17 Digital Marketing Tools to Grow Engagement and Revenue


We live in a digital era, and having a strong online presence for your brand is crucial. Digital marketing tools are designed to help you create brand awareness and boost your business.

If you’re running an online business, you probably know that reaching your target audience, either regionally or globally, is not that easy. However, various online marketing tools have been designed to provide you with the right solutions.

But how do you choose the right digital marketing tools? That is a question we plan on answering here today.

1. Hotjar

Hotjar is a user research and feedback platform that helps you understand your users through tools like heatmaps, surveys, and session recordings.

Some key features of Hotjar include:

• Heatmaps – See where users click, tap, and scroll on your site to identify areas of interest.

• Session Recordings – Watch real user sessions on your site to see struggles and pain points.

• Surveys – Get feedback directly from site visitors to understand their needs.

• Funnels – Identify drop-off points in your conversion funnels to improve processes.

• Form Analysis – Understand how users interact with your forms and where they struggle.

• Incoming Feedback – Let users leave feedback directly on your site through comments or screenshots.

Hotjar provides invaluable insights to optimize your site and deliver better user experiences. The free plan allows you to use it on one site with limited features.


2. SEMrush

SEMrush is a leading online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform.

It provides solutions for SEO, PPC, content marketing, competitive research and more. Some key features include:

• Keyword research – Find the best keywords to target based on difficulty, traffic estimates and more.

• Backlink analysis – Identify link building opportunities and monitor your backlinks.

• Site audits – Crawl your site to identify SEO issues and optimize pages.

• Rank tracking – Track your site‘s rankings for important keywords.

• Content analytics – Analyze the performance of your content and discover new topics.

• PPC research – Get keyword ideas, search ad history and optimization tips for paid search.

• Competitor research – Track competitors‘ organic and paid search strategies.

With its vast data resources and powerful analytics, SEMrush is an invaluable tool for executing successful digital marketing campaigns. They offer a free trial to test it out.

3. Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform that makes it easy to create visual content even if you don‘t have design skills.

Some of its key features include:

• Templates – Access to thousands of professionally designed templates for social media posts, presentations, infographics, logos and more.

• Drag and drop – Easily drag and drop elements like images, shapes and text.

• Resize and arrangements – Intuitive resizing and arrangements tools to customize designs quickly.

• Fonts and graphics – Large library of fonts, images, icons and illustrations to incorporate into designs.

• Brand kits – Create visual branding kits with logos, colors and fonts for a consistent brand.

• Collaboration – Work together on designs and access projects from anywhere.

• Integrations – Seamlessly export designs to platforms like Word, PowerPoint and Google Slides.

Canva makes creating visual content effortless even for non-designers. Its simplicity and usefulness make it an essential tool for social media marketers, bloggers, entrepreneurs and businesses.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that helps small businesses grow by improving their email marketing efforts.

Some key features include:

• Email campaign creation – Simple drag and drop builders and templates to create opt-in forms, drip campaigns, broadcasts and more.

• List management – Organize contacts and groups into different segments for targeted messaging.

• Automations – Trigger emails based on user actions like email opens, clicks, and website activity.

• Analytics – Track email metrics like opens, clicks and unsubscribes to optimize campaigns.

• Landing pages – Create landing pages and connect them to campaigns to grow your audience.

• Integration – Integrate with e-commerce platforms, CRMs and other tools.

• Deliverability – Advanced deliverability features to ensure your emails hit the inbox.

An easy-to-use platform combined with powerful features makes Mailchimp a go-to tool for small business marketing. It‘s free for up to 2,000 subscribers.

5. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content discovery and analytics platform great for content research and competitive analysis.

Some key features:

• Content research – Find the most shared content on any topic to get content ideas.

• Competitor analysis – Analyze competitors‘ content strategies – what works and what doesn‘t.

• Keyword research – Identify high-performing keywords to optimize content for.

• Influencers – Discover influencers creating relevant content in your niche.

• Alerts – Get alerts when new content matches your keywords.

• API access – Seamlessly integrate BuzzSumo data into your workflows.

• Chrome extension – Easily access all features directly in your browser.

BuzzSumo allows you to make data-driven content decisions to create high-performing content that generates shares and backlinks. Their paid plans unlock more advanced features.

