By Ajay Yadav
Are you a small business owner looking to launch your first digital marketing campaign? You are not alone. With the help of digital marketing tools, you can reach out to potential customers worldwide and grow your business.
Source: UnSplash
Whether you are a solopreneur, a small team, or a growing company, having the right tools at your disposal can make a difference. In this blog post, let us explore ten essential digital marketing tools that cater to every budget, helping you achieve your marketing goals effectively and efficiently.
Bonus: Creative Marketing: 5 Key Benefits With Examples
Why Is Digital Marketing Important For Businesses?
Source: Pexels
Digital marketing plays a crucial role in the success of businesses in today’s landscape. Digital marketing encompasses several strategies, including content marketing, email marketing, PPC advertising, and SEO.
By engaging with your customers regularly, you can build brand loyalty, increase customer satisfaction and generate more sales.
Bonus: New to Digital Marketing? Here’s a Beginner’s Guide to SERP!
Now, let us explore ten effective digital marketing tools you need when starting a business.
1. Website Design
Your website is the face of your business, and it is the first thing potential customers will see. Invest in a good website design to make a perfect first impression. Your website should be easy to navigate and have a modern design with all the information about your business displayed.
Source: Pexels
Look at these tools that help you design your website without much effort.
a) WordPress
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that offers a vast library of themes and plugins for website design. While the core software is free, you may incur domain registration and web hosting costs. Pricing for hosting typically starts at around $3 to $10 per month, depending on the hosting provider and plan.
Source: WordPress
b)Wix
Wix is a user-friendly website builder that offers a drag-and-drop interface and a range of templates. Wix has both free and premium plans, including AI-powered website building options. The premium plans remove Wix ads and provide additional features and storage, ranging from $14 to $39 per month.
Source: Wix
2. SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential digital marketing concept for any business. SEO helps your website rank higher on search engine results pages, which means more people are more likely to find your website. It involves optimizing your website’s content and structure and creating content that will show in search engine results.
Invest in SEO optimization and use the right keywords, backlinks, and content to make sure your website is visible to potential customers.
a) SEMrush
Drive organic traffic and optimize your website with SEMrush. It offers comprehensive keyword research, competitor analysis, and SEO tools suitable for businesses with varying budgets.
Source: SEMrush
SEMrush offers an intuitive and robust interface, enabling you to effortlessly discover highly targeted keywords for your SEO campaigns and content creation. Additionally, it provides a comprehensive Social Media Toolkit equipped with advanced analytics to help you gain valuable insights into your social media performance.
Price: Paid SEMrush plans range from $119.95/month to $449.95/month
It is for Marketers, SEO strategists, small business owners, and marketing teams for enterprise-level corporations.
b) Ahrefs
Gain insights into your competitor’s strategies, track backlinks, and enhance your SEO efforts with Ahrefs. With its range of plans, including affordable options, Ahrefs caters to businesses at different stages.
With Ahrefs, you can find profitable keywords that can rapidly elevate your website’s ranking.
Source: Ahrefs
Price: Ahrefs has a host of free SEO tools anyone can use. Paid plans range from $99/month to $999/month.
It is for Marketers, SEO strategists, small business owners, and marketing teams for enterprise-level corporations.
3. Graphic Design & Video Editing
Content marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tools. Create content that is interesting, engaging, and relevant to your target audience. You can use videos, blog posts, infographics, Instagram reels, or other forms of content to reach potential customers.
a) Simplified (Free Forever)
Simplified is a versatile digital marketing tool that excels in graphic design and video marketing. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, Simplified empowers businesses of all sizes to create captivating visuals and engaging videos effortlessly.
Source: Simplified
With a vast library of templates, customizable elements, and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can create eye-catching social media graphics, website banners, infographics, and more.
With Simplified, you can easily create professional videos to promote products, engage audiences, and tell compelling stories. With pre-designed video templates, customizable text, images, and footage options, businesses can produce attention-grabbing video content without prior video editing experience.
b) Adobe Creative Cloud
For more advanced design needs, Adobe Creative Cloud offers a suite of powerful tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. It has plans suited for freelancers, small businesses, and larger enterprises.
Source: Adobe
Adobe Creative Cloud individual app plans start from $9.99 per month, and all Apps plan for US$52.99 per month.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of digital marketing. It is a great way to stay top-of-mind with your customers and nurture leads. Invest in an email marketing platform and create engaging content that speaks to your target audience.
a) Mailchimp
Build and manage email campaigns with ease using Mailchimp. It offers a free plan for startups and budget-friendly options as your subscriber list grows.
