9 of the Most Powerful and Latest Digital Marketing Tools That Are Proven to Drive Results

Since the development of digital marketing in the 1990s, several tools and channels have been introduced in the market. Digital Marketing started with Archie, the first search engine.

It was then followed by the first clickable web-ad banner in 1993, then the first e-commerce transaction over Netmarket, the launching of Yahoo, and the introduction of search engine optimization or SEO.

From this point on, new platforms have been constantly introduced, including HotBot, SixDegrees.com, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, MS Live Search, YouTube, Google Adwords, Adsense, marketing automation among several others. 

This 21st century, there are countless digital marketing tools armed with the latest developments and strategies to keep abreast with present and future changes and possibly reach over 170 million people who use social media regularly.

As one would expect, each of the said tools have different uses, including analytics, SEO, content curation, social media, visual design, email marketing, project management in which several of them are far superior in terms of the latest version currently available. 

In view of this, it is quite daunting to test every tool to determine which would yield remarkable results. Thus, a list of 9 the best and latest digital marketing tools for businesses are provided. 

Read ahead to find out more. 

1. Google Analytics 

This is a free web analytics tool that enables one to have a tracking code that can be incorporated in a business’ websites and social media pages, which helps track audience demographics, particularly with regard to:

• User information: The number of visitors who visited a website along with the active users who are currently navigating the website


• Session information: The frequency of visits, clicks, video views, and purchases


• Bounce Rate: The total of web visits that did not lead to interaction with the business or conversion

The above list of data collected by Google Analytics is beneficial in identifying what is necessary to be improved on one’s website that will lead to conversion. Under Audience Report, details about gender, age and location of frequent visitors are provided.

It simplifies the processes needed to distinguish one’s target audience while Acquisition Report shows the traffic from search engines, YouTube videos, and other social media platforms.

2. Sumo or SumoMe

Sumo, which has more than 5 million global users, is a plugin that tracks reader’s interest by using their Heat Maps to identify what links or stories people click and what they skip. It also uses Content Analytics to monitor the extent to which visitors scroll a website or business’ page.

This is useful for business owners to decide the right location for placing a call-to-action. For instance, if most visitors leave a website or page before reaching the bottom of an article, one can decide to position their CTA at the top of the article or page to reach more engagement. 

Apart from what has been mentioned, Sumo also helps increase email subscribers by creating a pop-up box that compels target audiences to provide their email address by offering valuable content such as: 

• Competitions with attractive prizes
• Discount Coupons
• Free course
• Free one month trial
• Free webinar
• Quiz
• Useful articles converted into a PDF
• Videos
• Weekly tips 

Furthermore, the tool allows highlighting certain phrases found in a website’s content, which gives the opportunity for visitors to tweet the said phrase. On top of that, it has a social sharing widget, thereby enabling a website’s articles to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. 

3. UberSuggest

It is a free yet effective search engine optimization (SEO) tool for searching new long tail keywords as well as article titles or topics. It accumulates powerful keywords from all platforms and presents it in an organized manner.

These are real powerful keywords used by multinational companies to get higher Google rankings which can also be used by inexperienced and new businesses because of its easy-to-use interface. 

The tool provides information regarding the following:

• Search Volume – This indicates the number of people who are searching for the same keywords and each specific and related keywords are ranked based on the quantity of searches each keywords have. 


• SEO Difficulty – This estimates the difficulty of the keywords’ ranking on search engines such as Google. The higher the number means the more challenging it is for a content to rank on top of search engines.


• Paid Difficulty – This assesses the level of difficulty of a page or content to rank higher on Google through pay-per-click advertising. 


• Cost Per Click – This calculates the price that it has to be paid to Google if one plans to advertise with the said platform. 

4. Google Keyword Planner

This research tool helps businesses gauge the most effective way to gain more traffic from Google. It provides additional keywords in relation to a certain topic and can track the number of times the said keywords appear on search engines.

Aside from new keywords, which are great for search engine optimization or SEO, the tool can also suggest topics for blogs.

Some of the useful key features are:

• Target Options – This is used to show search volume and search trends at a certain geographic location, and that includes the country, state, province or city.
  
  Moreover, it allows business owners to choose a different language, especially if they are targeting a non-English speaking country. Furthermore, one has the option to request for keywords from external search engines. 


• Date Range – This allows the choosing of a specific date range for relevant keywords that only normally have high rankings on special occasions.
  
  This Google Keyword Planner’s feature is beneficial to those who are planning for seasonal campaign on certain events – Christmas, Valentines Day, Children’s Day and June weddings, to name a few. 


• Search Filter – This includes a Negative Keyword feature in which one can add a word to their campaign and this action will hide the said campaign for searches that contain the same word.
  
  Other features included in Search Filter are Keywords to Include, which is the opposite of Negative Feature, Keyword Options which enables one to choose one or all of these four options: Only show ideas closely related to my search terms, Show keywords in my account, Show keywords in my plan, Show adult ideas. 


