Online Marketing Tools to Boost Your Business in 2019

Did you know that there are more than 7,000 choices for marketing technology today? If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you’ve likely seen Scott Brinker’s marketing technology landscape— and then, like everyone, you were immediately overwhelmed! That’s because selecting the right online marketing tools is essential to your business success.

As a digital marketing agency that focuses on ecommerce marketing, Google and Bing ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, and Website Development and Design, we use our fair share of tools to help us manage our clients’ accounts, so they are successful. So why not spill our secrets? In this post, we will cover our top choices for online marketing tools. Some cost money, some are offered free or have freemium plans, but all are essential to our success and our clients’ success.

Google Online Marketing Tools

Ok, we are kind of cheating here because Google has A LOT of tools. But they are all important and all free! Now if you have not set up your Google Ads or Google Analytics account, stop reading and go do it now, we will wait…..

From Google Analytics to Merchant Center and even G Suite, Google is a fixture in our office and should be in yours. They have products for managing everything from your ad campaigns to your productivity. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but here are the tools at the top of our list:

• Google Analytics
• Google Data Studio
• G Suite
• Merchant Center
• Google Ads
• Google Trends
• Google Search Console

We take a deeper dive into some of the tools later in this post.

SEO Tools

They say the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google. SEO is an important piece of the digital marketing puzzle. And to implement an SEO strategy effectively, you need online marketing tools that will help your site rank well for targeted keywords.

SEMRush

SEMrush is an all-in-one comprehensive tool to improve online visibility for any website that wants to increase website traffic, improve leads or sales and develop an online presence for their brand. It provides insights for SEO, PPC, Social Media, Content Marketing and more.

We use SEMrush as a primary tool for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research and insights for site audits; keyword research, ranking and opportunities; backlink tracking or sourcing; site positioning, competitor analysis, content marketing opportunities and more.  

“SEMRush allows us to identify all the issues of a website to improve its SEO and increase its ranking on SERPs.

Yoast

Use the Yoast WordPress plugin to help boost your blog posts and content on Google and Bing.  Add a focus keyword, edit your snippet and preview how it looks in the search results page. Yoast also has a readability score and provides suggestions to improve it.

“If you write blog posts, Yoast guides you to optimize them for search engines. It’s a great tool to remind you of all the steps needed for SEO.”

Creative Tools

My favorite design quote is from Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Creative is just as important as your strategy, selecting the right audience and the right channel. We are lucky to have a creative team that designs the coolest ads for our clients. They recommend using these online marketing tools:

Adobe Creative Cloud (CC)

Adobe CC is the foundation of all our tools. As a designer, if you only have the ability to purchase one tool, this is the one you need. Adobe CC has a suite of tools used to design print, edit photos, create illustrations and even layout websites.

“Adobe CC is the standard in the creative industry. They are constantly updating their software and with a CC subscription, you always have the latest updates.”

Adparlor Mockup Generator

Create ad mockups for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest for FREE. That’s right, we use this tool to provide our clients with a proof of what their ads will look like on the social platform of their choice.

It’s an easy and efficient way to provide our clients with a mockup of their ad and get approvals faster.

Bannersnack

A cloud-based banner ad creation tool that can help you create and design banner ads used across multiple online channels.  Once created, you can download your work as JPG, PNG, HTML5 or Gif and share or embed them where needed.

“Bannersnack is the easiest way to get started making animated HTML5 display ads. With a super easy to learn user interface, you’ll be building amazing display ads, Facebook ads, social media posts and much more in no time!”

Grammarly

Need help with spelling, grammar, and punctuation? Grammarly is the perfect Chrome extension for the job. With the freemium version, it will alert you to errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation and even tell you when you are too wordy. Pay for premium and get even more features including plagiarism and impoliteness.

Grammarly is that final editor when you are in a hurry. Plus you get a weekly recap and comparison with other writers.

Facebook Ads Library

Facebook recently launched its ads library to provide transparency on all the ads currently running on its platform. As advertisers, we like to use it to see what our competitors are doing and what our clients’ competitors are doing.

“An efficient way to find ads that are currently runnign on Facebook. Saves so much time. “

Advertising Platforms

Paid search and paid social is our bread and butter. Send us a message and we can prove it. We will talk so long about conversion rates, click-through-rates, ROAS, CPC, PPC it will make your head explode!

On a more serious note, the foundation of any online marketing tool library is the ads platforms that Google, Facebook and Bing offer. Get to know the ins and outs of these. We have lots of content on setting your campaigns up and implementing advanced targeting strategies. They can be extremely helpful in bringing new clients and more money into your business.

