33 Digital Marketing Tools for Businesses in 2022

From SEO to Social, I’ve curated a list of the essential digital marketing tools for businesses should consider in 2022.

Like any other project you take on, it’s crucial to have the right tools for the job and the world of digital marketing is no different. As you start working in this world, you may find free options to accomplish certain tasks, like built-in reporting or manual social media posting, but some tools are worth paying for because they get better results while saving you time and effort. It’s often better to buy a screwdriver than to try and insert a screw by hand.

Organic Social Media Marketing Tools

With so many people spending so much time on social media, it’s one of the most important channels for brands to leverage. You can build a relationship with an audience and keep them informed even when they’re not looking to buy. It can be a lot for people to digest, which means there’s a lot for an agency to manage. Social media management tools make it easier for you to post across different platforms so that you can focus on creating better content.

HeyOrca

HeyOrca might be one of the best tools for you to use because it empowers collaboration. Not just within your team but also between your agency and clients. Different members of your team can access your clients’ social calendars, draft posts, upload content, leave comments/feedback, then send the calendar to the client for approval once it’s complete. It can automatically post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.

It should be easy for your non-tech-savvy clients to use as well because it doesn’t require them to log in or get bogged down in creation tools; they access their calendar using a unique link, are presented with drafted posts, click “Approve or “Needs Revision,” and can leave comments.

Any content that gets uploaded to be used in posts gets stored in a media archive for easy access later, as can templated posts that you expect to use again in the future. Add on top of that easy analytics reporting and you’ve got yourself a useful tool.

Key Features

• Planning and Scheduling: Plan, schedule, and publish posts directly to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business, & Pinterest
• Collaboration: Link your colleagues & clients to any of the content you’re working on. They can provide feedback directly on the posts.
• Client Approvals: Clients can approve or reject posts directly in HeyOrca. Posts will only go out after approval(s) have been granted.

Price: $99/month USD per Calendar

Facebook & Instagram Creator Studio

As we mentioned, there are some free options to the paid tools we mention but these have drawbacks. Facebook & Instagram Creator Studio are two of them, as they allow you to post, schedule, store content, monetize, get insights, and respond to DMs but only on these two platforms.

Woobox

Woobox is a social engagement platform that emphasizes interactive content. The platform is perhaps best known as a turnkey solution for running social giveaways, contests, polls, quizzes, forms, coupons, brackets, and “instant wins.” From curating hashtag entries to selecting winners at random, Woobox takes much of the legwork out of running a contest or giveaway via social media.

Email Marketing Tools

The first email was sent way back in 1971, so it’s kind of strange to think of how big a part it still plays in digital marketing at large. Despite being old-school, email is easily one of the most effective marketing channels in terms of ROI. Email usage continues to grow approximately 4% year-over-year and has no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

MailChimp

MailChimp represents an absolute giant within the email marketing space, with over 250 billion emails sent by its users last year. The beauty of MailChimp is the platform’s usability and sliding price tag based on the size of your email list. In particular, their “forever free” plan is perfect for smaller marketers looking for an introduction to email marketing. If you’re new to digital marketing tools or email in general, MailChimp represents a great starting point.

Key Features

• Ready to use campaign templates
• Segmentation – Easily filter your audience by characteristics or behavior to find exactly who you want to talk to.

Pricing:

• Free for your first 2000 contacts
• The essentials plan starts at $11/month

Emma

Emma—which is actually an abbreviation for email marketing—is a robust platform that backs up its powerful features with a notoriously hands-on customer service team. Emma has all of the tools that you need to start creating and testing your own email marketing campaigns.

Marketo

If you’ve dabbled with some email platforms and feel ready to take it to a more advanced level, Marketo could be the solution for you. Although email is a huge facet of its business, it is by no means the only part of the tool. This makes Marketo ideal for those in search of all “all-in-one” weapons for their marketing arsenal. Marketo emphasizes automation as part of its suite of digital marketing tools, with email marketing as a major piece of that puzzle.

GetResponse

GetResponse’s unique email marketing platform stresses the growing trend of automation. This solution analyzes specific trends and behaviours from your list to trigger specific messages and autoresponders instantly. The end result is a smarter email marketing presence and a more engaged list.

