The saturated digital world has led to a marketing crisis—digital marketing is in need of marketing.
Most consumers, no matter the industry, now believe that marketing only equals ads. And the problem is your audience likely hates ads.
They hate seeing them, especially since they probably remember their experience with traditional hard-selling tactics.
People don’t want others to make them purchase things they don’t want to own, and certainly not by advertisements that don’t resonate with them.
Mere skills in research, strategy, and design won’t cut it these days.
As a digital marketer, you have to know how to use various marketing tools and techniques to develop long-term solutions and sustainable digital marketing strategies to win over potential customers.
But with so many marketing tools out there, how do you know which one can help you bring your A-game?
Fret not. We have precisely what you need—a comprehensive master list of the best tools a digital marketer needs.
What are the best tools a marketer should use?
Online businesses should always align with their target audience’s needs. Their products and services must solve pressing problems, leading to a mutually beneficial relationship.
And what is a digital marketing tool? These are platforms and apps that you can use to curate content, strategize better, collaborate more productively, and so on. These will help your business thrive in the digital era.
Where does a digital marketer fit in the picture? Well, you come in by helping online businesses understand their customers: who they are, what they need, and what can make their lives better.
In essence, digital marketing tools help you come up with effective digital marketing campaigns that not only help you keep your online business’s customer base but aid in attracting potential clients as well. They also help your audiences benefit from their products and services.
Luckily, lots of online tools can help you put your brand in the open. We’ve listed down the best ones for you in this comprehensive list:
For Collaboration
Throughout your digital marketing journey, you will deal with many people and companies involved in your field.
With the right collaboration tools that best fit your needs, you can increase your productivity while minimizing costs.
1. Slack
Price: Free, $7.25 monthly for Pro, $12 monthly for Business+
Slack is one of the more popular messaging applications businesses use today.
Your online business can adjust quickly to the ever-changing trends through Slack’s channels.
Through these channels, you get a platform to start business conversations with certain people you need to talk to, inside and outside your organization. Here, you can access information whenever and wherever you prefer.
Slack made collaboration in the digital marketing space more accessible by bringing people and teams together without having to coordinate their locations and schedules.
With everyone having access to shared information, team members can say their pieces at once to help the team stay aligned.
Slack also enables speedy discussions with external partners by allowing you to incorporate other digital marketing applications, including chatbots, transaction notification, and analytic tools.
2. Zoom
Price: Free for Basic, $149.90 monthly for Pro, and $199.90 monthly for Business
Always need to host or attend video conferences? With its user-friendly, clean and simple interface and proven reliability, Zoom is the perfect tool for your business.
It has grown to be one of the most used applications in the world, especially when the pandemic hit.
While Zoom only allows meetings for up to 40 minutes for its non-pro users, you can still host an unlimited number of meetings.
Its superb video and call quality and option to record calls have been proven effective for live chats, webinars, and video conferencing.
Zoom’s Gallery View feature can also see up to 49 participants with their cameras on simultaneously.
It not only supports large audiences for online collaboration but can also easily incorporate third-party apps to reach the market you want.
For example, Zoom meetings can be live-streamed on Facebook. You can also send invites or schedules through Google Calendar.
Digital marketing with your team and external partners are made more productive and fun with the Zoom app. Plus, it’s effortless to use!
For Project Management
What’s an effective digital marketing strategy without project management? You need to make sure that all your campaigns remain on track.
Teams across the company should also have a primary platform they can access for reference—this is important if you have freelancers onboard!
That said, here are some project management tools you need:
1. Asana
Price: Free for up to 15 people, $10.99 monthly for Premium, $24.99 monthly for Business
Asana’s project management software was designed based on a concept recognizing that “the path of least resistance is not always a linear progression.”
What does this mean? It recognizes the importance of accountability and transparency, which is why it created inclusive software that can connect freelancers to executives and vice versa.
Here, you can easily break down tasks into subtasks, which you can then assign to respective team members.
