An online marketing plan is no longer optional; it is a necessary component of an overall business plan to succeed. With all the forms of digital marketing available, it’s no surprise that many businesses become overwhelmed at the complex, time-consuming work required to implement and optimize the right types of campaigns to contend in their industry. Not all businesses have the resources for a digital marketing specialist, social media manager, or a data analytics team.
Fortunately, there are many tools available that simplify the various components of digital marketing.
Social Media Marketing Tools
Social media plays an important role in customer research, content distribution, new customer acquisition, and even customer service. Merchants can use it to engage with customers, promote new products, and spread brand awareness. However, using social media takes time. A merchant needs to compose messages, post it at the right time of day, interact with customers, and manage multiple accounts between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and so on. To make managing social media easier, a merchant can consider using a tool like Hootsuite.
#1: Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows a merchant to schedule social media posts, track how people engage with posts, manage multiple accounts from one dashboard, and much more. Rather than switching back and forth between different social media accounts trying to do everything throughout the day, a merchant can get it all done at one time with this great tool.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Another important component in marketing a business online is ongoing SEO. Using good SEO practices help a website to appear higher in search engine results, thus delivering an improved opportunity for more of the right site visitors. There are several aspects to SEO, among the most important is the health and crawlability of the actual site, known as on-site SEO.
#2: SEMrush
SEMrush is an excellent tool that can be used for both research and maintaining a site crawl campaign to assist with ongoing search engine optimization. It can be used for keyword and competitor research, as well as a checklist of necessary on-site improvements including, but not limited to, broken links, duplicate content, slow page load times, and broken images. SEMrush is our favorite SEO utility but there are several other valuable SEO tools available for eCommerce marketers to utilize.
#3: Yoast
Yoast can be used to ensure keywords are being properly used on the website. Yoast is best known for it’s WordPress plugin, but they actually have a Magento extension as well. With it, a merchant can make sure to have the right keywords on the right pages, optimize site content, and make sure the pictures are formatted properly, among other things. Yoast also provides SEO training courses to learn best practices and DIY pro tips for managing campaigns on a budget.
Data and Analytics
Finally, even for those who research keywords with SEMrush, optimize their site with Yoast, and make social media usage more efficient, merchants still need a way to tell how well those efforts are working. Hence the need for analytic tools to understand patterns of success or failure.
#4: BuiltWith
BuiltWith can show what platform a competitor website is running, where it’s hosted, and what tracking snippets are in place, giving insight into what marketing tools competitors are using. It’s a great way to learn about common tools used in a specific niche and to find opportunities to expand.
#5: Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics is a staple analytics tool used today. However, there are ways to utilize more powerful capabilities using Google Tag Manager and Analytics Enhanced eCommerce tracking. When properly implemented, Google Analytics will track traffic source, engagement metrics like time on site, time on page and bounce rate, as well as conversion rate metrics. Additionally, Google Tag Manager events can be set up to see in-depth data such as cross-device tracking, page scrolls, individual product add to cart rates, giving you better cart abandonment data, and more!
Make the Most of Available Tools
There is a wide range of tools available to online marketers— this is only a glimpse of some of our favorites. The key is to start with a few of the essentials, master them, and then start exploring others. By doing this, marketers and merchants can learn which tools provide the most value, and which ones they prefer over others.
If you’d like to learn more about online marketing tools that can help your eCommerce business, please contact us at any time.