Online campaigns have become the best way to reach potential customers at key moments, you need to have the right set of digital marketing tools and digital marketing services to develop impactful content.
There are dozens, if not hundreds of different platforms out there, so finding the best digital marketing tools requires a significant amount of research.
Instead of evaluating platform features first, you need to look at your requirements and figure out exactly what solutions meet these needs to perfection.
At Fannit, we’ve spent the last decade helping businesses build successful marketing campaigns.
Our marketing team has an in-depth understanding of the different advertising tools and platforms out there.
In this article, we’ll go over the different types of platforms at your disposal and share our picks for the best online marketing tools for small businesses.
What Are Digital Marketing Tools?
First, let’s start by answering the question “what are digital marketing tools?”
A digital marketing tool is any online resource that allows you to create content, monitor performance, or otherwise contribute to the success of your virtual promotion campaigns.
This includes social media tools, analytics tools, marketing automation tools, email marketing tools, and many other tools.
Your marketing mix, sometimes referred to as your marketing stack, is made up of all the tools you use to work on your promotional content.
To be successful, your marketing mix should contain resources that support all of your active campaigns.
That said, the only way to use a technical SEO (search engine optimization) platform or similar tool is to learn about its different features and implement the knowledge in a live environment.
If you want to find and implement the right tools by yourself, you’ll need to take the learning curve into consideration.
Small businesses may not always have the resources to cover the cost of the digital marketing tools and then invest a lot of time into learning how to use these new platforms.
By working with an experienced agency, you can enjoy the benefits of having the right digital marketing tools immediately without having to cover individual subscriptions for each one.
Types of Digital Marketing Tools
Before going over the top tools in digital marketing, it’s important to understand that different platforms serve distinct purposes.
This means that you’ll need to use more than one service at a time to create organic search and paid ad campaigns.
Digital marketing tools are categorized based on their function.
That said, there are hybrid platforms that allow you to perform actions across various channels, like managing social media accounts and sending email marketing blasts.
With that in mind, small business digital marketing tools are usually divided into the following categories:
- Project management solutions
- Social media management tools
- SEO (keyword research and optimization)
- Email marketing
- Pay-per-click or PPC
- Link building
- Organic web traffic sources, like search engines
- Paid traffic sources, like Google Ads
- Analytics tools, like Google Analytics
- Marketing automation
- Tracking and monitoring
- Content marketing tools
- Content management system or CMS
- Customer relationship management or CRM tool
Best Digital Marketing Tools for Your Small Business
Now that we’ve covered the basics of online promotion platforms, it’s time to go over our picks for the top digital marketing tools out there.
We’ve created a list of 16 digital marketing tools, ranging from CRMs to SEO tools and advanced analytics platforms.
Our goal was to find alternatives for small businesses looking to create a healthy stack that allows them to reach their target audience.
This list is by no means comprehensive — the only way to find the best mic is to develop a tailored digital marketing strategy for your business.
Once you have laid out your marketing strategy, you can look at the different goals you want to achieve and determine which tools your marketing team will need in the process.
Here are our picks for the best tools in the digital marketing space.
1. Hubspot – Hybrid
Whether it’s an SEO platform, email marketing tool, or customer relationships management solution, Hubspot can be categorized as many things.
The truth is that this platform is as all-inclusive as you can get in the world of digital marketing.
Hubspot can help you post and manage accounts on social media platforms, create email campaigns, and develop tailored landing pages.
Moreover, this digital marketing tool also supports your sales team because you can use it to track lead development, monitor conversions, and calculate your ROI.
2. AHREFS – Hybrid
AHREFS is regarded as one of the best online tools because it allows you to improve performance in multiple marketing channels.
For starters, AHREFS provides real-time website analytics from both a search engine’s and a webmaster’s perspective.
You can also use this platform to find relevant keywords for organic as well as paid campaigns.
This is a great alternative to the Google Keyword Planner because AHREFS provides more information about traffic volumes and SERP results.
3. Canva – Content Marketing
When most business owners think about a content digital marketing tool, they imagine a page creator or topic research platform.
However, visual content also plays a crucial role, so it’s also essential to have a reliable editing tool like Canva.
Whether you’re creating social media campaigns, email marketing sequences, or content marketing posts, Canva can help ensure that you have attractive visual elements throughout.
The platform features a drag-and-drop builder to help support your marketing efforts, plus you can use it as a free digital marketing tool and upgrade whenever your budget allows.
4. Yoast SEO for WordPress Website- SEO Tool
WordPress is regarded as the best platform for small business websites because of the SEO tools it features.
However, if we have to choose one tool within WordPress that has the most value, it has to be the Yoast SEO extension.
Yoast allows digital marketers to perform basic SEO optimization on the spot. It’s a free digital marketing tool that’s available to all WordPress users.
You’ll still need to perform higher-level optimization, but as far as free digital marketing tools go, Yoast should be one of the top alternatives on your list.
5. Google Analytics – Analytics Tool
Google Analytics is one of our favorite digital marketing tools because it’s powerful and it allows you to track performance on both organic and paid campaigns.
Through Google Analytics, you can see how many website visitors are generated by the different marketing channels you’re leveraging.
Furthermore, you can also see the performance of specific landing pages and make adjustments to your SEO strategy as well as your other marketing plans to get the best results.
