The Importance of Building Your Brand
Brands rule the world, because people trust recognizable names. To create your brand, you need to work on elements such as your logo, tagline, concepts, business principles and more. All of them will help build an image of your company. The more positive feedback you accumulate online, the more credible and trustworthy you’ll appear to potential customers.
Creating your brand is the way to grow your income. Your audience trusts you and comes back to you again and again, which reduces the costs of attracting an audience. To monetize your traffic, join the Travelpayouts affiliate network for free and earn on flight tickets, hotels, car rental, and other travel services.
Online Digital Marketing Tools for Your Business
What are digital marketing tools? This is online software that helps automate marketing campaigns and grow your business. They facilitate promotion in different areas of digital marketing – advertising, social media, etc.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the best online marketing tools.
How does it work? Google Analytics automatically collects data from your website and generates a deep analysis of its traffic – where visitors come from, how they act and how long they stay on the webpage, as well as their gender, age and interests. It helps clarify what potential consumers are looking for once they land on your website and answers the question of why they leave, it if that’s the case.
It’s possible to customize your account and see only the metrics that you need. The tool is compatible with other platforms, including Google Ads, and suitable for various types of websites, including blogs, e-commerce websites and more.
Google Ads
Google Ads is one of the most popular advertising platforms available today. Advertisements appear with a green label “Ads” in Google search results at the top of the page. Marketers bid on specific keywords that they want to be shown for and then pay for the clicks users make on their ads.
Even though the tool is free to sign up, you’ll be required to set up your budget for the auction. The average cost per click (CPC) on Google Ads depends on the keyword and niche, but it is approximately $2.32 on the search and $0.58 on the display network.
Google Ads is a versatile service for any business size and industry. While the campaign is running, the platform also provides recommendations to improve your ads, keywords and budget. Google Keyword Planner can help you optimize keywords and make your ad more appealing.
Renderforest
This is a versatile service for creating various kinds of visual and audio content for your brand including logos, animations, music visualizations, videos, presentations, slideshows, landing pages and even a website. The best thing is that the tool is easy to use and doesn’t require any technical or design skills.
You can start with a Free plan that gives you access to all the basic features, but you’ll only be able to export your projects with watermarks.
Canva
Canva is one of the most popular online tools for making creative content. The platform offers a drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to create any design you wish with a great variety of layouts, templates and design elements to choose from. Basically, you can do anything from a photo collage to an album cover or a Facebook ad.
Canva offers a free plan allowing you to design anything, but without access to the library of photos, fonts, etc. To get more features, you can try a Pro plan, which has a 14-day free trial. Canva also features a blog with tips on design, marketing, branding, photography and more.
Xtensio
Xtensio is a super flexible business communications platform where teams easily create and share beautiful living documents. Over 350,000 webmasters, agencies, consultants, entrepreneurs and educators use Xtensio to build smarter documents.
The free plan offers 2 folios and 2 weeks of revision history. Otherwise, you can choose among multiple premium options.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best SEO digital marketing tools for keyword and backlink research. It allows you to conduct keyword research: what keywords drive most of your competitors’ traffic, what keywords you rank for now, which ones you’ve missed, and more. Also, Ahrefs helps analyze the backlink profile of rival companies so that you can see which sources you can use too for increasing your ranking.
Ahrefs features a blog and a YouTube channel with marketing tutorials that will help any aspiring blogger to get their business off the ground. You can start with a seven-day trial for $7 only and then go premium (from $99 per month). Purchasing an annual plan will save you the two-months worth of cost.
Slack
Slack is definitely among the most popular digital marketing tools for 2020. It is an online workspace for both small firms and big enterprises.
Slack allows users to reach the whole team and helps them communicate in a single interface. You can start a private channel with one person or a public channel to involve a few members at once. Another great feature is that you can start a new thread to any message in the chat to not “pollute” the main conversation.
The notification system ensures that every team member stays informed of what is going on in the workspace. All conversations are saved in the history, and you can access them anytime.
Finally, you can use a few different workspaces at once, easily switching between them when necessary.
Slack offers both desktop and mobile versions and features two paid plans from $6.67 to $12.50 per user per month. You can pay monthly or annually and cancel your subscription at any time. Large businesses can request customized solutions.
Trello
Trello is another example of the most popular digital marketing tools for online collaboration. It allows you to create various boards and delegate tasks to your team members to ensure easy communication and project management. You can give assignments, change their status, mark priority, send notifications, add comments and much more. It’s possible to customize backgrounds and set privacy filters. The only drawback is the lack of reporting.
Trello features a desktop version and mobile apps for Android and iOS. Also, it can be integrated with Slack for better project management. There is a fully-functional free version with up to 10MB per file attachment. Premium pricing starts from $9.99 per user per month if billed annually.
Asana
Asana is another great tool for project management. One of its main features is a timeline allowing users to build an efficient road to success for their business. Asana also offers to streamline your team members, processes, create and monitor accountability, build calendars and schedules, and many other features.
On top of that, Asana is completely customizable and provides an opportunity to simultaneously manage several projects within your company in a single interface.
The program is free for the teams with up to 15 members, and you can upgrade to access more features and invite more colleagues (from $10.99 per user per month if billed annually).
Zoom
Zoom is a video conferencing software that companies use to conduct meetings, training, reports, interviews, workshops, courses and other events where team member visibility is crucial. The platform maintains privacy and saves the efficiency of remote collaboration.
Zoom offers:
- High-quality video and sound.
