There’s no escaping digital in business these days. And in putting your business out there in the digital space, there’s digital marketing. There are many channels to work on to succeed. Hence you must have the right tools to gather data, amplify your message, reach and engage with your target market, capture leads, and deliver. We listed down recommended digital marketing tools and services to do just that and some more.
Business
These are the digital marketing tools and services that allowed us to operate in the digital space.
AppSumo
AppSumo is one of the best resources of software tools available at a great price.
For businesses maximizing the potential of digital marketing, access to affordable tools that help grow the business is heaven-sent. AppSumo features reliable and up-and-coming products for lead generation, email marketing, social media, web development, and more. The platform offers these products with huge discounts at times for lifetime access.
Customers enjoy the confidence that AppSumo partners with reliable start-ups and companies. The team reviews the products offered, which means all the featured software and services provide excellent value to businesses.
Wise
Formerly known as TransferWise, Wise is a financial technology company based in London. The company initially offered money transfer services that became popular due to lower transaction costs and favourable foreign exchange rates. Also, sending and receiving money is fast.
If you’re a foreigner in a different country, you’ll find the service invaluable. Also ideal when you need to pay your team working remotely.
Solis
When you need a consistent internet connection wherever you are, you need Solis (formerly known as Skyroam). It’s a wifi hotspot device very much similar to pocket wifi. The big difference is that it uses a cloud SIM that connects to its partner network in the country you’re in. You no longer have to buy a SIM card with mobile data when you reach your travel destination.
Solis is ideal for executives who travel a lot or for digital nomads travelling from one country to another and needs to be online most of the time.
VPN
Virtual Private Network, or VPN in short, is a service that makes access to a public internet connection safe and secure. When accessing public networks, your activities on the internet are traceable.
Hackers who are in constant search of victims can trace your connection and peek into your activities such as online banking, purchases, emails, etc. They can look into your browsing habits and even capture your login credentials and other sensitive information. With Express VPN, your connection becomes secure and anonymous. Click here for more reasons why you need a VPN.
An alternative option is NameCheap VPN which also works great. It’s an affordable VPN service that secures all your devices. You can work, stream and play games, and browse online without concern of limitations.
Grammarly
This tool is a handy writing assistant that identifies grammatical errors, wrong spellings, and punctuations.
If you do a lot of writing for business correspondence, reports, and even social media posts, this tool should be part of your arsenal. You can even use Grammarly for free if you’re on a tight budget.
But if you’re serious about making sure that all you’ve written are correct, the paid version offers more than the basics. Grammarly premium checks sentence construction, clarity, tone, word choice, and more!
SmallPDF
Not all software that can handle PDF is the same. Some allow you to read the document, and most would require you to pay when you need a signature signed or edited.
Enter SmallPDF. It’s a web-based software where you can edit the contents of a PDF, convert PDF to Word documents, convert images to PDF, and so much more. With 21 tools that the software can accomplish, it truly is powerful.
The service can be enjoyed for free, although there’s a limit of 2 conversions or use per day. For heavy users, the service is available for a monthly or annual fee.
Infograpia
An infographic is an excellent way to display easy-to-understand information with pictures, charts, and texts. But not everyone has the design skills. That’s where pre-made templates by Infograpia come in handy.
The templates are easy to edit. You can create impactful presentations, reports, and marketing materials in a breeze. The service pricing is practical, too! For just a one-time payment, you get unlimited access to all the templates and lifetime updates. That’s value for money for one of the digital marketing tools in this list.
Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio is an online tool that allows you to gather your data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, et al. and present it through interactive dashboards and reports that are easy to read and fully customizable.
You can visualize your data and tell a story using charts and graphs. Reports can be made interactive with filters and date range controls. Links and clickable images can be added to create product catalogues, video libraries, and other hyperlinked content.
Onlinejobs.ph
It’s not surprising for solo entrepreneurs or start-ups to focus on growing the business instead of taking on administrative or other operational tasks. But hiring staff in the usual business setup can be costly. You will have to consider the cost involved in getting an office, furnishings and equipment, plus your employees’ salaries.
Fortunately, the remote work environment is now a reality. You can hire staff to do digital marketing, website development, administrative work, and even programming without the need for a physical location. Working from anywhere in the world, these remote workers can get things done for you.
You can find these remote workers from freelancing platforms such as Onlinejobs.ph. It is the largest marketplace for Filipino virtual assistants, where you can find professionals to hire as executive assistants, customer service personnel, copywriters, or whatever staffing you need for your business.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is one of the digital marketing strategies to help your business be found on the internet. There are many processes involved, such as an SEO Audit to spearhead your online presence. The tools below can help automate some of the processes.