A digital marketing campaign, for instance, will require several elements like client management, client briefs, creative briefs, presentation decks, and so on.
To ensure maximum productivity, you can set milestones to help the entire team track the campaign’s progression.
2. Loomly
Price: $26 monthly for the Basic, $59 monthly for the Standard
Loomly brands itself as a “brand success platform,” a marketing tool designed for smaller teams.
If you’re running or handling a small business, you’ll find it helpful to create calendars, workflows, and other elements to make brainstorming and campaign progression a breeze.
The best part about Loomly is that it focuses mainly on content creation, which is why it curates fresh content for you based on trending social media topics.
It’s also known for its user-friendly interface, perfect for those who might not necessarily be tech-savvy. Unfortunately, it does come at a price!
3. Trello
Price: Free for Basic, $20.83 monthly for Enterprise
One of the most effective marketing tools for collaboration is Trello. It helps teams organize, brainstorm, and strategize content.
Due to its design, you can easily see and track progress and know when something should already be published.
The platform is highly visual, where you can create “cards” with notes like deadlines, topics, and other reminders. It’s best for small teams and businesses, where you can assign tasks and ensure accountability and productivity.
Used properly, you can create a sustainable process that allows you to track your marketing tasks from day one accurately!
For Research and Sourcing
What’s a marketing campaign without thorough research and content sourcing? It’s important to look outside and explore the digital world when creating marketing campaigns.
You need data, insights, relevant keywords, and other necessary materials—all these combined lead to valuable, solutions-oriented content your customers will want to read.
Thankfully, there are research and sourcing tools for digital marketing that can make this process easier for you:
1. Frase
Price: $14.99 monthly for Solo, $44.99 monthly for Basic
Frase is a content optimization marketing tool that uses AI to curate content insights. These can be used to your advantage, especially if you want to increase your web traffic and visibility online.
It allows you to optimize existing content and assist you in writing new ones. It will enable you to create outlines automatically on any topic, which includes headers, FAQs, news, facts, statistics, and other details you need to create a piece.
2. Answer the Public
Price: Free, $99 monthly for Premium
If you want to focus on research alone, Answer The Public is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools. It’s best for search engine optimization, as it allows you to conduct thorough keyword research simply by entering your topic.
The platform will bring a list of common search terms, related topics, questions, and keywords you might need to develop relevant content for blog posts, landing pages, and so on.
While it may not always fall right into the ideas you want to play with, it allows you to view consumer pain points differently. Simply put, you’ll know exactly what your customers are looking for, so work on answering their questions!
If you want to invest in SEO tools, we highly recommend Answer the Public.
3. HARO
Price: Free for Basic, $19 monthly for Standard, and $49 monthly for Advanced, $149 monthly for Premium
Help A Reporter Out, or HARO, is one of the most effective online marketing tools marketers often overlook.
While journalists mostly use it to gather feedback from actual people, it provides marketers with an authoritative database of testimonials, reviews, tips, and other expert sources designed to make content more valuable.
It’s a separate platform, but you get the answers through your email, making it quite accessible. But what makes this an effective marketing tool is that it reinvents traditional blogging, as it also allows you the opportunity to establish your brand.
How can it help you stand out from the crowd? Well, you can also participate as an expert source.
You’ll be given exposure as a marketer or a business owner, especially when other marketers use your insights as part of their content. You get earned media, which often means quality backlinks that can improve your website’s authority and SEO.
4. Sourcery
Price: $29 monthly for Starter, $99 monthly for Pro, and $199 monthly for Agency
Sourcery is a public relations management software that helps you earn quality backlinks from reputable and high DR publications.
Sourcery makes tools like HARO more useful by providing you with more details about a PR or media coverage opportunity, such as the domain rating of a publication, the type of links it provides (dofollow vs nofollow), how much traffic it gets monthly, and how difficult the query is, among others.
Earning backlinks for SEO is hard and time-consuming, but with the help of Sourcery, you can save time and increase your conversions.
