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Jef van de Graaf

Copywriter | Entrepreneur | World Traveler

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37 Digital Marketing Tools to Grow Your Business

January 22, 2021 //  by Jef//  Leave a Comment

15 min read
Digital Marketing Tools

Whether you’re starting or optimizing a business, you need digital marketing tools to help grow and scale your profit. This list contains the best digital marketing tools to do just that, from social media management to performance analytics.

Many of the digital marketing tools on this list I personally use to grow my businesses. Others may be recommendations I got from friends and colleagues in my network.

You don’t need to use EVERY tool in this list for your digital marketing efforts. Remember, any tool you adopt comes with a period of learning, which can slow you down.

However, as you master an essential tool for your business, you can effectively increase your productivity and accelerate your profitability.

Digital Marketing Tools Quick List

  1. Affiliate Marketing
  2. Content Creation
  3. Content Curation
  4. Customer Service
  5. Email Marketing
  6. Lead Generation
  7. Influencer Marketing
  8. Scheduling
  9. Search Engine Optimization
  10. Social Media Tools
  11. Podcast & Video
  12. Project Management
  13. Website Analytics
  14. Website Testing
  15. Miscellaneous Digital Marketing Tools

PLEASE NOTE: SOME OF THE DIGITAL MARKETING TOOLS IN THIS ARTICLE CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. THIS MEANS I MAY EARN A COMMISSION IF YOU CHOOSE TO PURCHASE ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE. CLICKING ON AN AFFILIATE LINK DOESN’T CHANGE THE PRICE YOU WOULD NORMALLY. THE COMMISSIONS I RECEIVE ARE SMALL, BUT EVERY BIT HELPS TO SUPPORT THIS BLOG. SO, THANKS!

IF YOU SEE A YELLOW 🟊 IT MEANS I PERSONALLY USE THIS DIGITAL MARKETING TOOL FOR MY BUSINESS AND PROJECTS.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a smart way to encourage others to sell products or services on behalf of your brand. Each time an affiliate earns a sale, they receive a pre-determined percentage. The following affiliate marketing tools can be used to set up agreements with your brand and for people to sign up to be affiliate marketers.

1. CJ Affiliate

CJ affiliate is one of the biggest affiliate marketing platforms. It is one of the best platforms to get your products or services picked up by high-quality marketers. CJ has a huge network of bloggers and advertisers to help you quickly scale your business based on affiliate marketing.

2. Shareasale 🟊

Shareasale is an affiliate marketing platform used by big brands like Etsy, Groupon, and BuzzFeed. The platform focuses on building long-term relationships with partners to build trust and familiarity with your business. In 2019, Shareasale generated more than $150m from their network of 15,000+ merchants and 200,000+ publishers.

Shareasale Affiliae Marketing Tools
Here’s an inside look at the Shareasale dashboard. You can browse thousands of merchants and apply as an affiliate marketer.

3. Impact 🟊

Impact uses a different terminology by calling themselves a “partnership” platform. They partner with world-leading brands such as Walmart, Microsoft, and Lenovo. Affiliates on this platform must meet Impact’s quality standards to ensure partners get the most out of their relationships.

Content Creation

4. Adobe 🟊

Adobe is famous for its comprehensive suite of creativity tools. From video production to image design, Adobe offers a robust set of digital marketing tools. However, they may not be the quickest to pick up as they require a bit of learning and a lot of practice to master.

I use Adobe for all my creative, visual content. Above you’ll see the cover photo I created in Photoshop for this post.

5. Canva

Canva has become one of the most popular creativity tools on the market. It offers a simple graphic design tool to create social media and other digital assets in a few clicks. Canva’s ease of use helps you pump out more content faster. However, the overuse of generic templates can steal the unique spark out of your brand’s identity.

6. Envato Market 🟊

Envato Market is a robust marketplace for templates, designs, images, and more. You can also find high-quality WordPress themes to get a new website up and running in no time. If you’re looking for stock photos and video clips, you can explore millions of beautiful ideas on Envato Elements.

Content Curation

7. Feedly

Feedly is a news aggregator platform that curates the internet’s best content and displays them into feeds. Users can customize their feeds to receive and share content based on interests and topics. Also, you can use Feedly to monitor brands and other content creators in your niche to capture your audiences’ relevant content.

8. Scoop.it

Scoop.it is a mix between content curation and social network. You can discover and share relevant content to your social network or blog while uploading content to be shared by others.

