Online marketing is the in-thing at present across the world of trade and business. Also known as digital marketing it is all about promoting products or services through digital channels leveraging cutting-edge digital technologies. It makes use of a wide array of online tools and platforms to connect with potential customers or target audience. Compared to conventional marketing it offers a number of advantages including greater brand awareness, more targeted reach to tap on the right audience, enhanced customer engagement and measurable ROI. In addition to all these factors online marketing is also cost-effective compared to its traditional counterpart. Thus businesses, cutting across sizes and industries, cannot ignore this in any way.
Marketing automation to help your business grow
Marketing automation makes use of the latest technology to streamline and automate various tasks related to business marketing. Thus marketers can free up their time to focus more on strategic work. The basic approach to it involves automating repetitive task using software. Some of the typical tasks that come under marketing automation these days are e-mail marketing, posting in social media channels, nurturing leads and so on. Using marketing automation tools businesses can personalize customer interactions. The tools also enhance efficiency of any marketing campaign to a large extent. Marketing automation enhances customer satisfaction. Overall contribution of marketing automation facilitates business growth.
Now that we have a clear idea about marketing automation, let us explore some of the most popular tools that facilitate automation in the world of business marketing. Some of the most popular tools for digital marketing in the present times include the following –
| Tool | Category | Major features | Tentative cost |
| Wix | Website building | This is an AI builder which is user-friendly easy to use | Tentative cost is around $17 a month although a free version is also available |
| Shopify | e-Commerce website building
|
Offers a quick setup and easily extensible | Approximate cost comes around $29 a month with transaction fee added to it |
| Hubspot | It comes under CRM or Customer Relationship Management
|
Extensive integration capability and an outstanding visual journey builder of your customers
|
Approximate cost comes around $15 a month although a free plan also exists |
| Aherfs | This is an indispensible tool when keyword research is concerned | It provides about 150 innovative ideas on keywords absolutely free each month | Standard cost comes around $108 a month although free plan also exists |
| Buffer
|
The digital tool comes under social media management category | Offers easy scheduling for your every social media profile or account | Free version is there while the paid version costs around $5 a month per channel |
| Intercom | A live chat tool |
|
Custom pricing |
| Canva | The software tool is helpful enhancing graphics in both websites and social media | It has an intuitive and easy to use editor which has inbuilt AI features | Yearly plan is around $120 although free plan is available too |
| Adobe Photoshop
|
An utmost helpful tool in editing images and photos |
|
Starting price is around $20 a month |
| Mailchimp | An excellent tool for e-mail marketing | An all-round, all-inclusive digital marketing tool | Standard price is around $13 a month although free version also exists |
Now let us explore these tools in little more details.
Wix
This is an all-inclusive site builder.
Its pros include –
- An efficient site builder that supports infinite integrations
- Powered by AI and easy to use
Considering its downside, the tool can be slow at times. Wix proves exceptionally useful when you need running a blog or build a website that sell products or accept bookings. It offers a lot of striking features on a free plan. So the software tool also proves easy on the pocket. It allows you –
- Creating a website right from scratch
- Create a sit with help of its in-built ADI or Artificial Design Intelligence
- Select from a catalogue of more than 800 design templates
- Fine tune your task with writing and visuals both generated by AI
- Easy customization with “drag and drop” editor
- SEO features to secure rank in organic searches for your site
Shopify
In the domain of digital marketing services Shopify is widely used software. It builds e-commerce websites.
- It provides each and every tool that you may require
- Easy and hassle-free to set up
- Both support and resources that are available are the best in class
On the flip side it turns out to be costly at times especially when you add a lot of additional apps. It offers hundreds of fancy themes and niche features to choose from. It allows and enables you customize your online store to do anything you want.
Hubspot
- This one is amazingly rich in features and at the same time is also easy to use.
But on the downside it is highly expensive. You may also have to set up a separate Hub to execute the automations that you want in your business. This easy to use software has a full suite of tools to facilitate sales, marketing, customer service, operations, B2B commerce and even content for your business.
Ahrefs
This is an indispensible tool for online marketers. If facilitates the task of flawless keyword research unlike anything else.
- It equips online marketing professionals with flawless data that help securing prominent positions in organic searches across the search engines.
- One gets no less than 150 keyword ideas free every month.
On the downside, paid plans prove more powerful when you want to upgrade. The free version of this tool handles just any basic operation related to SEO including keyword research, link building, monitoring traffic and ranking. Ahrefs is a powerful tool to perform SEO audits.
Buffer
The software facilitates better management of your social media profiles and accounts.
- It offers easy scheduling of all your social media profiles and accounts.
- It offers a pretty descent free plan and pricing for each channel.
- This proves an affordable and useful tool for small businesses.
On the downside Buffer often changes both its pricing and features drastically. But this is certainly one of the best options when you want to be present on multiple social media channels and need tailoring your post on each one of those, opine professionals who provide innovative and ethical digital marketing solutions to businesses.
Canva
It offers a robust free plan although other major reasons behind its popularity include –
- A bouquet of countless templates to suit your needs
- Ease of use
The built-in AI tools still need upgrading. These tools are not much powerful compared to dedicated photo-editing software. Even if you are a rookie in designing, using its “drag and drop” editor you can surely build something up from nothing with ease. It also offers inbuilt designing templates for your presentations, reels in Instagram and YouTube thumbnails.
Adobe Photoshop
This robust and all-inclusive photo editing and designing app hardly needs an introduction!
- It certainly offers some of the best AI features that any other design app is yet to provide.
- Adobe Photoshop offers powerful photo editing which sets the standard in the industry.
On the downside you can say it has a learning curve that is quite steep. It includes almost all the advanced tools that professional designers require. The list includes layers, masking, blending modes and support of the RAW version. There is hardly any photo editing task that this powerful app cannot do.
Mailchimp
This is a versatile tool for e-Mail marketing.
- It offers a stunning range of advanced features that are easy to use.
- Mailchimp is actually nothing short of all-inclusive marketing automation platform.
On the flip side, its free plans are currently more limited than that in the past. It offers a landing page builder, branding tools, customer journey mapping, list segmentation and e-mail templates to cater to your needs in its free plan. It also offers a range of other innovative tools for lead forms, websites, social media, landing pages, e-commerce although those are in paid versions.
Intercom
Some of the exciting features include –
- A range of innovative features powered by AI
- User-friendly and intuitive AI chatbot customization
- A set of advanced inbox functionalities to make life easier for online marketers
On the flip side the tool is expensive. Building custom bots prove really intuitive and that is what makes Intercom truly unique. It offers branching paths to design your conversations. You can implement trigger specific actions based on user behaviour. Moreover there is also the option of adding rich media including both images and videos.
Final takeaway
Digital Aptech is a globally trusted IT company which offers all-inclusive services including digital marketing. Experienced online marketers in its team explain there is nothing as such as the best digital marketing tool. In this volatile and competitive domain there is neither any tool that universally caters to every single requirement. The list of best tools often varies and varies widely. This variation works on basis of certain factors like budget allocated in a campaign, experience levels of online marketers in a team and others.
