Technology is amazing. Although it has its pitfalls, it has allowed us to streamline so many processes, automate innumerable tasks, and connect with countless audiences. This has been especially true for the digital marketing industry. Today, there are hundreds of apps, platforms, and tools for marketing your business online. So many, in fact, that it can be overwhelming trying to decide which apps to invest in and which to pass on. Ultimately, the best tools for your business will depend on your company’s goals and unique needs. However, there are a few tools that we here at KWSM find indispensable, and we’re letting you in on the best that’s out there. Below, we’ve rounded up the top four digital marketing tools for marketing your small business online.
Google Analytics – Website Analytics
Google Analytics a free software tool, and it’s an essential tools for effective digital marketing. When it comes to analyzing your company’s online presence and website statistics, Google Analytics offers important metrics. The site is particularly vital because it helps you make informed decisions regarding your online marketing strategy, such as what type of content to post and what social media channels to invest in for driving traffic. Some of the more useful insights the platform provides include:
- Website traffic: the number of visitors coming to your site
- Acquisition channels: the sites or social media apps are funneling visitors to your site
- Session duration: the length of time each visitor spends on your site
- Top pages: the most viewed pages on your site
These are just some of the metrics provided. As you gain a better understanding of your site and the behavior patterns of your site’s visitors, you will begin to understand other more detailed insights featured on the platform, too. As such, this is one marketing tool that you definitely want to use.
MailChimp – Email Marketing
MailChimp is a marketing automation and email marketing service platform. The site allows you to create and automate your email marketing efforts, and also provides insights on how each email performs with statistics on open rates and clicks, among other metrics. In addition to email marketing campaigns, you can also use MailChimp for creating social ads, landing pages, and even as a CRM database. Although there are other email marketing platforms on the market, the KWSM team favors MailChimp for its user-friendly interface and its cost-effective pricing. The tiered plans include a free monthly option but range up to $299 per month for their premium services.
Canva – Design
Canva is a powerful visual design platform that boasts a user-friendly drag-and-drop system for creating aesthetically pleasing marketing materials. With the app, users can create a host of marketing collateral, from social media posts with preset size dimensions for many popular post types (such as Instagram Stories, Facebook posts, Pinterest pin posts, etc.) to flyers, presentations, and even infographics. Additionally, the platform offers countless design themes and templates for each type of content. As visuals in marketing are becoming increasingly more critical in enticing people to interact with your content, having an easy-to-use platform like Canva is a must-have for businesses, particularly those without the budget to hire experienced graphic designers. The company offers a rather robust free version, but for higher-level graphic design elements (such as adding transparent backgrounds to graphics), access to more premium photos, and adding branding and team collaboration capabilities, they offer Canva for Work at $12.95 a month for teams or custom pricing for enterprises.
Grammarly – Blogging and General Content Editing
One hallmark of top content is the well-written copy, and Grammarly allows us all to be excellent grammarians. This cloud-based platform is an editing application that scans your uploaded text for proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. At KWSM, we love Grammarly as it offers a second pair of eyes over our content and is particularly helpful with editing blog articles. The site also offers an Internet browser extension for use when drafting emails and performing other online writing tasks. The company provides a free version, but for more advanced editing features such as checking for overused words, analyzing sentence structure or scanning for plagiarism, there is a premium version for $29.95 per month.
The Internet is vast, and reaching your audience can be daunting with the many platforms and tools available on the market. We hope that this list has provided you with a starting point of where to invest your digital marketing dollars to help your business grow. But remember, while each of these tools is great and targets a specific pain-point in the online marketing process, they only aid your digital marketing efforts. For a more in-depth and tailored digital marketing strategy, you may want to consider hiring a dedicated digital marketing team like KWSM.
Did you know? Nearly all small businesses (95%) will increase their spending on digital marketing this year, indicating that digital marketing is a valuable, high-return investment.
If you’re looking to invest more in digital marketing for your business but don’t know where to start, give us a call. KWSM is a full-service digital marketing agency, and we specialize it transforming small businesses through online marketing.
Click here to learn what we can do for your business.