9. Kapost

Kapost is a powerful platform that lets you plan, curate, distribute, and analyze all your content marketing efforts. You can also define unique audience attributes to your content to showcase which stages in a customer’s buyer journey a prospect is most likely to convert.

Customer Service

10. Hubspot

Hubspot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketers, sale teams, and customer support. They provide all the tools and resources to help you build an effective lead generation system and customer experience.

I tried HubSpot for a month, but it was above and beyond what I needed as a solopreneur. However, I’m always reading their blog for digital marketing tips and tricks. You should check ’em out.

11. Freshdesk

Freshdesk offers a combination of support tools such as chatbots, customer ticketing, team collaboration, and much more. The platform boasts its use of AI and machine learning to automate processes to make your business highly efficient.

12. Zendesk

Zendesk is an easy-to-use customer service platform that can be set up in a few hours. From creating a self-guided knowledge base to all-in-one ticketing tools, Zendesk makes it easy to communicate with your customers on any channel.

Email Marketing

13. ConvertKit 🟊

ConvertKit is a great email marketing platform for creators and small businesses. It provides all the tools you need to collect emails, send emails, and automate email campaigns. ConvertKit can be used for free and requires an upgrade once you reach 1000+ subscribers.

14. Sendfox 🟊

Sendfox is part of the AppSumo family, a software company that provides digital marketing tools for entrepreneurs and businesses. If you’re looking for a simple email marketing platform for newsletters and automation, Sendfox is a great starting point.

If you want to create a monthly newsletter, SendFox is the easiest way to get started for free.

Lead Generation

15. Hunter.io

Hunter.io lets you find email addresses for potential customers in seconds. You can make up to 50 searches per month on a free account to test your strategies before upgrading to a paid plan with 1000+ searches. Hunter.io is best for cold email marketing is your game.

Hunter.io is perfect for freelancers that want to find emails to introduce their services to potential clients.

Influencer Marketing

16. Upfluence

Upfluence helps you connect with social media influencers and authentic content creators to effectively promote your brand. The platform has a database of more than 4M+ profiles with advanced filtering to find the best influencers for the most impact.

17. HireInfluence 🟊

HireInfluence is an award-winning influencer platform for brands, influencers, and agencies. They work with many world-famous influencers brands, such as MTV, Addidas, and Nickelodeon. Their full-service solution takes care of everything from talent sourcing to content creation and beyond.

🟊 HireInfluence is a recommendation from my close friend, Robert Marousseev. He’s the co-founder of Smellacloud, an e-commerce company that sells aromatherapy products. They rely heavily on influencer marketing and have grown their brand to more than €1.5M in sales.

Scheduling

18. Calendly

Calendly is the best appointment scheduling tool. You can integrate your Google or Outlook calendar to synchronize meetings, appointments, and demos based on your daily schedule. If you provide consultations or meetings that require people to pay, you can upgrade to a premium account to collect payments before someone books an hour or more of your time.

Here’s a screenshot of my Calendly booking page for clients that need a consultation.

Search Engine Optimization

Ahrefs 🟊

Ahrefs is a must use digital marketing tool to gain insights on competitors and develop successful SEO strategies. The platform includes a website’s link profile, site health, keyword rankings, and more. If you’re trying to get web pages ranked on Google, Ahrefs is the tool to gain an in-depth look at search engine data for SEO campaigns.

SEO is a tedious and challenging job. However, tools like Ahrefs help you optimize your time and improve your strategy to gain more relevant, organic traffic to your website.

19. SEMRush

SEMRush, an all-in-one tool suite, helps to improve your online visibility and to discover marketing insights. If your business needs SEO, PPC, Keyword Research, PR strategy, and Campaign Management, SEMRush gives you all the data you need for a successful SEO campaign.

20. Moz

Moz is another SEO platform that helps you with SEO, inbound marketing, link building, and content marketing. In addition to Google Analytics, Moz is a great tool to get better understanding of your audience.

21. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a website checker that can quickly crawl your website to identify errors. You can use the tool to identify any broken links, bad redirects, and forgotten pages.

Digital Marketing Tools: Screaming Frog
I scrape my site using Screaming Frog every month or two to see if there’s anything I need to fix to maintain good site health.

Social Media Tools

22. Buffer

Buffer is a social media tool that helps you schedule and publish content. The in-depth social media analytics and reporting are great for identifying opportunities to grow your brand.

23. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a leading social media management tool that lets you manage multiple accounts. It’s the perfect platform for social media managers to curate, schedule, and publish content while gaining metrics to analyze the ROI on both paid and organic efforts.