Note that Google Analytics is not a paid tool, but you need to install it on your website and paid campaigns through a simple process in order to track the performance of these efforts.
6. Google Ads – PPC
PPC is known for delivering faster results than other types of digital marketing tools.
Google Ads is the biggest and more reliable PPC network that small businesses can work with, so it allows immediate access to your local target audience.
But, simply creating campaigns on this platform doesn’t guarantee success.
Google Ads campaigns need to be supported by appropriate keyword research, tailored landing pages, and email marketing campaigns that help generate conversions later on.
7. Trello – Project Management
Trello is a simple, cost-effective management tool that’s perfect for small businesses.
The platform offers a free version that’s still suitable for businesses that have basic marketing strategies.
The key to Trello’s unique structure is that it offers a visual guide that’s easy to understand by all users.
The platform allows you to create tasks, include resources, comment on the progress of each activity, and assign responsibilities to different users.
8. Buzzsumo – Content Marketing
One of the biggest challenges of content marketing is finding topics and ideas for your next blog post.
Major search engines aren’t designed to find trending data and social media trends can be hard to decipher.
Buzzsumo is a content tool designed to find topics to help while developing blogs and creating landing pages that engage potential customers.
9. Slack – Project Management
Slack is not a traditional management tool for projects, but it does have the ability to supercharge your digital marketing strategy by allowing efficient team communication.
In addition to allowing instant messaging, digital marketers that use Slack can include attachments, create groups, and leverage extensions to access tools like Google Drive directly from the platform.
It’s also simple to use, so companies can set it up and start using it right away to improve communications with their digital marketers.
10. Asana – Project Management
Asana is a dynamic project management tool designed to track campaigns through your different channels.
In addition to providing valuable insights that help you streamline your processes, Asana encourages your team members to share information and create a more fluid work environment.
11. Buffer – Social Media Management
Buffer is also among the top social media marketing tools, but for different reasons than Hootsuite.
While it’s still a powerful platform packed with great features, Buffer features a clean and simple interface.
This allows you to maneuver the platform seamlessly, but you can still conduct research, create drafts, and schedule posts in the most popular social channels.
Additionally, Buffer offers comprehensive analytics and the ability to collaborate with other team members on the same project.
12. Hootsuite – Social Media Management
No list of top tools for digital marketing is complete without Hootsuite.
This comprehensive social media management is the perfect alternative for small business owners that want to focus on Facebook and similar channels.
In short, Hootsuite allows your social media marketer to schedule posts, find the best hashtags, and track the performance of all the content you share.
Besides automating social media posts, this social media tool also tracks conversions and calculates your ROI.
This is perfect for small business social media marketing campaigns designed to attract social leads.
Hootsuite does have a few setbacks, namely, the fact that there is no free version and that it takes time to learn how to use the platform.
13. Hotjar – Analytics Tool
If you’re on the hunt for free digital marketing tools, Hotjar should be one of your top choices.
Hotjar is one of the top digital marketing tools for tracking because it provides a heatmap of where your visitors spent time on your site.
The free version of Hotjar is only suitable for businesses that have fewer than 1,000 visitors per month, but it does offer unlimited heatmaps on the sessions it tracks.
Its paid version brings a variety of superb features that, while different from those from conventional digital marketing analytics tools, still provide a huge amount of actionable information.
14. Marketo – Hybrid
If you want email, content, and social media marketing wrapped in one with a sprinkle of SEO on top, Marketo may be the right digital marketing tool for you.
Marketo allows you to automate a large number of marketing processes so that you can focus on creating a great experience for your customers.
It’s considered one of the overall best digital marketing tools because it can aid throughout the entire creation and deployment of your marketing strategy.
Like other comprehensive platforms, your in-house digital marketer will likely require some time to learn about all of Marketo’s great features.
That said, this digital marketing tool can save your team a significant amount of time while also building a strong connection with our audience through marketing automation.
15. Statista – SEO and Content Marketing
As the name suggests, Statista is a website that focuses on collecting relevant, reliable statistics on a huge range of subjects.
Why is it one of the top digital marketing tools then? Because it has the power to transform your content from good to transcendent.
Modern consumers focus heavily on facts and your marketing strategy should reflect that.
Instead of relying on gimmicks, Statista allows your digital marketer to create engaging content that’s backed by data.
All users have limited free access to Statista, so companies that want to leverage this digital marketing tool may have to cover its relatively high subscription. This may not be realistic for all small businesses.
But, with enough practice, you can learn to leverage the limited access to this platform in a major way.
16. Google Data Studio – Analytics
Google is constantly designing free digital marketing resources for companies and the Data Studio is one of the search giant’s latest creations.
Unlike other tracking digital marketing tools, the Google Data Studio allows you to pull information from various sources and condense them into tailored reports.
This includes sources like Facebook Ads, the Google Search Console (which barely missed the cut for this list), and a variety of additional sources.
Want to Create the Best Marketing Mix? Fannit is Here to Help
Finding the best digital marketing tools is all about understanding your company’s requirements.
Once you have a clear idea of what goals you need to achieve to succeed, you can create a list of marketing tools designed to help you attain these objectives.
Stay tuned to learn more about the best tools for your digital marketing campaign.
To find out more about working with Fannit, contact us today and our team will be glad to help.
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