8 Tools That Should Be In Every Digital Marketer’s Toolkit

The digital marketing field is a fast-paced and ever-changing one, and the most effective marketers know that they need to be able to adapt to these changes. One way they do this is through investing heavily in tools that allow them to learn more about the evolving digital landscape, understand the competitive landscape better, and optimize their efforts accordingly.

Along with our own research, we’ve put together a list of five tools that should be in every digital marketer’s toolkit.

1. Google Analytics: Even for companies that don’t offer digital marketing, this is a great same-time reporting tool, a must-have. Google Analytics offers tremendous value with its ability to show visitors the websites they come from, what the average time on site is, and key pages that get traffic. In addition, it’s free and easy to set up.

2. A/B testing: A/B testing allows users to make changes to their websites and test how different elements perform as an alternative to their best-performing option. This allows marketers to see which elements are having the greatest impact on site conversion rates and make changes accordingly.

3. MarketMuse: MarketMuse is another great resource for marketers, because it helps them ensure they are doing the most important things that will make the biggest impact. It offers suggestions for additional keywords and content, as well as suggested tools to use in order to get that content out there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

4. MailChimp: Probably the most popular email marketing software out there, MailChimp can help you track your results and optimize your efforts with ease. This is a great email marketing service for those who already have an established email list. MailChimp offers the ability to send targeted email campaigns, and an analytics dashboard that allows you to see who is opening up their emails and what they are doing after they open them.

5. HootSuite: A productivity and engagement powerhouse that lets you manage, monitor and engage with multiple social networks from one dashboard.

6. FunnelFIT: An in-depth analytics tool that will help you optimize your digital marketing efforts and improve your spending efficiency.

7. Mixpanel: A technique that helps you track performance, analyze conversions, and analyze data from any app or website. You can even have real-time conversations on this platform!

8. Content marketing: Content marketing is becoming more and more important as the cost of search engine optimization continues to drop. Many digital marketers are moving away from PPC (paid search) advertising in favor of more in-depth content marketing strategies that have been shown time and time again to have a positive effect on ROI.

“Although content marketing is about more than just writing a blog post or creating a press release, the aforementioned tools will help you get started on building a more successful content marketing strategy. As an added bonus, many of these tools can be used for your entire marketing campaign; it’s best to have a broad toolkit.”

7 Reasons Why This Year Could Be The Year Of Digital Marketing

It’s time to take a step back and evaluate how your business is performing so far. Have you been able to achieve the results you were hoping for?

If not, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Many businesses are still trying to figure out the most effective way to market their products and services in today’s digital age. And that’s where digital marketing comes in.

1. Digital marketing helps local businesses build a loyal customer base.

Digital marketing allows you to build a lasting connection with your customers by creating a presence on their screens.

With the right content and a strong social media marketing strategy, you can increase brand awareness and even improve your sales.

2. You learn more about the customer’s needs, so you can better predict profitability.

Online consumer research has been proven to be effective by multiple studies. A 2018 study found that 87% of consumers use the internet to research their needs before buying a product. It’s also easy to understand why. Researching needs can save a large amount of time and money, which is especially important for small businesses.

Digital marketing is a great tool for small businesses to learn more about their customers’ needs through both in-person and online interviews. From there, it’s easier to create a custom product or service to cater to those needs.

3. Multichannel marketing gives you a multichannel approach

It is no secret that digital marketing has revolutionized the way people access and consume information.

The internet is not the only place where you can market your business digitally. There are many other digital channels that you can use to attract, engage, and convert potential customers into buying customers.

4. Small businesses can compete against large businesses on a level playing field

A recent study by Marketo found that small businesses with digital marketing spend nearly twice as much on marketing as large businesses. This is because small businesses are more likely to take risks and be more innovative than their larger, more established competitors.

5. Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing.

Digital marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing because it doesn’t require huge budgets and it’s not as time-consuming. In fact, it doesn’t even require a website (although that can help). Digital marketing can be done on a small budget, but traditional marketing can take a long time to be developed and implemented.