Keysearch
Before writing an article or blog for your website, you need to optimize your website with SEO content. Here’s a link to this blog: https://aureumhospitalityadvisers.com/digital-marketing/optimise-your-website-with-seo-content/. This process can be time-consuming.
Keysearch helps you find the best keywords to use. The web-based application has a dashboard where you can quickly identify low competition keywords in whatever niche you’re in. That’s a big help, especially when your blog is relatively new. Using high-competitive keywords can hurt your site ranking.
The software also has a keyword difficulty checker and would suggest other keywords. Identifying the right keywords to use helps you rank well. A keyword research tool like Keysearch is undeniably your best companion in your SEO work.
Yoast Premium
SEO is a complicated process. But if you’re on WordPress, the Yoast plugin will help you optimize your content for search engines the easiest way possible.
It guides you in setting up your primary keywords, writing your meta description, and making sure that you have enough of your primary keywords throughout the body of your blog. The good thing about this plugin is that even if you change your theme, all the information you entered remains intact and won’t be affected.
While these features are available on the free version of Yoast, the paid version is more powerful. With Yoast Premium, you no longer need to manually search for related pages to implement internal linking because the plugin automatically pulls suggestions for links.
Yoast Premium also has the redirect manager feature that redirects old URLs to new ones. For example, if you update the URL of an old blog to make it more relevant, the plugin will take care of that automatically.
There are more features that Yoast Premium offers compared to the free version. Suffice it to say that if you want to up your on-page SEO game, the paid version is worth it.
Sitechecker
These days, entrepreneurs do everything on their own. And that includes monitoring their website’s performance on different aspects – SEO performance, ranking, speed, etc. And that likely means accessing other platforms.
That’s why Sitechecker is heaven-sent. This web-based software helps you measure, track, and improve search engine visibility in one easy-to-use platform. Instead of checking data on Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other tools, you look at a dashboard containing all the information for your website, saving you a lot of time going over tons of data.
It can also conduct a site audit and report errors such as missing Alt-text, invalid HTML, canonical issues, to name a few.
Sitechecker saves you a lot of time going over tons of data. It’s a valuable tool for those handling websites for different clients like digital marketing agencies and SEO specialists.
SEO Power Suite
Power users require powerful tools, and that’s what you get with the SEO Power Suite. As the name suggests, it’s a suite of software tools you install on your desktop, be it on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Each tool has a specific job to do.
SEMrush
SEMrush is a popular software for SEO. Its functionalities include the ability to do keyword research, competitor analysis, link building, and rank tracking. It’s filled with features such as charts to help you understand your website statistics such as keyword ranking, traffic, et al. and develop action plans to take your SEO to the next level.
Shortpixel
A slow-loading website is bad for business. It makes users wait, and that’s not a good experience. They might end up typing a different URL to find the information they need. That’s a missed opportunity for you.
One of the culprits of a slow website is images with large file sizes. Uploading high-resolution images seem like a good idea to make your site look good. But it doesn’t help because they load slowly. Google PageSpeed Insights would even consider images with large file sizes as a red flag that needs fixing.
Good thing there’s Shortpixel. It’s an image compression tool that reduces image file sizes by up to 90% without affecting the quality of the image. That’s because optimized images are visually similar to the original.
You don’t even have to worry about the images you’ve uploaded on your website. Shortpixel can handle them all on the fly. And it supports JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, and even PDF file types.
Best of all, the entire process from installation to optimization is easy. Optimizing all images on the site may take a while, especially if you have a lot uploaded. But after that, Shortpixel will handle new photos uploaded on its own. It’s like set and forget.
WP Rocket
When you want to lower your website’s load time, WP Rocket is the answer. It’s a premium WordPress caching plugin packed with features to make your site faster. It also has a simple user interface that even newbies will quickly understand and configure with minimum effort.
Social Media
If you want to reach your current customers and target audience, it’s good to be where they are. In this internet age, they are on social media. These tools help you grow awareness, increase engagement, establish relationships, and capture leads.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform famous for its ease of use and friendly user interface. Initially used to create social media graphics, you can now use this tool to create presentations, documents, and other visual content. This tool is available for free but more features like creating a team, collaboration, branding kit, among others, can only be accessed with a paid subscription.
Later
If you’re on Instagram, you will find the Later app very useful. It’s one of the free tools to help you manage your social media presence and was created to plan, schedule, and analyze your Instagram accounts. The app grew from simply handling Instagram to also integrating Facebook and Pinterest into the social media mix.