It makes journalist outreach so much easier that you can do it on your own as a business owner or marketer.
If you have a marketing team to handle your outreach campaigns, the platform can help them become more efficient and effective.
If you’re new in link building and journalist outreach, Sourcery also provides you with coaching and strategy and valuable tips for pitching journalists based on the experience of its in-house outreach specialists.
You can earn increased traffic and leads, thought leadership, and improved brand awareness.
For Design
Human beings are highly visual, making design an essential part of marketing. It only takes three seconds to capture someone’s attention. You must package your content to look eye-catching—enough to make them stay.
Some of the best design tools used for digital marketing are the following:
1. Canva Business
Price: Free for Basic, $12.95 monthly for Teams/Pro
Canva has become a household name. Compared to other design tools, even its free version allows users to create professional graphics.
It’s also worth noting that users don’t need the design experience to create something social media-worthy.
Given its inventory of templates, shapes, colors, and fonts, you can easily create social media posts, infographics, and even videos.
Its drag-and-drop design also streamlines the design process, empowering your team to do more and achieve more.
2. Visme
Price: Free for Basic, $12.25 monthly for Personal, and $24.75 monthly for Business
As a marketer, you likely face countless clients daily. From presenting a marketing campaign budget to pitching a marketing strategy, it’s important to have a marketing tool designed for creating presentations.
Visme allows you to package data and analytics into visually appealing presentations instantly, pulled directly from spreadsheets.
And just like Canva, you can also create infographics and other raw data to present them in better and more digestible ways. No more boring your audiences with numbers!
3. Filmora
Price: $7.99 monthly for individual users, $155.88 per year for Businesses
Filmora, formerly known as Wondershare Video Editor, is a software perfect for video marketing campaigns.
It allows you to edit videos, including trimming, rotating, and adjusting video elements like speed and brightness.
You can also edit audio and then enjoy advanced features like Scene Detection.
But what makes it worthy of being part of the best tools for marketers? Well, it’s packed with existing elements like filters, overlays, texts, and even a music library that make your video marketing materials stand out.
It’s also a favorite among marketers due to its user-friendly interface, complete with tutorial videos that make the editing processes easier for everyone involved.
For Social Media
A business without a social media presence is a business doomed! So, when making social media marketing campaigns, it’s essential to have the best marketing tools.
This will make social media easier to navigate, even with a diverse audience group and multiple campaigns in the pipeline.
1. Sprout Social
Price: Free for 30 days, $89 monthly for Premium
Sprout Social is an effective digital marketing tool for social media. Apart from social media platform management, you can also organize and create a content calendar to schedule social posts across multiple platforms.
But what makes Sprout so easy to use? Well, it can time your posting for you based on the data it automatically gathers. As a result, you’ll have well-timed posts according to your follower’s most active times.
It also allows you to collaborate with team members and customers, making it an effective CRM (customer relationship management) tool. You can reply to users in real-time.
2. Hootsuite
Price: Free for 30 days, $49 monthly for Professional, and $179 monthly for Team
Hootsuite understands how chaotic social media can be, so it allows you to handle multiple social media accounts under one umbrella.
You operate on a single dashboard, making it an effective social media marketing tool.
Apart from organizing your data, you can also access comments and mentions and assign tasks across your team.
For an in-depth study of your analysis, you can integrate in-house tools from the following social media platforms:
- YouTube
Suppose you’re a marketer who frequents community-based platforms like Reddit. In that case, Hootsuite also allows you to gather customer data and feedback to be integrated into your existing campaigns and marketing strategies.
For Emails
It may not seem like it to many, but direct email continues to impact the digital world. Unsuspecting business owners don’t realize just how useful and impactful email can be, which is why it only follows to create a list of email marketing tools for generating leads:
1. ConvertKit
Price: Free for Basic, $15 monthly for Creator, $25 monthly for Pro
While email marketing works, lead generation continues to pose a problem for many digital marketers.