Source: Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform. They offer tools for automation, insight, content creation, and audience data.
b) Sender
Sender offers affordable (yet powerful) email marketing software ideal for startups, small businesses, and e-commerce stores. Its Free Forever plan has all the email features you need to boost engagement and drive sales.
Key functionalities include email automation, advanced segmentation, drag-and-drop email builder, responsive templates, and detailed analytics & reports. Everything to help you create personalized and targeted email campaigns for your subscribers.
5. Social Networking
Social media can be a great way to reach potential customers. Choose the right social media platforms and create content that resonates with your target audience. Monitor comments and reviews and use them as an opportunity to connect with potential customers.
a)Simplified (Free Forever)
Simplified is not only a graphic design and video marketing tool but also a comprehensive social media marketing platform that offers all the necessary features in a single, user-friendly platform.
Simplified simplifies managing multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard. You can schedule and publish posts across various networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. This centralized approach saves time and effort, ensuring consistent and timely content delivery.
Source: Simplified
With its graphic design and video editing features, you can produce eye-catching visuals, compelling videos, and animated graphics. It streamlines the content creation process and eliminates the need for multiple tools. It provides in-depth analytics to measure the performance of social media campaigns. You can track engagement, follower growth, reach, and other key metrics across different social media platforms.
Bonus: The Best Marketing Memes to Enter 2023 With
b) Hootsuite
Manage all your social media platforms from one centralized dashboard, schedule posts, and monitor engagement effortlessly. Hootsuite offers both free and paid plans, accommodating budgets of all sizes.
Source: HootSuite
The Hootsuite Analytics features come with every Hootsuite plan, starting as low as $99 per month. It is for Content creators, brand managers, marketers, and small and large business owners.
6. Analytics
You can measure the success of your digital marketing efforts using a variety of data-driven tools and analytics. These tools can provide invaluable insights into who is engaging with your campaigns, which channels are driving the most results, and how effective your content strategies are at achieving your goals.
It will help you optimize your campaigns and ensure you’re getting the most out of your digital marketing efforts.
a) Google Analytics
Track and analyze website traffic, user behavior, and conversions with the industry-standard tool Google Analytics. It is free to use and provides valuable insights for businesses of all sizes.
Source: Google Analytics
By leveraging the power of website analytics, you can view valuable insights into visitor interactions, monitor marketing campaigns, and gather essential data about your customer demographics. This information helps you optimize your website and campaigns to enhance user engagement and boost conversions effectively. And the best part is Google Analytics is free for everyone.
b) Hotjar
Uncover user behaviour and optimize your website with Hotjar. Its heatmaps, visitor recordings, and conversion funnel analysis can help you make data-driven decisions at an affordable price.
Source: Hotjar
Hotjar offers a set of invaluable features that prove indispensable in creating user journey maps and gaining insights into areas of your UX that require enhancement.
7. Productivity and Collaboration
Productivity and collaboration tools are essential for businesses to streamline their workflows, enhance communication, and maximize efficiency. With remote working ruling now, water cooler chats and boardroom meetings have no room.
a) Trello
Stay organized and collaborate seamlessly with Trello’s intuitive project management tool. It’s free to use, making it a great choice for teams on a budget.
Source: Trello
With its user-friendly interface, flexible structure, and robust collaboration features, Trello is a valuable tool for project management and team coordination. It promotes transparency, improves task visibility, and helps teams stay organized and focused on achieving their goals.
b) Slack
Slack is a popular productivity tool designed to streamline communication, collaboration, and teamwork within organizations.
It offers real-time messaging, file sharing, and integrations with third-party apps. Features include channels for organized discussions, direct messaging, voice and video calls, file sharing, powerful search capabilities, and customizable notifications.
Source: Slack
Slack’s mobile and desktop apps ensure connectivity and productivity from anywhere. With its focus on real-time communication and collaboration, Slack improves team efficiency and overall productivity.
c) Uniqode
Most social media platforms limit the number of links you can add to your bio, restricting the number of campaigns you can promote at a time. This is where link-in bio tools such as Linkpage come in.
The link page is Uniqode’s mobile-first landing page builder that can host multiple links.
Conclusion (+ Simplified)
No matter your budget, these essential digital marketing tools will empower your business to thrive in the competitive online landscape. From social media management and SEO to design and collaboration, there’s a tool for every aspect of your marketing strategy.
Simplified offers a comprehensive suite of features, making it your one-stop solution for all your digital marketing needs. From graphic design and video marketing to social media management, analytics, email marketing, and productivity tools, Simplified empowers you to streamline your marketing efforts within a single platform. Experience the power of Simplified today.
Invest in the right tools, maximize your resources, and propel your business toward digital success in 2023 and beyond.
