If you don’t know your audience, put the tools down. Digital marketing tools are hugely advantageous to any marketer, but using them incorrectly is a dangerous game.
You wouldn’t pick up a chainsaw or a power drill before knowing how to use it. So, don’t use a tool until you have a true understanding of how it works unless you want a hypothetical limb cut off.
There are thousands of tools out there that someone you know, maybe your great aunt’s fifth cousin, would recommend for your marketing. I would say more tools than time would allow to use them.
I have collated some of the top tools that we use at our Google Premier Agency, that you need to put in your basket:
PPC Tools
Pay Per Click Advertising. Analysis and understanding data is key to winning with this channel, but there are a few tools to help you along the way.
Find the right keywords for your Search Ads by using Keyword Planner. It will show you the volume, trend and average CPC of specific keywords.
If you are nosey like me, put your hand up.
This free tool is great for analysing your competitor Ads. You can see their copy and media. You can use it to inspire Ads for your own business.
An insane tool for anyone looking for any type of information! Completely free, with millions of videos. Perfect for how-tos and tips from people who have been there and got the T-Shirt.
Shameless promotion here. We publish regular blogs to help our audience with their SEO and PPC Advertising. So, keep an eye out.
If you need bulk edits to your Google Ads, you need to be using Google Ads Editor. It will save you an insane amount of time.
If you are a marketer that has never heard of Canva, are you living under a rock? A free tool that is perfect for creating Facebook graphics. There are thousands of templates available to help ignite your creative juices, especially if you aren’t a graphic designer.
A secret gem. Pinterest is perfect for sparking ideas for Facebook Ads. Find images you like and use them as inspiration.
SparkToro is fantastic for creating targeting lists for your Facebook Ads. It shows you what your audience engage with on social media, what they talk about, what podcasts they listen to and what they read.
It allows you to create a strategy where you get in front of your audience. Too many businesses base their strategy on where they think their audience is!
You may be thinking, Carrianne, why is this in the PPC section when it’s a tool for SEO? Well, reader, hear me out. SEM Rush is fantastic for keyword research. You need keywords to run Search Ads (at the moment) and ones that people are searching for. SEM Rush provides this data. It allows you to find similar keywords, their CPC and your competitor’s Ads.
SEO Tools
The amount of clients that come to us that don’t have Google Analytics set up, keeps me awake at night.
It’s a tool that needs to be utilised by every single marketer, business owner, CEO and Founder in the world.
It tracks website traffic and if it is analysed correctly, gives an in-depth picture of the customer journey. It allows businesses to understand their customer and implement actions to improve the performance of their website.
Find out what searches are bringing your customers to your site. Use this information for your content strategy and keywords. This is what your customers are looking for, so create create create for them!
Review your index crawl, get alerted about issues and see how Google sees your site.
I feel sorry for BING. Did you know the biggest search term on BING is Google? That’s heartbreaking.
While Google may be the winner, BING still has active users. Shocking, I know. Therefore, you need to make sure you optimise your website to be competitive on BING. This tool shows you all the data you need to know.
You need to start where every good marketer should, with an in-depth website audit. Screaming Frog crawls your website to find out the performance of your SEO. Find broken links, redirects, meta and sitemaps (to name a few).
Once you have implemented the changes that it suggests, you are ready to dominate your industry with your organic marketing.
Find out how your business is shown online. Making sure your online directories all contain the same information is key. If your Google My Business page is showing you close at 8pm, but Facebook says 6pm, this will hinder your customer experience.
You don’t want little Billy upset because he turned up at the shop at 7pm to get his sweets when you do in fact close at 6pm.
Adding your website to directories secures you a link and we all know how fabulous that is.
SEM Rush is our go-to, we can’t live without this SEO tool. We would much rather give up our phones than our SEM Rush account.
It is fantastic for analysing your own website’s SEO efforts. Find keywords, link opportunities and position of your keywords.
While a staple for SEO, it’s the perfect all-rounder. Use SEM Rush to shape your PPC and content strategy too!
AHrefs is fantastic for finding keyword and linking opportunities. You can input your competitors’ keywords and find a whole host of data. You can identify a site’s top-performing content and its source of backlinks.
Not only is it great for competitor research, but for analysing the quality of your own SEO efforts.
Site Speed is one of Google’s most important ranking factors. GTmetrix is a free tool that analyses the speed of your site and your Core Web Vitals. Find out more about CWV here.
It breaks down the performance of your website and clearly outlines how you can fix it.
Don’t guess what people are searching for. Analyse the data to find out. Answer the public is a great tool for helping shape your content marketing strategy.
Just type in a keyword such as, “SEO” and find out what questions and topics to include in your content. This allows you to uphold an audience-centric approach to your content.
A great plugin for your WordPress site. Once you have uploaded your content on a page, it will give you an SEO and readability score. Find out what you need to include to improve your scores, improve your rankings and increases your sales & leads.
Not only do broken links hinder your SEO, they ruin your user experience. Angry customers are scary, so don’t risk it.
Broken Link Checker analyses your website and finds any broken links, exactly what it says on the tin.
Nobody wants to end up on that dreaded 404 page.
Arguably my favourite tool. If you write a lot of content and copy, you have to download the Grammarly extension.
In my opinion, grammar is getting less and less scrutinised. Good copy is fast becoming “write as you talk” and if you have ever added subtitles to a video, you know people don’t speak properly.
However, if your grammar is poor, it looks bad. This could hinder your business’ reputation and credibility.
How do I choose what digital marketing tool to use?
As you can see in this blog, there isn’t a shortage of digital marketing tools. I recommend trying out different tools and finding your little gems.
If you need any help with your SEO or PPC Advertising, book a free discovery call with the team today.
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