Digital Marketing Solutions To Explore If You Run a Small Business

Digital marketing can be one of the most rewarding experiences for your brand, both literally and figuratively. Here's what the data tells us:

1. A staggering 45% of organizations do not have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy.

2. Another study states that marketing teams that document their strategy are 313% more likely to report success than those that don't.

3. Research further indicates that 75% of marketers increased their company’s credibility and trust with digital marketing tactics.

Needless to say, without a comprehensive and strategic digital marketing strategy, your brand can find itself in the sea of online businesses. To make the most out of your digital marketing campaigns, you need the right mix of user-friendly tools that are custom-built for smaller enterprises and solopreneurs. Read on, as we will be looking at what some of these tools might be.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing can be defined as the process of achieving marketing objectives and end goals with the help of digital technologies, channels, platforms, and media. As per Smart Insights, every digital marketing program should be comprised of six pillars:

1. Planning and governance, which includes strategic initiatives related to business goals, digital transformation, budgets and ROI, marketing strategies, business and revenue models, etc.

2. Goals and measurement, which includes digital key performance indicators (KPIs), forecasts, customer profiles, digital dashboards, etc.

3. Media, which includes earned media, paid media, online/offline integration, owned media, search, social, and display ads, and so on.

4. Content, which includes the content marketing strategy, top-of-the-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel.

5. Experience, which includes landing pages, personalization, website customer journeys, conversion rate optimization, a multichannel path to purchase, etc.

6. Conversational messaging, which includes mobile messaging, email marketing, chat, automation and CRM, etc.

Why Should You Invest in Digital Marketing Solutions?

Using affordable and user-friendly digital marketing tools empowers your business to:

• Reach out to a larger target base, irrespective of the location, and get more customers into your brand's metaphorical door

• Market your brand better and convert prospects into customers

• Move ahead with a better sense of direction and focus on strategic goals

• Elevate your digital marketing campaigns cost-effectively and scalably

• Interact with your customers and understand what they're looking for

• Personalize the user experience and target the right set of customers with the right kind of messaging

• Drive engagement and build brand loyalty by way of customized offers, incentives, etc.

• Understand your digital/online audience, including their likes/motivations/end-goals, etc., and gauge the brand's market share

• Track and monitor the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns by collecting data in real-time, and pivoting as needed

• Go the DIY marketing route without spending loads of money

• Automate repetitive tasks (such as email automation, keyword researching, etc.)

All in all, if you want an impactful online value proposition, you need to have a robust digital marketing strategy in place to boost your brand appeal and target the right customers with the right messaging.

Top-5 Digital Marketing Tools to Use for a User-centric Online Customer Experience

Here are the top five digital marketing tools to use for a user-centric online customer experience:

1. Google Analytics: The Best Tool for Customer Insights and Analytics

Google Analytics is hands-down the best software out there to get invaluable insights into your website visitors and how they are engaging with your brand. Plus, this software is completely free.

You can use this tool along with Google Search Console to figure out the main problems within your website and optimize it for traffic. Google Analytics also provides insights into:

• The number of visitors to your site (by day, week, month, or any other time period of choice)

• Which platforms the visitors are coming from (organic search, paid ads, social media platforms, and so on)

• The kind of unique and targeted keywords people are using on Google to find your website

• The in-depth details of the demographics and interests of your user base

• How long each visitor spends on your website and which pages are they visiting

Valuable insights such as these can enable brands to optimize their marketing campaigns as well as platforms such as the website.

2. Mailchimp: The Go-To Tool for Email Marketing

If your brand is big into email marketing, as it should be, Mailchimp should be at the top of your priority list. You can use this tool for free until your list hits 2,000 subscribers. If you're a small business that is just beginning, Mailchimp is therefore a must-have tool for your business. There are numerous reasons why Mailchimp works extremely well for your email marketing campaigns:

• It enables you to capture emails and manage your lists

• It can send out emails automatically or on a schedule as needed

• It allows you to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign. For instance, you can monitor key metrics such as engagement levels, email click-through rates, etc.

Remember that the paid plan has powerful additional features such as segmentation and personalization, landing page builders, form builders, audience insights, CRM tools, and predictive insights as well.

3. Hootsuite: For an Effective Social Media Presence

Hootsuite is one of the best tried-and-true social media marketing tools out there. This centralized tool empowers you to:

• Monitor your social media channels

• Schedule posts in advance basis your social media content calendar

• Engage with users on social media

• Access advanced reporting tools on the efficacy of social media campaigns and calculate ROI

• Track brand mentions and respond immediately without making your users wait

• Promote your social media posts across platforms and channels

4. BuzzSumo: The All-in-One Content Marketing Tool Every Brand Needs

BuzzSumo is an end-to-end content marketing tool that helps a brand to come up with a killer content marketing strategy that engages, entertains, and educates users at the same time. That said, to be able to deliver relatable and personalized content to your users, businesses should do their research properly. This is where BuzzSumo can come to the rescue. You can view content that's trending across social media channels based on the search topics you set.

You can then analyze the results to get ideas about the kind of topics you should be writing about. In addition, you can engage in keyword research as well as influencer search, analyzing topic-based social media feeds, conducting content analysis, driving crisis management, and leveraging effective brand monitoring tools.

5. KWFinder: A 360-degree Keyword Search Tool for All Your SEO Needs

SEO is the backbone of all your digital marketing campaigns. This is why a tool like KWFinder is essential. You can use this tool to get your hands on the right set of keywords with a good chance of ranking in the search results. You can also use Google's free Keyword Planner to find accurate and insightful keywords. All you need to do is put in a seed keyword and get access to hundreds of suggestions relating to search volume data, ranking difficulty score, etc. for each phrase/word entered.

Furthermore, you can pair this with complementary browser extensions by the brand, Mangools (which owns KWFinder) and leverage tools such as a backlink tool, website analysis, and SERP watchers, among others.

Tying It All Together

Long story short, you don't need multi-million dollar budgets to capture a fair share of the market anymore. The right digital tools will do the trick just as nicely and quite often are free. That said, you need to first understand what your digital goals are and then strategize about which tools to invest in so as to plan accordingly.

If you're looking to hire a seasoned digital marketing agency that can understand your business needs and provide ROI-driven and measurable results, get in touch with us at Ear Level Marketing! We will enable your business to connect with the right target audience within the marketplace and help you understand how your brand stacks up in a sea of (digital) sameness.