say:
Users like how they can easily set up, navigate, and operate the many features of Moz Pro. It’s a great tool to use to accomplish day-to-day SEO tasks. There are indeed alternatives to Moz Pro that work more efficiently in some specific tasks but they are pricier and not always worth what you pay. Moz does the job.
Pricing Plan:
Moz Pro has four plans for you to choose from. You can pay $99 per month for their Standard plan, $179 for the Medium plan, $ 249 per month for the Large plan, and $599 per month for the Premium plan.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO tool that has a database of over 16 trillion links that is updated daily. With this tool, you can regularly monitor if there are any emerging backlinks. You can also use it to check the most linked-to pages on the target website.
Great for: Researching competitors and finding out why they are ranking high.
Not for: Free searching or casual backlink tracking (It’s too expensive not to milk it for all its worth).
What Users Say:
Marketers say it’s one of the few tools that they cannot live without. It can greatly help improve organic rankings. All functionalities can help websites rank higher. The amount of data they provide is astounding.
Pricing Plan:
The pricing of this SEO tool is not for the marketer on a budget. You can get the cheapest plan or the Lite plan for $99. The Standard plan is available for $179, while the Advanced and the Agency plans are priced at $399 and $999 respectively.
Majestic
Majestic is an intuitive tool that offers users access to their database of indexed URLs. This database is updated daily so you know you’re getting data that is up-to-date. Its clean and simple interface can help you make presentations. It is one of the best when it comes to determining a company’s growth over time, too.
With the use of this tool, you can monitor how many and which of your articles or ads stay live and see if any of your links are down.
Great for: Competitive research and tracking backlinks.
Not for: Full SEO audits and anything other than backlink analysis.
What Users Say:
Most Majestic users like the tools Trust and Citation flow, as well as their lost link tracker that is useful for keeping track of their projects’ dropped links.
Pricing Plan:
You can try Majestic’s free version but if you find that its use is limited, you can access their full features at $99 per month.
All in One SEO Pack
This plugin was created to optimize WordPress websites and their content for various search engines. Its free version has already been downloaded over 48 million times since it was launched in 2007. This free version is readily available from WordPress’ plugin directory. The premium version enables optimization of any active taxonomies, including categories and tags. With the use of this premium tool, search engines can index and rank the videos that you publish on your WordPress website.
Great for: Optimizing WordPress websites for search engines.
Not for: Readability or keyword analysis.
What Users Say:
Users say its performance is comparable to Yoast SEO with just a few minor differences. Compared to Yoast, All in One SEO Pack has a less bloated interface and is considerably more lightweight. Some say All in One Seo Pack’s user interface is an eyesore and requires a lot of scrolling which is frustrating when you’re trying to go through a long settings page.
Pricing Plan:
All in One SEO Pack’s premium version offers three annual pricing plans: Individual plan which costs $136, the Business plan which is at $236, and Agency plan priced at $1118.
PPC
What to Look for in a Good PPC Management Tool
PPC tools are essential for any marketer. The right ones can be of great help to you in your marketing efforts. A good PPC Management tool should have an intuitive interface. It should be able to provide the option to monitor multiple campaigns simultaneously. It should also give you the flexibility to make changes in your campaign.
What are the Best PPC Management Tools?
Google Ads – Ads Editor
Google Ads Editor is a desktop application that can be downloaded to create, edit, and track Google Ads. This is used specifically for Google Ads campaigns that you can manage with the use of the Ads Editor.
Great for: Monitoring performance and making bulk changes to a large number of ads.
Not for: Managing PPC strategy outside Google.
What Users Say:
The Ads Editor is fairly easy to use but it does require manual monitoring and adjustments as it doesn’t provide any automation options. It doesn’t give suggestions for improvements like paid PPC tools do.
Pricing Plan:
Google Ads Editor can be used by Google Ad advertisers for free.
Performance Grader
This tool gives Google Ads campaign percentage scores. It uses criteria like keyword quality, keyword optimization, landing page optimization, click-through rates and more. Aside from the overall score, Performance Grader also gives sub-scores for each of the criteria.
Great for: Getting a thorough audit of your ads.
Not for: Marketers with ads that are doing so well that there’s no need for outside expertise.
What Users Say:
With Performance Grader it’s so easy to find out how your ads are doing without having to exert much effort. The report it gives is comprehensive and users like how they can also easily compare their Ads’ current performance to the previous month’s.
Pricing Plan:
It is free to use Google Ads Performance Grader. All you need to do is complete the short registration before using it.