Bitly
Bitly is a URL shortening tool and link management. It’s the perfect tool when sharing URL links on social media. It gives you more space, especially when there’s limited space like the one on Twitter. Bitly also offers a paid solution where custom domains can be used to generate a branded shortened link.
Tailwind
Initially known as a helpful tool to get started with Pinterest, Tailwind now included Instagram in its product roster. This powerful tool is more than just scheduling but also has features for content creation, powerful analytics tools, and community building.
Sweepwidget
If you’re looking to grow your social media following, you can run a contest, giveaways, promotions, or sweepstakes embedded in your website. On WordPress, you can install Sweepwidget and start creating your giveaway using a drag and drop builder.
Embed it using a shortcode wherever you want the giveaway form to appear. Using the embedded widget, users can follow, subscribe, like, share, comment, or take any action you require to participate in your giveaway or online contest.
RafflePress
Hosting giveaways or contests is one of the best ways to grow your email list, gain engagement and following for your business. RafflePress takes away the pain of setting up everything on your website with a WordPress plugin. It’s very intuitive and has a lot of options on how you want your visitors to join and also is a big help when it’s time to draw the winner. It’s one of the digital marketing tools we can’t do without.
Website
Your best sales channel is your website. Hence, it would be best to make sure that it’s working seamlessly according to what you intend it to be for your business. Whether you’re having your website designed or already have it up and running, using the following tools will be of great help in accomplishing your goals.
Website Basics
Namecheap
A domain name registrar, Namecheap provides domain name registration and web hosting. The company’s domain registration service is highly recommended as they also offer free domain privacy. This service offers a level of anonymity by hiding the domain owner’s name in the WHOIS.
Bluehost
A famous web hosting company, Bluehost is one of the largest web hosts. Bluehost offers various web hosting solutions, including shared hosting, WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, among others.
Siteground
Ask any web developer about their recommended hosting companies, and you will most certainly hear Siteground as one of them. The web hosting company founded in Bulgaria grew to host over 2 million domains worldwide.
With its reliable customer support team, fast hosting plans, and reliable uptime, it’s not surprising that Siteground is a web developer’s choice. But this comes with a price. Siteground’s hosting plans are pretty expensive and may not be a good fit for those starting up.
Astra Theme
Whether you want to design your WordPress website yourself or hire someone to do it for you, you’ll benefit from using the Astra Theme. It’s a lightweight theme compatible with Elementor Page Builder.
You can still use the Astra Theme without Elementor. The free version has start-up templates that you can use to build your website on your own. Of course, if you want more robust features, the Pro version gives you more powerful features for more advanced web development.
Themeforest
Themeforest is a popular marketplace for all things related to web design and development. If you’re looking for premium themes for WordPress, Shopify, or any other web platform, this is the place to go.
Buying a theme gives you a better idea of your website’s look and feel. You can create a filter on Themeforest for your preference. Clicking on each theme allows you to see a demo, helping you decide if it fits your requirements.
Purchasing on Themeforest gives you unlimited updates, which means as long as you’re using the theme, expect to get updates that you can access to upload to your website.
Elementor
A powerful web page builder on WordPress is Elementor. Our favourite drag and drop page builder plugin lets you view your work in real-time, making your web design process more streamlined. The platform also incorporates copy/paste functionality, allowing you to copy a specific element or design and apply it to another page you’re working on.
Google Analytics
A web analytics service by Google, Google Analytics tracks and reports website traffic and related activities such as visits, duration, pages visited, etc. It can also capture and report the sources of traffic, e-commerce purchases, and more.
Website Must-Haves
Weglot
Weglot is a cloud-based website translation platform. It integrates with WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, and more. You need to use Weglot’s website to translate all your content, manage translations, and push to your live website. Other noteworthy features are SEO friendly URLs, WooCommerce support, language switch button, third-party translations, and more.
WPForms
WPForms lets you create a form quickly with its drag and drop functionality. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to use this WordPress Plugin. With over 100 templates available, you can create a contact form, payment forms, survey, newsletter sign up, registration form, and more. It can also integrate with your email marketing software or CRM.
OptinMonster
If your goal is to generate leads for your business through your website, then OptinMonster is highly recommended. This WordPress plugin is installed on over a million websites that allow you to create attention-grabbing opt-in forms proven to boost conversion.
MonsterInsights
Easily set up Google Analytics with MonsterInsights. This WordPress plugin lets you connect your website to Google Analytics account, which will add a dashboard where you can see how your site is performing. The dashboard will give you a quick overview of your website performance and decide on how to optimize your website even better for more traffic, leads, or sales.
