With more businesses trying to expand their online presence, digital marketing has become a crucial part of advertising goods and services. The most lucrative digital marketing campaigns will include a combination of things like search engine optimization (SEO), both paid and organic marketing, social media marketing, and email outreach to promote products and grow businesses.
If you’re hoping to start a career in digital marketing, there are several tools you should be aware of that will help you do your job to the best of your ability. Utilizing these tools also ensures that your clients and their business get the exposure they need to succeed.
- Social Media: The digital world today practically demands that businesses take advantage of social media to market their product. Interacting with your customers on various social media platforms allows you to learn valuable information about what they’re looking for. Tools like Sprout Social and Loomly enable you to take the guesswork out of social media by scheduling content releases at ideal times and helping you understand which posts garner the highest level of interaction from your followers.
- Analytics: Analytical tools help users collect and track important data about how a marketing campaign is performing. A platform such as Google Analytics allows you to gather key details about who is mentioning your brand online, whether your mentions are positive or negative, and how many people have shared your posts. This information informs how you change your marketing strategies and where you invest money in the future. It enables you to make quick decisions if changes are needed.
- Marketing with an Email Service Provider (ESP): An email marketing campaign helps you reach a large number of people all at once with the help of an ESP. With this software, you can keep track of your customer’s contact information and send personalized emails to help increase sales. ESP also allows for simple and consistent customization of your template emails so your customers can begin to recognize your brand.
- Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization, often referred to as SEO, is a crucial digital marketing tool that helps your website be displayed at or near the top of search engine result pages (SERP) when someone searches for specific keywords related to your business. SEO is a multifaceted process that combines several technical strategies such as social media, mobile optimization, and backlinks to help boost your website’s credibility without spending a lot of money on marketing campaigns and advertisements.
- Research and Analysis of Competitors: Performing a competitive analysis of businesses that provide similar services is a great way to better understand your target audience and how your competition is gaining customers. Which social media sites are they most active on? What hashtags are they using to get their name out there? Knowing as much as you can about competitive businesses will help you recognize your own strengths and weaknesses, making you better equipped to offer superb services.
- Conversion Optimization Tools: Now that you have an understanding of what your target audience wants and how your competitors are reaching them, how do you get people to convert to your business instead? That’s where conversion optimization tools come into play. These help you identify where your users are spending the most (and the least) time on your website so you know which small changes will have the biggest impact.
- Paid & Unpaid Marketing: There are two primary types of marketing–paid and unpaid. Paid marketing requires a financial investment to push your content out to potential customers, while unpaid marketing involves developing content that your audience will want to engage with and share with others. Google offers a handful of free tools to help with this process. Keyword Planner helps give you more information about common keywords that are relevant to your business and Google Trends provides analysis of common search terms.
- Graphics and Design: Our first impression of a website is often what helps us decide if we’re going to stay and browse the page or navigate elsewhere, so it’s important to invest in appealing visuals for your business’ webpage. There are many affordable tools out there to help with this if you’re working with a limited budget. For example, Venngage allows creators to develop infographics and charts with customizable and eye-catching templates.
- Lead Enrichment Tools: You can think of lead enrichment tools as a sort of digital rolodex. When someone visits your website, they may often leave basic contact information if they’re interested in learning more about your business. These tools help fill in the gaps by pulling additional data about your potential customers. For example, Datanyze connects with LinkedIn to help personalize your outreach by learning more about those who visit your page.
- Productivity Products: As you can probably tell, digital marketing for your business often means having to monitor multiple projects with different objectives and deadlines. Products like Trello and Ontraport are designed to keep your productivity on track so that even the smallest task doesn’t slip through the cracks.
Learn Digital Marketing With Career Centers
If you’re ready to begin or enhance your career in digital marketing, check out these digital marketing classes with Noble Desktop, a partner program with Career Centers. Their courses can be taken at their campus in New York City or live online from the comfort of your home. If social media is your focus, they offer multiple six-hour courses for beginners in areas like Blogs & Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube & TikTok. If you’d prefer to learn about all platforms at the same time, they also offer a Social Media Marketing Certificate program instead. This class is 30 hours long and covers today’s most popular social media channels.
Noble Desktop also has an SEO Bootcamp and a Google Analytics Bootcamp available for students. These courses are each two-days and will give you a solid foundation in these crucial marketing skills. Their Digital Marketing Certificate is a comprehensive 78-hour course for beginners that will give you all the necessary tools to successfully market your business.