Google Ads

This tool needs no introduction, but we will give it anyway. Google Ads is the number one online advertising platform. Use it to create campaigns to get your site or products in front of potential buyers.

“Google has 5.6 billion searches per day worldwide. That’s pretty good odds that your ad will get in front of someone. Using advanced targeting strategies, we can successfully grow businesses at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.”

Facebook Business Manager

Facebook has a lot of data that you can use to target specific audiences. We specifically like using Facebook as a lead gen tool and for retargeting online shoppers to e-commerce sites.

“Put your business in front of an active audience that already knows your brand with hyper-targeted strategies. We like to use Facebook’s custom audiences, events and the pixel to find your website users on Facebook and create ads to bring them back to purchase.”

Bing Ads

Don’t miss out on millions of searches. Use Bing along with your Google campaigns and reach an audience that doesn’t use Google. Bing ads now also exclusively serves Yahoo search traffic so it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

“Don’t underestimate Bing ads. People tend to not take it seriously or brush Bing aside for Google. We’ve had clients see more success with Bing than Google. Especially those with a niche product.”

Analytics

You won’t know if you are executing the right strategies if you don’t have an analytics tool in your online marketing toolbox. The amount of data available through online channels is almost overwhelming. These tools will help you organize it into bite-sized pieces and communicate the information to stakeholders or clients.

Supermetrics

Add on Supermetrics to Google Sheets and Data Studio for automated reporting. Supermetrics pulls your PPC, SEO, social and analytics data into one easy-to-read report.

“We can track spend across all channels in one Google sheet. Not only does it pull everything into one report, you can also schedule it to automatically update your data.”

Google Analytics

Analyze data for your business in one place. Gain insights into how people use your site, giving you the ability to take action to improve their experience.

Google Analytics is a free, robust tool that gives you access to unlimited amounts of website data to analyze, visitors, purchase behavior and content.

Social Platform Analytics

With access to the built-in analytics on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn you have information about what content performs for your brand. You gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s needs to encourage more engagement, link clicks, and even purchases.

“Using the built-in analytics tools is free. We like them because it gives us insight into what our audience wants to see, helping to grow our brand on social.”

Website

If you’re an e-commerce company, your website is as important as the building of a brick-and-mortar store. Selecting your platform is so important to the growth and success of your business. Choosing an ecommerce marketing tool for web design and development takes a lot of planning and preparation. We recommend the following:

WordPress

Use this free tool to build your website or blog. With so many options for customization, WordPress is the way to go for everyone. Knowing what add-ons to use is key to the success of your site. We found Beaver Builder to be the best page builder to use in conjunction with WordPress.

WordPress has endless amounts of plugins and add-ons, allowing for complete customization.

BigCommerce

If you have an online store that you plan to scale, BigCommerce is a great shopping cart platform that is customizable and can integrate with your WordPress site.

BigCommerce has a lot of features that help e-commerce sites scale. With development experience, you can create a site customized to what you and your audience needs.

Shopify

If you have a small to mid-size online store and lack development experience or resources, Shopify is a good solution. Its easy-to-use interface has everything needed to sell online and on social.

“Shopify is a good alternative to BigCommerce when you don’t have a developer on staff to help build a custom site. “

Lead Gen and Marketing Automation

For B2B, lead generation and marketing automation are crucial online marketing tools. Knowing what to select is based on your company goals and the features needed to implement a successful strategy.

MailChimp

Email marketing and marketing automation are an important part of any lead generation strategy. MailChimp offers different pricing models, including a freemium version. You can do as little as creating email campaigns to as much as building and using their CRM tool.

“MailChimp integrates with WordPress and lead gen tools to create custom audiences you can send custom email communication to.”

OptinMonster

Convert abandoned visitors into subscribers using OptinMonster’s lead gen tool. Create custom forms, perform a/b testing and integrate with email services and website platforms.

“OptinMonster has multiple types of pop-ups to capture email addresses. You can use anything from full screen to inline forms and set triggers based on activity.”

As noted above, we have access to a plethora of tools to help create efficiencies and drive business success. Choosing the best ones for your business needs depends on what problems you are trying to solve. Prioritize the tools based on your business goals and company structure.

How Can AdShark Marketing Help With Online Marketing Tools?

If you want a digital agency to help set up and manage your ecommerce marketing, paid search campaigns, SEO or web design and development, check out AdShark’s services. Or reach out to us to schedule a discovery call.