6. Buffer

Buffer is a popular social media management platform that makes it easy to plan, schedule and analyze your social media activities.

Key features include:

• Cross-platform posting – Schedule posts to go out on multiple social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and more.

• Analytics – Track key metrics like clicks, retweets, comments and more to understand post performance.

• Engagement analytics – Analyze when your followers are most active to inform scheduling.

• Image creator – Create custom social media images by adding text to templates.

• Team collaboration – Give team members access to collaborate and manage social accounts.

• Monitoring – Monitor brand mentions and keywords across social networks from one dashboard.

An intuitive interface combined with robust analytics makes Buffer an essential social media management tool for both individuals and businesses.

7. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers robust SEO and content marketing tools focused heavily on backlink research and analysis.

Some key features:

• Backlink checker – See who is linking to your site and your competitors. Analyze link profiles.

• Site explorer – View detailed link metrics like referring domains and URLs.

• Keywords explorer – Research and track keywords based on search volume, CPC and more.

• Content explorer – Find content ideas based on aggregated backlink data.

• Site audit – Run a detailed SEO audit to identify issues and improvements.

• Alerts – Get alerts for new backlinks, mentions, ranking changes and more.

For SEO professionals, Ahrefs provides unparalleled data depth and analysis into competitors‘ link profiles and organic search strategies.

8. LeadPages

LeadPages simplifies landing page creation by providing pre-made templates and easy customization tools.

Key features:

• Templates – Professionally designed landing page templates for opt-ins, webinars, ad campaigns and more.

• Drag and drop editor – Easily customize templates by dragging and dropping elements.

• Lead generation – Collect leads with forms, alerts and SMS messaging. Integrate with CRMs.

• A/B testing – Test variations of landing pages to improve conversions.

• Pop-ups and sticky bars – Drive more conversions with pop-ups and sticky opt-in bars.

• Analytics – Track views and conversions on your landing pages.

LeadPages is the go-to landing page builder for marketers focused on lead generation campaigns and sales funnels. Their plans start at $37/month.

9. Asana

Asana is a popular project management platform that helps teams plan, organize, track and manage work across departments.

Key features:

• Task management – Breakdown projects into tasks with descriptions, due dates, assignees and more.

• Dashboards – Get a high level overview of the status of all projects and tasks.

• Calendar – See task deadlines and schedules on a calendar view.

• Reporting – Generate detailed reports on project progress and productivity.

• Workload – Plan resources by visualizing employee workloads.

• Notifications – Get notifications when you are assigned tasks or priorities change.

• Integrations – Integrate with 1000+ apps to incorporate Asana into workflows.

Asana increases team productivity by providing visibility and coordination around projects. It‘s free for up to 15 members.

10. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the go-to free web analytics platform used by millions of websites.

Key features:

• Traffic sources – Understand where your website traffic is coming from – direct, referrals, organic and more.

• Behavior reporting – See how users interact with your site through behavior flow reports.

• Conversion tracking – Set up goals and conversion funnels to understand performance.

• Custom reporting – Create custom reports to analyze data tailored to your business.

• Real-time stats – View users currently on your site and see activity as it happens.

• Integrations – Embed analytics data into other platforms with API access.

For any marketer looking to understand website traffic and visitor behavior, Google Analytics is an indispensable tool, providing robust data at no cost.

11. Screaming Frog SEO Spider

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop web crawler that helps analyze and audit websites for SEO.

Key features:

• Crawl website – Spider any website to analyze its content, metadata, links and more.

• SEO auditing – Auto-generate detailed SEO audit reports with prioritized issues.

• Export data – Export crawled data into reports and feeds for further analysis.

• JavaScript rendering – Crawl dynamic websites by rendering JavaScript.

• Customize crawl – Set a custom user-agent, depth limit andcrawl rate.

• Integrations – Integrate crawl data with platforms like Google Sheets.

For technical SEO experts, Screaming Frog provides enterprise-level crawling capabilities to analyze large websites and uncover issues that affect organic rankings and traffic.

12. Slack

Slack is a leading team communication platform that brings all conversations into one place for transparency and better collaboration.

Key features:

• Channels – Organize conversations into searchable channels by topics, projects, teams etc.

