Based on the work I’ve done with small businesses to develop their online presence, I’ve found that many people are using many digital marketing tools but aren’t really aware of what’s necessary and what’s superfluous.
Because of this, they end up spending more time and money on their digital marketing efforts than is necessary.
That’s why it’s essential to figure out which tools are essential to your success, and only use those.
Here is a basic list of the types of tools you’ll need, but remember that you need to figure out what is actually necessary for your industry, size of business, and goals.
on it yourself.
Facebook Ads, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube—you won’t really need to be actively managing these accounts; you just need to set them up and then let the management tool do its work.
Note: If you decide to use an additional social media platform, you will need to actively manage the account yourself.
Business Address and Google My Business
2 Digital Marketing Tools You Can’t Do Without
1. Digital Marketing Management Tool
A digital marketing management tool is a service that hooks up to your website and allows you to manage your content, metadata, SEO, and online reputation.
This is the tool that you’ll use to create and edit blog posts, add content to any other websites that you’re managing, and make changes to your search engine listings.
A management tool will also allow you to measure the effectiveness of your other digital marketing tools by tracking your search rankings, click-through rates, and other indicators.
There are several options available when it comes to digital marketing management tools, but I use and recommend Clicky.com. It provides real-time data on your website traffic, including where your visitors are coming from (search engines, referrals, etc.), how they’re navigating your site
I would recommend using
Social Media Management
If you’re doing anything with digital marketing, you need a social media management tool. This is essential because managing social media is time-consuming if you don’t have the staff to do so or if you don’t want to spend so much time online replying to comments and messages.
A social media management tool allows you to actively monitor your accounts, delete spam, approve users who want to contribute content (for example, a Instagram hashtag campaign where users submit their photos) and keep the platform free of clutter.
Several tools are available for this—Hootsuite.com is one of the most well-known but it can be expensive. Some other options include:
Crampy.com (free up to 3 social accounts)
Squarespace.com (free social media integration for your website)
Youtube.com (you probably don’t need a tool to manage your YouTube channel but you might want to consider one if you have a larger YouTube channel or are running a YouTube marketing campaign)
Tools to Help You Create Awesome Content
Several tools are available to help you create content, from short videos to articles. If you’re short on time and staff, you need a tool that will allow you to either create or cur