• Search Volume Data and Trends – This shows the statistical data of existing keywords.


• Keyword Multiplier – This enables entrepreneurs to combine two to three keywords by combining service and location. After clicking “get forecast” or “get search volume”, it will provide the historical data that is being asked.

5. Hootsuite 

It is a Social Media Management System that tracks and manages social network channels, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WordPress blogs, Vimeo, Tumblr, Flicker, Mailchimp and Slideshare. 

Here are the main features of this platform:

• Scheduling to automatically schedule posts across all social media channels.
• Content Curation to discover impressive contents to be shared, instantly post contents from any webpage, appoint individuals to check content quality.
• Promote to increase brand visibility to target users through paid advertisement.
• Analytics to have a visual data of the performance of one’s team and posts.
• Monitoring to uncover conversations about a specific brand and its competitors by keyword or location.
• Team Management to authorize team members to access social accounts with the absence of passwords, limit employees access, assign tasks to each department, monitor all social media messages in one place.  
• Security to receive immediate alerts regarding suspicious activities on one’s social media account.
• Apps and Integrations to discover new business and marketing tools.

6. Active Campaign

It is used to handle email marketing, marketing automation, messaging, customer relationship management (CRM) and sales automation that gives the possibility for a brand owner to maintain relations with their core audience.

It gathers data for customized messaging and it has other various useful features that are provided below:

• Email Marketing to create and personalize email designs, send bulk emails, preview email, check spam, monitor delivery, validate links, and organize automated nurturing emails.


• Online Marketing to customize landing pages and emails for intended audience, develop customized landing pages, support mobile-optimized emails and forms, to monitor efficacy of keywords, links, search rankings, and to integrate with Google AdWords.


• Lead Management to record marketing asset, leads, contacts, marketing interactions, web visits, and email clicks, ensure data quality, builds list of target audience, track emails and websites opened by audience and their comments on social media and keywords they use, and sync lead and contacts.


• Sales to capture customers’ contact information, sales team and customers’ engagement, and track primary audience’s location.


• Social to schedule automated posts and add social share buttons.


• Service to provide live chat support.


• Reporting and Analytics to give insight regarding web analytics, ROI analytics, revenue analytics, and SEO/keyword analytics.


• Platform to allow changes and tests regarding CRM deployment and create templates.

7. Design Wizard

This tool offers the possibility for businesses to create high quality designs for social media ads, invitations, marketing campaigns, business cards and a lot more as it has well designed pre-made templates to achieve incredible results in a timely manner.

It is easy to navigate; thus, even those who lack design experience can use it without much difficulty. 

It has many features that designers love, such as:

• Thousands of professionally designed templates
• More than one million premium images
• Free image storage
• Free Buffer and Hubspot integration
• Easily upload own images, logos, and fonts 
• Image resizing
• Custom color palette

8. ClickFunnels

The main function of this tool is to capture email addresses, sell products, and convert free customers into paying customers. It has pre-installed funnel options intended for different products or services.

Users may also have the option to create a professional design for their website and marketing funnels for customer engagement and conversions. 

The main features of the tool are:

• Custom Domain – This makes it possible to add a new custom domain for one to connect their external domain that can be used for all of his funnels.


• Membership Funnel – This fortifies security when accessing one’s content.


• Order Pages – This allows one to include different payment methods for customer orders.


• Sales Funnel – This converts prospective visitors into buyers.


• Share Funnel – This duplicates an entire funnel from another account.


• Upsell Pages – This enables one to offer additional products or services to customers.


• Webinar Funnels – This is used for attracting a business’ target audience to attend webinars.

9. Basecamp 

Being immersed in growing one’s business presents the tendency for one to be loaded with countless tasks and activities to ensure the growth of their company.

There is a possibility that projects and ideas could be saved everywhere, making it difficult to retrieve important files when necessary.

With Basecamp, the scenario can be prevented because Basecamp enables one to collate all documents, organize staff delegations, meetings, projects and other activities and keeps all important documents in one place. 

Basecamp has many useful tools that also give updates to team members, and these are:

• Calendar – This is for creating a schedule for events, meetings, changes and upcoming projects for members to be notified.
• Check-in Questions – This is for asking questions anytime, and comments are arranged in one place.
• Client Access – This is for collaborating with clients in one site. Messages and emails can be sent to clients and those conversations can be kept private.
• Direct Messages – This is for having a private conversation with one person or a small number of members. 
• Discussion Board – This is for customizing and sending of messages or posts with images or files to staff members.
• Email Forwards – This is for discussing forwarded emails and sending replies to senders.
• Group Chat – This is for communicating with team members in which responses are received immediately.
• Hill Charts – This is for monitoring updates and long-term progress.
• Notifications – This is for disabling notifications momentarily and scheduling email notification time.
• Reports – This is for supervising tasks that are delayed and have been completed.
• Search – This is for searching keywords, people, images and files.
• Storage – This is for uploading documents and files. 
• Task Manager – This is for assigning tasks to members of the team.