Keyword Planner
The Keyword Planner replaced the old Keyword Tool. One of the most major changes in how this new one gives access to keyword volume that is based on a specific city instead of having to search using the local or global columns.
Great for: Getting keywords that are topic-related and finding out the total search volume for those keywords.
Not for: Targeting volume specific to the device (desktop, mobile, or tablet).
What Users Say:
Marketers who have tried the Keyword Planner say that this tool has some really good features and some that are not so good. The key is getting to know all its features and how you can make them work for you. The Ad Groups feature, in particular, is a great help for PPC advertising.
Pricing Plan:
With a Google Ads account, the use of this tool is free.
WordStream PPC Advisor
This tool is perfect for small business owners who want to analyze their PPC campaigns without having to spend too much.
Good for: Optimizing expenditures and evaluating the performance of your ads on different platforms.
Not for: Short term use (You have to choose between a 6-month and a 12-month commitment).
Pricing Plan:
After the free trial, you can choose to subscribe to their 6-month plan which starts at $294 or their 12-month plan which starts at $264. You can also pre-pay annually.
Spyfu
It’s a well-designed SEO and PPC tool that is packed full of features and metrics that can help you succeed in your campaigns. It offers unlimited search results and interactive reporting, among others.
Great for: Keyword search and management, site monitoring, and backlink tracking.
Not for: Web-wide crawling.
What Users Say:
Users believe that it’s an excellent tool that offers a great user experience at a reasonable price. They say some of its features are great, especially the one that allows you to download the competitors’ keywords.
Pricing Plan:
For their Basic Plan, you can choose to pay annually at $33 per month or monthly at $39 per month. Their Professional Plans cost $58 per month (billed annually) and for the monthly plan, you would pay $39 for the first month and $78 per month thereafter. There’s also a Team plan which costs $199 per month when paid annually and $299 when paid monthly.
Octoboard
Octoboard is a tool that collects and automatically updates data. Businesses have been using Octoboard to build white label portals for their clients, capture leads, update investors, and more.
Great for: Automated marketing reports, as well as Social, SEO, PPC, and Web Analytics.
Not for: Customization of comparison reports.
What Users Say:
Octoboard users like how with the product you can view all the metrics in one place. It’s easy to use and the features are very useful. One of the best things about Octoboard is that users can add an unlimited number of team members even under the free tier. They can also see the whole picture from a streamlined dashboard.
Pricing Plan:
Freelancers with up to five clients can use Octoboard for $25 per month. Their Team plan costs $50 per month and can handle up to 10 clients. Their Agency plan for up to 20 clients is priced at $100 per month while the Enterprise allows you to have around 30 clients for $150 per month.
Bing Ads Editor
Just like how Google has their Google Ads Editor, Bing has the Bing Ads Editor for advertisers on its platform. The search engine now has more than 5 billion queries daily so PPC ads on Bing is a good idea. Bing Ads Editor allows revision to your ads and monitors your ad’s performance, among others.
Great for: Doing online and offline edits to your ads, researching keywords and managing your bids.
Not for: Automation or Managing Ads that are not on Bing.
What Users Say:
Bing Ads Editor allows them to easily manage their PPC on Bing seamlessly. That ensures that they can optimize their Ads targeted towards a market that is not on Google so they’re not missing out on any users. It’s easy to use and while there’s a learning curve, it’s not going to take long for you to master the tool.
Pricing Plan:
Bing Ads Editor can be used by Bing advertisers for free.
Social Media
What to look for in a good social media tool
Different social media tools offer different features but you want to be sure you’re getting the right one. Make sure it has a calendar view, personalized settings, analytics, and allows multiple platform integration.
What are the most popular social media tools?
Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo lets you discover content so that you can easily figure out which ones work and who are the best people to deliver that kind of content.
Great for: Competitive analysis and setting a query on specific keywords.
Not for: Simple keyword research (It’s a robust tool that comes with a hefty price. Subscribe to the plans when you can utilize all of its features).
What Users Say:
BuzzSumo users love its competitive analysis feature that allows you to learn when your competition is getting mentioned. It’s also convenient that you can use BuzzSumo to reach out to some influential people on social media to see if they can work with you.
Pricing Plan:
BuzzSumo comes in three plans: Pro is priced at $99 per month, Agency costs $299 per month, and Enterprise has features that you can enjoy for $999 per month.
Buffer
This popular social media scheduling tool makes it easy for its users to make sure their content is posted automatically and on schedule. This works for various social media platforms including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Great for: Automated scheduling even as you add more content to the queue.