With ConvertKit, however, you’ll have access to advanced email journeys called “sequences.” These are designed to increase warm leads and email open rates.
The platform also allows you to segment your audiences successfully in minutes, which you can track through the main dashboard.
With API integrations, you can also link an existing CRM platform to help create striking email content your audiences will surely open.
2. HubSpot
Price: $45 monthly for Starter, $800 monthly for Professional
Although known for its CRM tools and marketing platforms, HubSpot now offers an email marketing tool designed to be accessible.
It’s one of the best free digital marketing tools.
If you’re already a HubSpot user, you can easily integrate this email tool with other HubSpot products for a seamless experience.
Even with the free version, you can send 2,000 emails monthly, create contact lists through an email builder, and get access to ready-to-use templates. This platform also allows you to track, manage, and resolve issues.
For Marketing Strategy Tracking and Monitoring
As marketing professionals, we’re used to dealing with visuals and words. But there’s another key to a successful digital marketing strategy: numbers.
No matter how much effort you exert in digital marketing to boost your business, it can still be lacking without the needed analysis of the results. Worry not, though. These tools got you.
1. Google Analytics
Price: Free for Google Analytics, $12,500 monthly for Google Analytics 360
Now that you understand the current state of digital marketing and the different identifiers of a single consumer, it’s easier to understand the importance of Google Analytics.
It provides a solution to help you better understand the behavior of your target market through statistics.
Google Analytics is your go-to tool to know your website’s traffic, including which sites get the most attention and where visitors spend most of their time.
If you’re looking for a free digital marketing tool, Google Analytics also provides basic analytics tools that you can use in planning your next digital marketing strategy.
After knowing these crucial data, you can better plan how to emphasize your business’ selling points to get more engagement.
You can customize their journey on your website, hopefully for these engagements to turn into sales.
For Optimization
To drive website traffic, you need more than just a strategy. Search engine optimization allows you to boost your online efforts by incorporating keywords into your landing pages, product descriptions, and blogs.
To bring your SEO campaigns to life and appease search engines, here are some tools to consider:
1. Ahrefs
Price: Tiered pricing from $99 to $399 monthly
Ahrefs is a widely used SEO tool to drive website traffic, containing around 150 million keywords in the United States alone.
Apart from this extensive database, you can also use its Top Pages tool to scan your competitors and see their top pages and how they compare to yours.
Using the Content Gap tool, you’ll see your weaknesses and identify which content areas need brushing up.
Ahrefs also allows you to see how your backlinks work. This is particularly helpful as they decline over time, so it helps you fix up pages that no longer perform.
You’ll also be able to monitor your website’s outbound links—any broken links should be fixed in no time.
2. Moz
Price: $99 monthly for Standard, $179 monthly for Medium
Moz, as a brand, is well-respected in the SEO world. Its resources are a go-to for many digital marketers, especially since it offers a keyword explorer tool that allows you access to your customer’s pain points.
On the other hand, the ranking tool allows you to see a clear picture of where you rank alongside competitors.
More importantly, you can access a list of issues that will cause Google and other search engines from providing you with website traffic. Should any problems arise, Moz will also alert you via notification.
Apart from these tools, Moz can also accurately predict, analyze, and break down the current SEO landscape. You not only invest in powerful tools but also in the latest SEO practices to get ahead of the competition.
Why do you need the best digital marketing tools?
In the digital era, a successful business requires more than just an understanding of administrative works and funding for capital. Digital marketing is more than just selling, though. The accelerated processes have made consumers and digital marketers alike forget that marketing exists to address the customer’s pain points.
No one wants to be bothered by ads on sidebars, menu bars, search bars, and other places where most digital marketers feel like ads should be placed.
Moreover, trends change almost every minute, and those who cannot keep up are bound to be left behind, especially in marketing.
Switching from traditional to digital marketing can undoubtedly be scary, but this is necessary to drive attention and audience to your brand.
With the advent of online media, keeping your business afloat means staying abreast with digital tools and marketing trends.
