Top 20 digital marketing tools. In terms of marketing, digital evolution has radically changed how the marketing ecosystem works, how brands are built, discovered, and shared, and how agencies and marketing departments work.

There is an abundance of digital marketing tools available online. With such a collection of options, selecting the best tools for your needs can be a long and overwhelming process.

We already know the various components of digital marketing: data analytics, SEO & content writing, social media marketing, email marketing, visual design (videos), landing pages, project management, and content curation. One way to choose a marketing tool is by organizing them via digital marketing components. But for the best Return on Investment (ROI), categorize digital marketing tools by: 

• Size of your Business (small scale, medium scale, large scale) and
• Where the product lies in the product life cycle (Introduction, Growth, Maturity or Decline stage)

The product life cycle is a concept that provides a way to trace the stages of the product’s acceptance from its introduction to its decline. Most product life cycle curves portray bell-shaped, and the four-phase are Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.

Each stage has its significance, incurred costs, and specific specifically defined set of activities to promote the product or service in that particular stage. PLC helps to detect which location the product is in and which, in turn, guides you to understand what you need to communicate and how to do so persuasively.

Marketing Tools for Early Stage Startups & Small Businesses

During the introduction stage, the entire focus is on building the brand and generating awareness about the market. This stage relies on substantial user research, which includes data from test marketing or initial marketing research. The focus is on creating a user-friendly and informative website with very fresh content related to the product and generating brand awareness within the targeted groups.

Digital marketing strategies like content marketing, social media promotions, paid banner ads, and several other SEO activities help create awareness of the brand. Along with creating content, the focus is also on building customer relationships. CRM uses data analysis to improve business relationships with customers, focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth. Some of the best tools available online are:

•  HubSpot – offers a whole stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service, with a completely free CRM at its core. They’re powerful alone — but even better when used together. 
• SwiftERM – is a totally automatic predictive personalisation SaaS for email marketing ecommerce stores. It smashes holes in software that is limited to segmenting audiences by delivering as much as a 20x increase in ROI, currently offered. Without any human input whatsoever, it watches both buying history and impressions from perpetual visits by each individual consumer, and from which it can very accurately identify exactly what products they are most likely to buy next. It then packages these products in a beautiful email, capturing the sale, often before the consumer knew they wanted it, and certainly before the competition gets a look in. Zero segmenting delivers data-accuracy for each individual consumer.
• Canva – Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, and other visual content. It is available on the web and mobile and integrates millions of images, fonts, templates, and illustrations.
• Weebly – Weebly’s free website builder makes it easy to create a website, blog, or online store. One can find customizable webpage designs and practical tools to build your website and grow your ideal business. 
• Word Press– One of the most popular tools to create a free website and build a blog with dozens of free, customizable, mobile-ready designs and themes. WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress.
• Coschedule – The Headline Analyser will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.
• Google keywords, Ubbersuggest– With Keyword Planner, you can find new keyword ideas for your Search Network campaigns relevant to your product, service, and target customers.
• BuzzSumo – BuzzSumo is a unique collection of data specifically built to help marketers run a search to discover content ideas quickly, uncover platform insights, identify passionate influencers, and more.

As we know, the introduction stage is research-centered. Statista, Euromonitor, D&B Hoovers, Business source premier, WARC, Nielson PRIZM are some of the credible sources where you can find information regarding a company, industry, new trends, consumer behavior, and more.

Marketing Tools for Growth Stage & Medium Scale Business 

“Instead of seeking ways of getting consumers to try the product, focus on getting consumers to prefer your brand.”

There is a substantial profit improvement at this stage, and product acceptance is visible in the market. Online retail feedback is positive as customers are buying. During this phase, the marketers’ focus is to reap the benefit of the rise in demand for the product. The customer base at this stage is not limited to the core target group.