• Direct messaging – Communicate with team members through direct private messages.

• File sharing – Easily share files and documents from cloud storage solutions like Dropbox.

• App integrations – Bring in data from everyday tools your team uses through app integrations.

• Automation – Automate repetitive tasks with customizable bots.

• Notifications – Get notified of important updates and messages. Configure notification preferences.

With its intuitive interface and robust capabilities, Slack has become the team communication app of choice for many organizations and teams.

13. Listrack

Listrack is an email marketing platform focused on helping small businesses convert more leads into customers through segmentation and personalization.

Key features:

• Lead scoring – Score leads based on activity and attributes to identify sales-ready prospects.

• Segmentation – Create highly targeted lists and segments based on any attribute or activity.

• Personalization – Personalize email content with merge tags and conditional logic.

• Email automation – Trigger personalized emails based on customer journeys and workflows.

• Analytics – Track email campaign metrics broken down by segments and customer attributes.

• Integrations – Connect your CRM, store, forms and more to unify data.

Listrack goes beyond basic email marketing by providing streamlined tools to track, segment and convert customers. It starts at $59/month for up to 2,500 subscribers.

14. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform that helps businesses personalize marketing at scale through segmented messaging.

Key features:

• Lead scoring – Track engagement to identify sales opportunities and prioritize outreach.

• Landing pages – Create custom landing pages that integrate with your automation workflows.

• Email marketing – Design responsive email campaigns with drag-and-drop builders.

• Segmentation – Create segments and personalized automations based on any data.

• CRM and sales – View customer profiles and enable sales teams for tracking deals.

• Attribution – Attribute leads and sales to different marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign allows both marketing and sales teams to engage customers across channels personalized to their journey. It starts at $9/month for up to 500 contacts.

15. Zapier

Zapier is an automation and integration platform that connects your various apps and services together through automations called Zaps.

Key features:

• App Integration – Connect your marketing, sales, support and other tools. Zapier supports over 3000 apps.

• Workflows – Automate multi-step processes by connecting triggers, actions and apps.

• Customization – Customize Zaps with filters, formatting, delays, webhooks and more.

• Monitoring – Get notifications and monitor the status of your Zaps.

• Support – Get access to live chat, email support, detailed help docs and guidance.

• Security – Enterprise-grade security and encryption to keep your data safe.

Zapier saves huge amounts of time by automating repetitive tasks and workflows across your tech stack to boost productivity.

16. Google My Business

Google My Business helps local businesses manage their online presence across Google including Search and Maps.

Key features:

• Listing management – Claim and verify your business listing on Google to control how it appears.

• Local SEO – Optimize listing with business information, descriptions, photos, contact options and more.

• Insights – View analytics on your search and map impressions, clicks, actions and calls.

• Posts – Post updates, offers and events to your listing to stand out and engage customers.

• Messaging – Enable messaging to allow prospects to message you directly through Google.

• Advertising – Run local ad campaigns through Google targeting by location.

Optimizing your Google My Business listing improves local SEO visibility and helps drive customer actions like calls, directions and site visits.

17. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar is an AI-powered search engine for peer reviewed academic literature. It uses machine learning to understand papers and surface the most relevant research.

Key features:

• Intelligent search – Get more relevant results than traditional academic databases and search engines.

• Citation analysis – See summary stats on a paper‘s citations, references, contexts and authors.

• Author graphs – Explore connections between authors to find top researchers in a field.

• Content recommendations – Discover new papers and authors based on your search history and interests.

• Summarization – View auto-generated summaries of paper abstracts and key points.

• Browser extension – Easily import papers from any website directly into your library.

For researchers and academics, Semantic Scholar helps accelerate research and discovery by enhancing access to relevant literature.

Conclusion

The digital marketing landscape offers a vast range of tools to help your business stand out online, reach customers, and accomplish growth objectives.

Identifying the right tools that integrate together for your needs and budget is essential for executing and optimizing effective marketing strategies.

The platforms discussed offer solutions for critical activities like SEO, content creation and distribution, email marketing, automation and analytics.

While individual tools have their strengths, often the best approach combines multiple platforms that complement each other.

Testing out free trials, leveraging platform integrations, and choosing tools that scale with your business over time can set you up for long-term digital marketing success.