Nowadays, a business is not just about selling a product or a service. It is less about what you have to offer and more about how you offer it. With so many players leveling the field, taking a different approach to marketing is imperative. This is why businesses aim to engage through relevant tools that attract customers on a deeper level. Hence traditional marketing methods are now being consistently replaced by digital marketing efforts.
Building your brand’s story in a relatable way will help you connect with the right audience. And how you do it is no rocket science. If you wish to connect with your customers, you need to be where they are – on the internet. A strong digital presence is considered the holy grail of marketing by every kind of agency – small or large.
So what is digital marketing? Marketing digitally means targeting your customers on the internet using multiple channels. For a new player, online marketing may look like a completely new terrain. There are so many aspects of digital marketing that it can be mind-boggling at first. Content creation, email marketing, social media, lead management, SEO, web traffic analysis – the list goes on. However, fret not. There are many digital tools to help you automate those tedious and complicated marketing tasks.
Whether you are just starting out as a digital marketing agency or an already established one, automating your digital marketing process is important. It will help you save time, increase efficiency and simplify your marketing efforts. You have a digital marketing tool for everything, right from email marketing to web page analytics, website builders for SEO to upselling and cross-selling tools. Integrate these tools in your marketing pipeline to create a stronger web presence.
Best Digital Marketing Tools in 2021:
1. Hubspot
It is an all-in-one software solution that helps you manage blogs, landing pages, email marketing, lead management, analytics, CMS, social media, SEO. The platform comprises a Marketing Hub, a Sales Hub, a Service Hub, and a powerful free CRM tool. The best part of this solution is their Freemium and Enterprise pricing, making it affordable even to freelancers.
Features:
- Traffic and conversion analytics
- Email marketing management
- SEO analysis and research
- Social media management
- Marketing automation
- Predictive lead scoring
- Customer service automation
- Blog & content creation and distribution
- SEO and content strategy
- Lead generation tools
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the best digital marketing tools in the market. It is an all-in-one online visibility management platform that takes care of your SEO, Paid Traffic, Social Media, Content & PR, and Market Research. The platform lets you do a site audit, collect benchmark data, get SEO ideas, and much more. You can even do a competitor’s research analysis, view their backlinks and track their keyword strategies. It is one of the best SEO tools in the market.
Features:
- Site/domain and keyword analysis
- Competitor SEO analysis
- On-page SEO
- Web Page/website rank tracking
- Social Media Management
- Link building and competitor’s backlink analysis
- Market analysis
- Competitor PR monitoring
- Content creation and distribution
3. Mapify360
Mapify360 is a cloud-based service that helps you find unclaimed or unoptimized local leads. Sounds interesting? Well, it surely is a different and effective approach to digital marketing. Business leads that have not yet been properly explored are defined here through Google Maps. Once you identify the local businesses that are not yet optimized, you can jump in with your optimization services.
Features:
- Identify unlimited local leads with the help of Google Maps
- Reveal “Google My Business” optimization issues
- SEO optimization reports
- Identify bad reviews for “Google My Business”
- Help client rank their business
4. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a comprehensive digital marketing tool that combines email marketing, SMS marketing, CRM, and ad retargeting. The platform automates outbound emails according to the digital behaviour of users. Engaging with your customers and generating leads have never been easier.
Features:
- Email campaign
- Marketing automation
- SMS campaign
- Facebook ads management
- CRM
- Ads retargeting
- Chatbots
- Transaction emails
- Dedicated landing page for each campaign
5. Mailchimp
Initially Mailchimp started off as a leading email-marketing management software. Now it has evolved into a full-fledged marketing automation solution. The platform offers a robust email-marketing management with e-commerce integration tools. It covers all your marketing needs, right from custom domains to automation and campaign analysis.
Features:
- Custom domains
- Pre Built templates to create and distribute sm posts, emails, landing pages and digital ads
- Planning and scheduling marketing calendar
- Email automation
- Reports and analytics
- A/B testing
- Integration with ecommerce tools like Shopify, Woocommerce and Magento
6. Marketo
Marketo is a leading marketing automation platform by Adobe. It combines customer data with analytics to bring about a personalized engagement. From account based marketing to web personalization, it covers almost all kinds of marketing strategies to engage and retain customers.
Features:
- Email marketing
- Content personalization
- Cross-channel engagement
- Sales insight and analytics
- Predictive audiences and content
- Account profiling
- Website personalization
7. Campaign Monitor
An email marketing tool that allows you to automate the process and engage with your customers efficiently. Its preset templates, clean and simple interface and custom auto-responders make email-marketing a piece of cake.
Features:
- A/B testing
- Automated drip campaigns
- Mobile optimized emails
- Data segmentation
- Campaign monitor and analysis
- Data import and export tools
- Subscriber list management
8. Google Analytics
It is one of the most popular business intelligence tools in the market, and not without good reason. Google Analytics provides access to a massive amount of data that gives in-depth insights into customer behaviour. Although it has a steep learning curve, the efforts are well worth it, given the free access. Combined with other google marketing tools, it becomes a powerhouse unmatched by any other platforms. It also has an enterprise version, Google Analytics 360, that packs additional features.
Features:
- Realtime reporting
- Audience report – demographics, traffic source, conversions, behaviour
- Detailed metrics – page views, sessions, bounce rate
- Customisable metrics and segments – including users, sessions and hits
- Cohort analysis
- Engagement report
- Mobile app analysis and reporting
- Multiple property management
9. Cake
Cake is a cloud-based affiliate marketing software that gives clarity and insights to your marketing campaigns. It uses custom targeting and whitelisting to generate reports on partner and campaign performance. Manage your campaigns, generate and track leads, optimize conversions and much more with this tool.
Features:
- Ad performance tracking
- Network performance tracking
- Cookieless tracking
- Custom links
- Comprehensive reporting and insights
- Lead generation and distribution
- Automated lead management
- Affiliate and multichannel marketing
10. Textedly
Textedly is an SMS marketing management platform that includes a wide range of features for an effective text message campaign. It offers mass texting, auto-responders, and text scheduling, along with campaign insights. Send up to 100000 text messages at once, track their delivery and build an opt-in subscriber list. Their Zapier integration will allow you to integrate Textedly with over 1,000+ apps.
Features:
- Planning and scheduling SMS campaigns
- Contact management
- Auto-responders
- Analytics and insights
- Free incoming text message
- Multimedia messaging
The Best Digital Marketing Tool is…
As a digital marketing agency, there is a wide range of services that you can cater to. The top digital marketing tool is the one that is the best fit for your business. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” platform here.
An effective digital marketing strategy will require several A/B tests, trials and errors to optimize the results. It also needs multiple channels to broadcast your ads in a targeted fashion. While SEMrush is more comprehensive in its features, tools like Textedly focus more on a specific campaign type. Choose your tool according to your trade, and you can never go wrong.