Not for: Direct posting on Instagram.
What Users Say:
Social media marketers think it’s a must-have tool. With Buffer, it’s easy to run multiple profiles and campaigns at a low price. The content feed is a great feature but still needs improvement because it’s not consistent in pulling the most recent links.
Pricing Plan:
Individuals can try Buffer for free if they are only using one social profile or pay $10 for the Awesome plan that will let them manage up to 10 social profiles. For teams, there is the Small plan which costs $50, Medium which costs $100, and Large which costs $250.
Canva
Canva is a design software that can help social media marketers and businesses with their graphic design needs, whether it’s for the web or print. It comes with a lot of free and paid templates, images, and other elements that are needed for visually pleasing campaign material.
Great for: Designing presentations, posters, invites, brochures, and more.
Not for: Video editing.
What Users Say:
Canva users say that both the free and paid versions are great and are worth using. It’s not for expert designers who are used to Illustrator and Corel Draw but beginners, as well as intermediate users, will find this tool more than sufficient for their graphic design needs. Many wish they had a video editing feature so they won’t have to use a different tool for that.
Pricing Plan:
Canva is available for free with a few feature restrictions. Canva for Work costs $12.95 per month. You can save up to 23% if you choose to make annual payments.
Animoto
Animoto is a great video editing tool that can help you create training videos and more. It can also be used for an array of applications.
Great for: Creating high-quality videos with photos and video clips for social media marketing.
Not for: Making high-production commercial videos like movies.
What Users Say:
Those who have tried this video editing tool say that it works well especially if you have to make videos regularly and don’t have much time to make them. Animoto is great for making “How To” videos as well. Beginners love how uncomplicated this tool is to use.
Pricing Plan:
The Personal plan costs $5 per month. They also offer the Professional plan for $33 per month and the Business plan for $49. These plans are billed annually.
IFTTT
IFTTT is short for If This Then That. It is a tool that allows users to automate social media workflows by creating custom triggers. There are 276 channels available for use in IFTTT. For instance, through IFTTT you can create flows like “If someone left a comment on your blog then notify you via email.”
Great for: Creating custom triggers for automation.
Not for: Critical applications (IFTTT tends to go out for extended periods).
What Users Say:
IFTTT users like its straightforward interface that makes it easy for beginners to try their hand at automation. Some think it still needs to improve support for other enterprise software systems. Other than the fact that it goes down every once in a while, IFTTT is useful for handling automation.
Pricing Plan:
You can use IFTTT for free or contact them if you want to know about the pricing and subscribe to their developer or business plans.
Sprout Social
This tool allows small businesses to manage their social media accounts easily. It has features like post scheduling which are flexible so you can choose whether to use the program’s algorithm to make sure that your content is posted at the best time or manually set post times.
Great for: Content management and social listening.
Not for: Automation for Facebook groups.
What Users Say:
Sprout Social is so easy to use and its dashboard is easy to navigate. The. social listening feature, in particular, is a game-changer. However, there are still drawbacks and the price of the plans is one of them. They think Sprout Social is better suited for big agencies that can afford their plans.
Pricing Plan:
Sprout Social’s Standard plan starts at $99 per month for five social profiles. The Professional plan costs $149 per month for 10 social profiles and their Advanced plan costs $249 per month for premium features that you can use for 10 social profiles. Note that these plans are just for one user so if you’re working with a team, the price would be a lot higher.
Facebook Ads Manager
This tool enables you to manage your ads on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or the Audience Network. It allows you to create campaigns and even choose the parameters you want to apply.
Great for: Running and tracking your ad campaigns.
Not for: Managing Pages, user access, and accounts.
What Users Say:
With the Ads Manager, it’s easy to duplicate the ads, as well as edit the settings of the ad from one place. You can easily customize the tables and graphs so you only see metrics that are relevant to you.
Pricing Plan:
You don’t pay for the Ads manager per se, but you can set how much you are willing to pay for your ads.
Content Marketing
What to look for in a good content marketing tool
Content marketing has become a truly competitive arena that it wouldn’t be wise to join the battled unequipped. The right tools can get you ahead in the game. When choosing your content marketing tools, make sure it can help you with your content research and planning, help you create your content, and perform analysis.
What Are the Most Reliable Content Marketing Tools?
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most popular digital marketing tools and comes with a great reputation. It’s focused on inbound marketing and a good choice for small business owners and marketers who want to start building a solid strategy for their content marketing.
Great for: Content curation and optimization.
Not for: Drop and drag designing landing pages and emails.