UpdraftPlus
UpdraftPlus is a backup solution for your WordPress website. Why backup your website? If your site gets hacked or someone (hopefully not you) inadvertently makes some changes on your website resulting in layout problems or even total deletion, having a backup will allow you to restore your website.
With UpdraftPlus, you can schedule your backup to daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, et al. The plugin can be configured to save your backup to cloud storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, among others.
WebToffee (GDPR)
WebToffee’s GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin, also known as CookieYES, is a WordPress plugin that makes your website compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations. Create a cookie consent banner and manage cookie consent easily.
The plugin has powerful features for easy compliance with global privacy laws with fully customizable banners, automatic script blocking, cookie policy generator, configurable for EU visitors based on IP address, and more.
Terms of Use Template
Google measures websites from a trust perspective. It is then essential that your site has the “trust pages” such as the About page, Contact, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use pages. It’s pretty challenging to develop pages filled with legal information, especially for entrepreneurs with no legal background.
Others use generic tools that are often not enough and can be confusing to use as well. The thought of hiring a lawyer to help you get through this can be pretty expensive. Fortunately, there’s the Terms of Use Template service.
This tool is a ready-to-use template for your terms of use drafted by a seasoned lawyer and is fully GDPR compliant. It has a clear overview of the legislative framework and legal requirements for your terms of use. With the detailed instructions on how to customize and use the template, you’ll have your Terms of Use page in no time.
Website Tools
Gravity Forms
Initially used for contact forms, WordPress Plugin Gravity Forms can now create different forms for varying intent, including employment applications, lead generation, take payments, and more.
Wordfence
Secure your WordPress website with Wordfence. It’s a firewall and malware scanner that keeps your website safe from internet threats. Wordfence Web Application Firewall determines and blocks malicious traffic. With an integrated malware scanner, requests with malicious code or content are blocked.
hCaptcha
Protect your website from bots, spam, and abuse with hCaptcha. Once installed on your website, users are asked simple questions that humans can answer but are difficult for machines to accomplish. Upon successfully answering such questions, users get to sign up or leave a comment.
Captcha is a process to differentiate humans and computers apart. A popular alternative to ReCaptcha, hCaptcha is a modern approach to stopping bots with visual tests.
Depositphotos
You can purchase royalty-free content from Depositphotos, including stock photos, vector images, video clips, and editorial files. With over 100 million files, the company offers a wide selection of quality content that you can use for your website or content creation. Keep an eye out on AppSumo as they regularly have great deals for Depositphotos.
Scopio
Another source of quality, royalty-free images is Scopio. You can find authentic stock photos from its library of images submitted by a diverse community of over 14,000 photographers from 150 countries. You can stop using the same stock photos as everyone else.
Having access to a great source of stock photos makes work easier. When creating blogs or social media content, you don’t have to go to great lengths of taking pictures of your own. Just do a quick search on Scopio to find the image that you need. You also won’t have to worry about the license to use the photos because the platform takes care of your copyright.
AffiliateWP
Do you want to create an affiliate program for your business on WordPress? AffiliateWP is the answer. It’s an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that gives you access to tools needed for affiliate marketing. AffiliateWP features a dashboard that lets you track affiliate referrals accurately. It also has an integrated payout service so you can pay your affiliates directly to their bank accounts or debit cards. Other notable features include real-time reporting, eCommerce and membership integration, and more.
Thirsty Affiliates
Are you into affiliate marketing? Do you insert affiliate links on your blogs posts and pages? It’s time you use Thirsty Affiliates. This WordPress plugin allows you to add, manage, and easily insert links into your posts and pages.
It’s impossible to remember all your affiliate links. Hence, you likely have a list of those links somewhere on your computer. Wouldn’t it be great if you could insert the links without having to access another software? With Thirsty Affiliates, you can access the links from your editor and insert them into your post.
But that’s not all. The plugin also cloaks those long and hard-to-remember links with your brand. The feature adds a sense of trust that your readers are being redirected to a page that you recommend.
Tidio
Tidio lets you do a live chat with your customers. And when you’re away, a chatbot can pitch in and respond too. Plus, you can nurture conversations through email marketing. It also comes with a mobile app so you can respond to queries on the go.
You can install the software on WordPress, Shopify, and other eCommerce platforms. It also features a configurable widget that can blend in with your website. If you have the Messenger app, you’d be able to integrate Tidio with it.
Micro and small businesses can take advantage of this product for free. But if you want more, monthly and annual subscriptions are available. You can get your free trial to see if it fits your needs.
Final Words
With the different facets of digital marketing that we have to deal with, these tools come in handy when working on various tasks. We hope this roundup can help you in your business as well.