Does this sound too confusing? Don’t worry! We’ve listed the situations you need to know about the current state of marketing.
1. Understanding your audience’s behavior across all platforms
It might be easy to claim that you already know your customers after looking into their preferences for a while.
This isn’t the case, though, especially if you consider all their activities and behavior across different social media platforms.
You can obtain consumer data in various ways, but the real struggle would be analyzing these data sources to understand better how consumers behave. It follows that you will also need to consider these behaviors relative to your brand.
For example, a newsletter subscription will tell you their details, including their full name and contact details.
A third-party application may then tell you more about the pages they like or the kinds of articles that they spend the most time reading.
You may also learn about the comments they leave on videos through research and reports.
All these give different identities to a specific person, and you can only imagine the various personalities you will have to deal with when studying a vast audience.
The short attention span of online users makes it even more challenging to study their behavior and preferences.
They often change their tastes and modify their accounts, making it more challenging to be up to date with their profiles.
For marketers, this leads to a struggle to update their data and keep up with their preferred trends.
2. Attracting the right customers
Data you’ve gathered from people’s online activities makes it challenging to be up to date with your existing customers and find new ones.
More often than not, being focused on one chunk of data may cause you to ignore another set of relevant figures altogether.
Looking at available data is crucial when pursuing a lead toward a potential customer. You will have to pay more attention to those who will likely be repeat customers of your brand in the future. After all, who would not want a loyal audience?
The challenge comes from missing essential data because you’ve looked at their activity on a different platform.
For example, you might be looking at their browsing history when you could have learned more about them in the pages they follow. This also becomes a hurdle in the digital world.
3. Sustaining a consistent customer experience
Customers are always right. And while this can be questionable at times, it also holds true in ensuring a good customer review for your brand.
Giving customers the service they want can be tricky, though, if you’re unaware of what they prefer. This can be one of the effects of fragmented data—a lack of understanding of your customers’ behaviors and preferences.
To be more concrete, imagine being offered the same product even if you’ve already purchased it before or if you’re already using the same product but under a different brand.
The repetitive product advertisements could annoy you one way or the other, leading you to perceive the brand negatively.
Repetition happens when a marketer is unaware of a person’s different behavior and identifier. They end up being too pushy, which turns off customers in a matter of seconds, so your lead generation fails.
Conversely, you would also want to sustain interest to gain leads. This will then require you to place your messaging strategically across brands and platforms that will lead you to your target.
4. Tracking and monitoring analytics properly
They might look intimidating, but numbers are the number one pal for measuring and tracking your performance.
With the state of marketing in the digital age, it becomes harder to track who sees your messages and whether the targeted marketing is working as planned.
This becomes a problem when the metrics you use as the basis of your strategies become less reliable due to customers’ varied identifiers.
This is where the importance of better data organization comes in.
You can track your performance more accurately through third-party tools and apps by focusing on collaboration, research, and project management, among others.
Not only will you better understand your customer’s acceptance of your brand strategy, but you can also quickly devise measures to improve your processes.
Conclusion: What is the best digital marketing tool for you?
You will face many challenges in digital marketing, especially since trends change as soon as people’s references do. But with the right tools at your disposal, you’re already one step ahead of your competitors.
In your journey toward being one of the best online marketers in the field, you will learn that you and your marketing team don’t always have to do things alone.
The best marketing tools will help you develop a concise and efficient marketing campaign to attract a more extensive clientele and automate tedious marketing tasks.
Combining the marketing tools and techniques mentioned above will help you devise practical solutions and strategies to reach your business goals.
Don’t worry about being dependent on these tools—they exist to evaluate what works and give you the confidence you need to pursue bolder digital marketing efforts to be better business owners.
That said, which of these tools will you include in your marketing stack this year? Stay on top of your marketing budget, capture warm leads, and manage multiple campaigns. It’s never too late for a change, and with the holidays coming up, don’t hesitate to beat the rush by automating your processes!