What Users Say:
HubSpot is indeed an excellent tool for organizing your content marketing strategies. It’s a robust platform that allows you to do almost everything you need to do for content marketing, from content creation to automation and management. The changes that they roll out often, however, can be frustrating as you would have to catch up with them most of the time and adapting to those changes can consume time.
Pricing Plan:
You can use HubSpot for lead tracking for free. They also offer their Starter plan for $50 per month, Professional plan for $800 per month and Enterprise plan for $3200 per month.
Airstory
Airstory is a drag-and-drop document maker. It aims to help with the process of writing content. It’s from the same team that runs Copyhackers.
Great for: Streamlining the writing process.
Not for: Non-collaborative writing and when you already have a writing process that works for you.
What Users Say:
Airstory is revolutionary as it offers something that we haven’t seen before. Its goal to make content creation easier even for non-writers is nice. But for people who already have solid writing habits, changing their workflow could affect their productivity. Adapting to Airstory may take a while.
Pricing Plans:
You can create 10 projects a month for $59.
Yoast
Yoast is one of the top WordPress SEO plugins. Millions of people use it, from small business owners to seasoned marketers. Yoast SEO offers a lot of features and capabilities that can help your content marketing strategy.
Great for: Enhancing content readability and optimizing content for search engines.
Not for: Defining canonical URLs, controlling site structure, or dealing with bloated codes.
What Users Say:
Yoast goes beyond SEO as it is also effective as a site management tool. This plugin can be set up with no complications and is user-friendly. It does the job of monitoring your website and checking for issues pretty well. It also makes it easy to tweak Facebook and Twitter snippets for sharing.
Pricing Plans:
You can use the Yoast SEO plugin for free or get Yoast SEO Premium for $89 for one site.
AnswerthePublic
Answer the Public is a simple and easy-to-use tool that content creators and marketers use when they need content ideas. More importantly, it can tell you what people are searching for online.
Great for: Generating content ideas quickly.
Not for: Getting results with a keyword difficulty score.
What Users Say:
People who have used this tool think it’s nice to be able to use such a handy tool like Answer the Public without paying for anything. It is straightforward and doesn’t make users jump through hoops to get what they want. It’s helpful that they divide the results into three categories, too.
Pricing Plan:
You can use it for free.
CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a one-stop-shop for all your management and organizational needs. It makes a lot of tasks easier thanks to its seamless integration with WordPress and easy to use the drag-and-drop feature. It also helps you keep track of the number of times you have shared old posts and where it has gotten the most traffic.
Great for: Managing content and converting them (from Google Docs or Evernote) into WordPress content.
Not for: Tagging content across multiple platforms.
What Users Say:
The calendar view is just great because it allows you to see all that you need to accomplish at a glance but it would have been better if you can use your smartphone or tablet to view the calendar.
Pricing Plan:
The Solo Standard plan costs $15 for a calendar billed annually. You can also pay $19 per month for a single user and up to five social profiles. The Solo Marketing plan is available for $30 for annual payments or $39 per month for up to 10 social profiles. Solo Automation plan costs $79 per month or $60 per calendar if billed annually.
Headline Analyzer (by CoSchedule)
Headline Analyzer is actually one of the features of CoSchedule. It provides users with an analysis of where there are lapses in their headlines and why it needs to be improved.
Great for: Grading headlines based on their emotional value and headline keyword optimization
Not for: Automating headline creation.
What Users Say:
Headline Analyzer is such a useful tool that can help you write compelling headlines or better yet, avoid bland headlines. It can help you finetune your titles so that they have the perfect blend of common and uncommon words, as well as emotional and power words.
Pricing Plan:
Headline Analyzer is available to Coschedule users for free.
Trello
Trello is a great tool for planning a content strategy. Its versatility sets it apart from other similar tools. From building social media or editorial calendars to doing collaborative work with the entire team, Trello can handle it.
Great for: Organizing tasks and schedules and content strategy planning.
Not for: Writing long documents.
What Users Say:
Users of Trello like how you can keep an entire team updated with the use of the boards and the freedom to add members to that board when needed. It’s easy to assign tasks to multiple members. It works on any screen size and functions more like an app instead of a site.
Pricing:
You can use Trello for free.
Final words
As you can see, there are a plethora of tools that can help you with your digital marketing endeavors, whatever they may be. In today’s ultra-competitive world, you’ll need to find the right mix of tools to help you achieve your goals and objectives in the most optimal way.
Analyze your marketing strategy and find out which will benefit most from the tools listed above.