6. The power of digital marketing in measuring ROI.

Digital marketing can be targeted. Measuring its impact is both feasible and credible.

Because of the lower costs, small-business owners can easily invest in online marketing, and begin to see results.

7. The digital marketers in your industry are already paving the way with incredible campaigns

According to a survey made by a company that specializes in internet marketing, most small business owners plan to increase their marketing efforts by online marketing in 2019 and beyond. There is an obvious reason why: The competition.

To avoid missing out on the digital marketing train in the future, you’ll want to start using digital marketing tools now. It’s not too late to join the marketing bandwagon, and there are hundreds of tools to help small business owners get their message out. Simply put, you’ll have the capability to market your business without much effort.

10 Key Ways to Make Effective Content Marketing

In this world of the internet, most small and medium-sized companies are still struggling with how to use the internet effectively.

Digital marketing seems to be a necessity, but not every business has the funds to invest in it. The solution is to tap into the secrets of effective content marketing. There are 10 ways to make your content marketing more effective.

1. Establish long-term objectives

Even though an individual’s needs change over time – from a one-off purchase to continue buying over time – businesses should make sure they are realistic in their goals when establishing long-term objectives. They should also consider what industry the business is in. Finally, goals should be tied into the business’ overall strategy.

2. Create a content calendar

A content calendar will help you avoid being repetitive with an up-to-date overview of what you have already posted. In short, a content calendar will provide you with two important things: quality and a focus on consistency. Consider that each channel has its own set of frequencies for posting messages.

3. Know Your Stuff

You must focus on your business, industry, and industry trends, as well as the products or services you are promoting. In addition, your posts should have something to do with the main topic of your business. Even if you determine your audience loves randomness, it still has to reflect or lead back to your brand.

4. Keep active

Posting can be time-consuming, but it’s a great way to improve your blog. You should focus on quality over quantity, because readers will not keep visiting your blog if your posts are not helpful to them. You should write posts that can be linked to, so that people can easily find your best content.

5. Mixing up the components

Many companies get stuck in the mindset that the content is just text. They think that people will follow them because of the messages in the writing. Mixing up the components, with text, images, and video, will increase your engagement and hopefully encourage those following you to continue to follow you.

6 Tracking Pattern

It’s critical to track your efforts with respect to the types of content you’re posting on Facebook. To improve your posts and make sure you’re posting the “right” types of content, you’ll want to track the success of each idea you’re generating.

7. Consider reaching out to guest bloggers

In case you don’t have the talent to write or take photos, you can always consider guest bloggers. Some guest bloggers will want a payment but you can find writers who are happy to be compensated for their time by posting your articles on their sites.

8. Avoid being stagnant

It’s easy to become complacent; after all, we have a good number of subscribers and likes. We can feel like we have achieved success, but as long as our competitors continue to attract people, we have our work cut out for us. We need our existing followers to grow so they can start talking about our blog and introducing our work to their friends and family.

9. Get Inspiration from Industry Leaders

When in doubt or a bind, always look for ideas and advice from the leaders of other industries or companies. 

Chatbots: Becoming a Major Digital Marketing Tool

It’s no secret that digital marketing, especially through the use of social media, has gained popularity in recent years, and it’s no surprise that marketers are constantly looking for new ways to make their marketing efforts more efficient and effective. One of the newest trends in digital marketing that’s being tested at the moment is chatbots, or software-based robots that people can interact with through messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Slack, among others. We’ll look at how they work, why they’re gaining so much popularity and what to consider before implementing them into your own marketing strategy.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot, sometimes referred to as an online chat agent, or talk bot, is software that is designed to simulate a conversation with human users. Chatbot interaction occurs through direct and immediate input via chat rooms, instant messaging, SMS, or speech recognition.   Chatbots are often integrated into applications in order to assist users with services.

How can you use chatbots in your business?