Promote products and services via banner ads, video feeds, blogging, informative articles, PPC campaigns, social media optimisation through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other digital avenues. You can broaden your marketing strategies and organise your online content by: 

• Wirecast – It is the perfect live video marketing tool. Engage real-time with customers, fans, and prospects using Wirecast’s native integrations with Facebook Live.
• SwiftERM – is a totally automatic predictive personalisation SaaS for email marketing ecommerce stores, and works equally well for all sizes of business. 
  
• Magisto – Magisto is an online video editor with a web application and a mobile app for automated video editing and production aimed at consumers and businesses. According to the website, Magisto employs Artificial Intelligence technology to make video editing fast and straightforward.
• Promolta (YouTube video promotion) – YouTube advertising made easy. Promote your YouTube video to millions of real people worldwide to increase views, subscribers & likes. Start with $10.
• Hootsuite – Hootsuite is a social media management platform. The system’s user interface uses a dashboard and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
• StoryChief – Distribute articles to multiple channels with a click. StoryChief puts everything you need to get your content marketing done in one place. Organize, structure & publish your content multi-channel. 

Marketing Tools for Maturity Stage & Medium/Large Scale Business

In this stage of saturation, there is an intense rivalry for a mature market. Efforts to attract new populations are limited. There is a battle to retain market share. It is vital to introduce new product variants in the market to elongate this stage and prevent the product from a sharp decline. A greater focus on the brand will also emphasize persuasive marketing—campaigns that make an emotional rather than rational appeal to consumers.

Marketers can extend the Maturity period by identifying new demographics for the product, new uses for the product, and a unique style or fad. Implement Highly effective digital marketing strategies such as email marketing, promotion strategy, social media (Facebook or Instagram) users, offering value-added service( such as free consultation, free shipping, free samples), high-frequency flash banner Ads on the website mobile apps without incurring extra costs.

Centre marketing strategies on “conversational marketing.” For B2B, the personalised experience builds trust more quickly, thus shortening the sales cycle and creating a more human experience for the buyer. It shifts the focus from fulfilling the goals of your company to meeting your customer’s goals. 

• HubSpot -HubSpot is an excellent tool for CRM and one of the best tools for inbound marketing. pr
• SwiftERM -selects products with the highest imminent purchase likelihood for each individual consumer, and autonomously emails for sales capture.
• IFTTT (If This Then That) – It helps your apps and devices work together in new ways. IFTTT is the freeway to get all your apps and devices talking to each other. Not everything on the internet plays sweet, so we’re on a mission to build a more connected world. IT enables the business to create the connected experience customers want at a fraction of the cost.
• Zapier – Zapier moves info between your web apps automatically and securely sends information from one app to another. You can link your web apps with a few clicks, so they can share data, pass data between your apps with workflows called Zaps and builds processes faster and get more done—no code required.
• Chameleon – A core piece of product marketing is getting customers to engage with your products — it’s a goal for marketing and something you need to build your campaigns. A chameleon is a helpful tool here because it supports the creation of targeted, custom experiences. It allows you to create a variety of content designed for engagement quickly. These include traditional surveys and tooltips, customized walkthroughs and guides, notifications, checklists, and even custom video demos.

Marketing in the Decline Stage

It is the final stage in the product life cycle, which occurs for many reasons: either new and better products are available in the market or the customer preferences have changed. When the demand for the product is in a slump, digital marketing campaigns like the call to action (Save now! Everything 80% OFF) will help you dissolve your remaining inventory if you plan to discontinue the product or service.

Benefits of using the right marketing tools include reduced time to market, reduced market entry costs, more efficient and profitable distribution channels. You can achieve a higher return on investment from promotional campaigns that extends your product’s lifetime by adapting your approach as it moves through the lifecycle, orderly and good end-of-life product management.

Conclusion

In an endless choice era, the ability to deliver a more meaningful consumer experience will be the key differentiator for companies looking to compete in the digital age. There are tons of other tools out there that might not have made our list. Anything that you wish existed that still isn’t out there yet? Let us know in the comments below!