- The opportunity to share screens.
- The option of recording meetings and storing them (MP4 or M4A formats).
- Breakout rooms for small groups.
- Phone support and a personal customer service manager.
- Cloud recording transcripts.
- Personal customer service manager.
- ROI tracking.
You can conduct free 40-minute long online meetings with up to 100 members or go premium (from $14.99/mo/host).
Zoho
Zoho is a versatile software that fits businesses of any size. This platform contains several online digital marketing tools for various departments within your company:
- Sales and marketing: Signup forms, surveys, e-commerce, bookings, contact managers, etc.
- Finance: Invoices, expenses, subscriptions, checkouts, inventory, etc.
- Email and collaboration: Work drive, docs, sheets, bug tracker, etc.
- IT and help desk: Mobile device management, identity management, log management cloud, etc.
- Human Resources: Recruiting and more.
Pricing depends on the options you purchase. For example, CRM costs $12 to $100 per user per month (if billed annually). There is a free plan allowing up to three users per month and limited functionality.
Wix
Wix is a free website builder with a drag-and-drop editor to create a full-packed web resource. No coding is required, as you can choose from tons of templates and images in the library. The builder is easy to use, which fits beginners perfectly, and offers advanced features at the same time.
With Wix, you can create a website, connect a domain and hosting, do SEO optimization, advertise your blog on Google, create logos for social media, and more.
You can use Wix for free, but your domain name will be rather long and contain the word “Wix,” which doesn’t add any credibility to a website. Otherwise, there are various premium subscriptions.
Buffer
Buffer helps manage social media and increase your presence to drive more traffic. It allows you to schedule posts, track their performance, interact with the target audience and analyze the behavior of subscribers. For example, you can get insights into what they are most interested in and tailor your campaigns accordingly.
Buffer allows you to handle several accounts in one interface which is very convenient if you want to be present on all major networks. For teams, there is an option of multi-user cooperation. Also, Buffer has a browser extension for accumulating posts that you’ve liked from various sources to be able to access them later.
Premium accounts start from $15 per month depending on the number of features. You can test the program with a seven-day or 14-day free trial.
Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is a great content marketing platform. Just enter a keyword or URL (to work with the backlink feature) and see the trending topics. It’s also possible to hook up your Facebook account to BuzzSumo to analyze your presence within this social media platform.
BuzzSumo provides:
- Content discovery: Browse topics, trends and forums to spark new ideas.
- Content research: Look through billions of indexed posts to find inspiration or research the market.
- Find influencers to network.
- Track what is going on in your niche.
- Monitor your brand mentions.
BuzzSumo offers a seven-day free trial. Premium plans start from $99 per month.
Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service platform developed to increase the efficiency of communication between a seller and a customer. The service tracks, prioritizes and solves tickets for customer issues. You can use various channels for customer interactions in a single interface, including phone, chat, email, social media and more.
Zendesk features five premium plans with a free trial for four of them. The prices start from $5 per agent per month.
Facebook Live
Facebook Live allows you to stream video via your mobile device camera to communicate with followers in real time. Broadcasting is a great technique for promoting goods/services, sharing valuable information, as well as expanding your audience.
Viewers can share videos, leave comments and more. It is a perfect way to build an online community and stay in touch with them anytime, anywhere.
The tool is completely free and it is available to all Facebook registered users.
Proof
Proof analyzes the activity on your website. It sends notifications of leads and purchases, helps make a great experience for each visitor and inserts calls-to-action that adapt to user’s behavior and change along the way.
Proof helps:
- Increase conversions by analyzing your website visitors behavior and helps convert them into customers.
- Reduce costs of advertising by improving its efficiency.
- Show your product’s popularity and increase your brand credibility.
You can also set up various types of notifications:
- Hot Streaks. You’ll see how many people have recently made a purchase.
- Live Visitor Count. This feature shows the total number of real-time website visitors.
- Recent Activity. You’ll get notified of any recent activity, whether it was a signup or purchase.
The pricing depends on your traffic and starts from $24 per month for up to 2K visitors. You can start with a 14-day free trial for any plan you like.
Surveymonkey
SurveyMonkey is developed for launching any type of online survey for a wide variety of objectives including market research, vote, competitive analysis, purchaser/employee’s feedback, etc. You can create surveys with blank spaces for answers or offer answer options.
The app will generate a link to a survey, and you can send it via email or social media network, as well as place it on your website. Once the survey is done, you can analyze customer feedback and build a content marketing strategy based on what you get.
Also, the tool allows you to measure your employees’ engagement and even accept payments with online forms.
The free plan offers unlimited surveys with up to 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. Otherwise, you can choose among multiple premium options.
Buildfire
BuildFire is a mobile app builder. The platform features drag-and-drop UI, SDK, plenty of customizable design templates, and more. With this tool, you’ll be able to build an app yourself, since no coding experience is required.
There are three ways in which you can take advantage of BuildFire:
- Build an app for yourself.
- Order an app from the BuildFire team.
- Create apps for your clients and sell them.
The service offers a 30-day free trial and a few premium plans (from $53 per month).
Best Digital Marketing Tools and Techniques for Your Brand
Consider your brand’s specialties and business objectives before choosing the appropriate software. For example, to improve social media presence, you can use Facebook Live and Buffer, while managing your project and teamwork can be easier with essential digital marketing tools such as Asana, Slack or Trello. If you are not sure which program to choose, start with a free trial or a free basic plan to see how it works in practice.