Many brands are still experimenting with chatbots, which means you can use them in many ways. Chatbots can be used for both marketing and sales. The general rule of thumb here is that people tend to prefer text-based interactions over voice conversations, especially when it comes to providing feedback or asking questions. They feel more at ease typing out their thoughts than speaking aloud.

Here are some ways you can use chatbots in your business:

1) Follow-up campaign after digital or physical events

To get leads, you can use chatbots to conduct surveys and ask consumers to provide their information so that you can follow up with them later. They can be useful for building brand awareness and engaging your customers as well. A recent survey by ServiceRocket found that 73% of business owners believed chatbots were effective in converting potential buyers into actual sales. Plus, 60% said they were effective in building brand trust.

2) Surveys about your products

If you are planning on using chatbots for your business’s customer service department, it will serve you well if you build a FAQ-based bot instead. This way your customers won’t have any issues getting their questions answered through your chatbot.

3) Use them to promote special offers, loyalty programs, etc. 

You can use them to identify potential clients and convert them into paying customers. It is also possible to use chatbots to offer customer support. Just like they can be used for marketing and sales, chatbots can be employed in customer service departments as well.  If you’re using them to sell products or services, you might want to learn how to build a conversational chatbot.

4) Respond quickly to customer queries.

By using chatbots in customer service, you’ll be able to respond faster to customer queries (and complaints). Plus, when handled correctly, you might end up receiving fewer calls from customers because your chatbot is capable of handling some issues on its own. This leads to happier and more satisfied customers. With so many advantages, it’s not surprising that more businesses are looking into incorporating chatbots into their business models.  What do you think about chatbots? We’d love to hear about how you plan to use them!

Top Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

With so many different digital marketing tools out there, it can be tough to know which ones are right for your business. You want to find the best digital marketing tools that will make it easier to connect with your customers while also helping you grow and thrive online in order to grow your business.

Google Analytics

As a small business owner, there’s no question about whether or not you should have Google Analytics set up on your website—the only question is which package you should buy. The most basic package offers everything you need to track who visits your site and where they come from. You can look at reports that tell you how much traffic a specific social media campaign drove in comparison to another one, or how many people came in through search engines versus direct links to specific pages.

Facebook Insights

Facebook is a powerhouse of data that can be harnessed to see how users are interacting with your brand. With Facebook Insights, you can see statistics about your page activity such as top posts and interactions, demographics of your audience and much more. Facebook Insights helps you to understand what’s resonating with your followers and adjust accordingly.

Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook ads can be a good place to start when trying to boost your visibility online. Facebook ads are a quick and efficient way to drive people back to your website or convert them into customers. The biggest benefit of Facebook advertising is that it’s easy; you can create effective campaigns in mere minutes without ever touching code. What’s more, the visual aspect of ad creation makes it easy to test different images, target various audiences and establish success metrics right away.

Buffer

This tool provides you with an easy and fast way to schedule your posts across multiple platforms. Once they are scheduled, you simply press publish and voila! You have just spread information about your business in order to increase your brand awareness.

HubSpot

While it can be difficult to choose which platform fits your business best, HubSpot seems to have something for everyone. The platform provides a wide variety of marketing tools that work seamlessly together, allowing you to easily run tests on what works and what doesn’t.

Bitly

If you find that your target audience is increasingly turning to social media platforms to connect and learn about your business, then you need to have a Bitly account. This simple URL shortener lets you take direct action by tracking click-throughs from specific links. It’s an invaluable tool for assessing how strong your digital marketing campaigns are performing.

SEMrush

This is a powerful and comprehensive suite of digital marketing tools, including keyword research, competitor analysis, link prospecting, and audience building. SEMrush provides a ton of valuable data and can help you save time on your online marketing efforts. SEMrush is recommended for digital marketers at all experience levels.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

This tool lets you see search volume and suggested bid prices for related keywords. You can also play around with negative keyword searches to find long-tail terms that you might not otherwise have considered. The AdWords Keyword Planner is a free online tool designed to help you discover new and potentially lucrative keywords related to your business.