24. Later.com 🟊

Later.com is a visual social media planner and publisher that does things a little differently. While offering similar tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, Later.com helps you overcome Instagram’s limitations. If you want to add links to individual posts, Later.com creates a mini-profile page where all your relevant links to connect people to your content, products, landing pages, and more.

I use Later.com to schedule and manage my Copywriting Agency‘s social media: @CopyAdsContent

Podcast & Video Tools

25. Descript 🟊

Descript is the most effective tool for creating podcasts and videos. You can use the platform to convert audio and video content into scripts to use as captions or blog posts. In my opinion, Descript is the industry leader that makes audio and video creation fast, accessible, and collaborative.

Podcast Marketing Tool
At first sight, Descript can seem overwhelming. However, they have an interactive onboarding tutorial that walks you through the entire platform with you.

26. Wistia

Wistia is video marketing software to create, host, and analyze data for your podcasts and videos. If you’re looking into creating educational content or provide demos of your business, Wistia can help you grow your business using these strategies.

Project Management

27. ClickUp 🟊

Clickup is the only platform you’ll ever need to manage projects, people, and plans to earn more profit. You can find templates to plan content, organize finances, manage projects, coordinate teams, and more.

After testing other project management apps, such as Trello and Asana, ClickUp is by far the best and the only one I can confidently recommend to you.

Website Analytics

28. Google Analytics 🟊

Google Analytics is the most popular tool to analyze the ROI of your website marketing and advertising efforts. Once set up with your website, you can learn about your web traffic’s demographics, on-site behavior, and more. For more advanced data, you may want to go through Google’s Analytics Academy (free) to get the most out of their platform.

29. Google Search Console 🟊

Google Search Console is a must-use digital marketing tool to gain insights into your website’s search performance. If there’s ever a problem with your website, you’ll receive notifications from Google along with recommended steps to fix them. For WordPress users, use Google’s Sitekit Plugin to integrate all of Google’s tools directly into your dashboard for a quick overview of all your analytics in one place.

30. Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is a straightforward platform to help you visualize all the important data for your business. Instead of focusing on bounce rates and click-throughs, Kissmetrics integrates into your website to extract information to show a clear view of your growth. From churn rate to repeat purchases, you’ll want to use this to better make data-driven business decisions.

Website Testing

31. Hotjar 🟊

Hotjar is a really fun tool to learn how visitors behave on your website. It tracks visitor’s actions, clicks, page views, and more. You can use the data generated in a heat map to optimize your page for better engagement, clicks, and conversions.

HotJar
I use HotJar from time to time to see how people are behaving on my websites.

32. Optimizely

Optimizely is a digital experience platform used for A/B testing and web experimentation. For example, if your landing page for a product isn’t selling as well as you hoped, you can use Optimizely to make changes to different elements. You can update the headline and images to find the best possible format that drives more conversions to your offer.

33. Wynter.io 🟊

Wynter is a messaging optimization platform for B2B companies. If you’re looking for a panel of experts to evaluate and test the message on your website, Winter is the place to go.

🟊 I’m a tester for Wynter and offer my insights and ideas to help B2B companies improve their messaging. Let me know if there’s a website or a specific web page that you’d like to improve (click here to contact me via my copywriting agency)

Misc. Digital Marketing Tools

34. Grammarly 🟊

Grammarly is going to be your new best friend. Anytime you’re creating blog posts, sales letters, and emails, use Grammarly to improve the flow of your writing and the impact of your message. Grammarly’s intuitive AI text checker may not be human, but it’s the next best thing if you want kickass writing.

You can see, my article wasn’t perfect. I use Grammarly to double-check all my articles before I hit publish.

35. IFTTT

If This Than That (IFTTT) is the easiest way to automate repetitive tasks. IFTTT lets you create conditions based on the apps you use every day to trigger specific outcomes automatically. For example, if you publish an article on your blog, you can have it published automatically on other channels or social media platforms.

36. Thrivecart 🟊

Thrivecart is a shopping cart platform that lets you sell products and services online. For example, if you have an online course or an e-book, you can set up a checkout process in seconds. You can also connect with affiliate marketers to help promote and drive sales.

37. Zapier

Zapier is another automation tool that helps you connect apps and create automated processes. For example, you can send updates to your team whenever you get a new customer, ask for feedback and testimonials after a purchase, and so much more.


What are your favorite digital marketing tools?

I’m always on the hunt for the best digital marketing tools to improve the way I work. Whether it boosts my productivity or improves my sales, I’d love to hear your recommendations in the comments below.

Category: Digital MarketingTag: Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing Tools

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