 

Paid Advertising Tools

Whether you’re working with social media ads designed to target very specific people or retargeted ads that remind users what they’ve been shopping for, these tools can help you maximize every dollar you spend.

Facebook Ads Manager

Ads Manager is Facebook’s own tool for creating and running hyper-specific advertising campaigns. Facebook is constantly improving its ad platform and the tool frequently releases new targeting and budgeting features for users. For marketers just starting on the paid social front, this is easily one of the best digital marketing tools with no third-party fee to create and manage your advertisements. The platform’s detailed parameters ensure that you target exactly who you want while setting budget limits, and Facebook takes care of the rest.

AdRoll

AdRoll is one of the most well-known names in the retargeting space, boasting a customer base of over 35,000 advertisers. Its platform grants access to over 500 ad exchanges, which includes most of the major social media networks. It offers a self-service platform, but you can also leverage its employees for additional help if you need it. Some success stories from use AdRoll range from a 35% lower CPC to a 265% lift in sales in some cases.

ReTargeter

ReTargeter is a diverse tool that uses site retargeting, search retargeting and dynamic retargeting. You can use ReTargeter as a self-service platform or you can pass all of your campaigns onto an account team to run your retargeting for you. You can use these search services à la carte or combine several into a custom package. The platform emphasizes use for eCommerce brands given that the ReTargeter has access to consumer behavioural data of over 150 of the web’s top retailers.

 

Website Testing Tools

No matter where your web traffic is coming from (social media, display ads, retargeting, etc.), your website or landing page needs to be optimized so that these visitors become customers and not bounce rate statistics. The smallest changes can make the biggest difference when it comes to getting people to convert on your landing pages, and these tools can help you test & optimize your site to give you the best chance.

Hotjar

Hotjar’s platform provides a real-time visual record of your visitors’ actions and behaviours on-site. Through heat maps that clue you in on where people are (or aren’t) clicking to actual video recordings of your visitor’s journey, you can quite literally see what needs to be optimized rather than have to guess.

Unbounce

Unbounce is an amazing tool for quickly building, tweaking and publishing new landing pages to test. One of the most fantastic features of Unbounce is how easy it is to use the platform to create brand new pages. Even if you’re not much of a designer, you can use some of the templates available as a jumping-off point, then tweak them to fit your style.

Oracle Maxymiser

Maxymiser is a tool that goes far beyond the realm of landing page testing. This enterprise-level software solution was built to test multiple aspects of any given site and to run several different tests simultaneously. Maxymiser also allows you to segment who you want to send to each test, creating a more catered experience for your website visitors.

Optimizely

Optimizely combines tools for visual creation and robust targeting into its platform, making it easy to quickly create and target tests to the proper groups of users. The company also has a formidable amount of partners to make it easier to centralize customer data for your various tests.

Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)

Even though the mantra of “always be testing” has become a bit cliche, there’s no denying the importance of A/B testing any given page of your site. Visual Website Optimizer streamlines the process by allowing you to quickly play with elements of your pages such as headlines and images to generate multiple versions of your site for visitors to land on. Coupled with a powerful analytics platform, you can quickly see which version of a page is the clear winner in terms of clicks and conversions.

 

Content Creation Tools

We have no shortage of options when it comes to content creation—infographics, blogs, videos–but what’s going to resonate with our audiences?  We’ve recently created a list of 39 free image creation tools which includes a ton of different digital marketing tools, but here are some of our favourites.

Canva

Canva is a free, web-based design tool you can use to create unique images to share on your blogs, social networks and beyond. You can use Canva to create completely unique images from scratch or to polish up some photos that you already have on hand.

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a comparable tool to Canva but it’s definitely worth using if you’re already subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud. Either one is great for creating graphics but Spark also allows you to create video content.

Visual.ly

If you don’t have the time or artistic flair to create your own pieces of content, then you can use a tool like Visual.ly. Visual.ly is a platform that pairs those who need content up with those who can create it. The site charges a flat rate for each type of project, which includes Infographics, e-books and video.

Fiverr & Rev

These are not the same tool or company but they meet the same need; hire a short-term freelancer to create something quickly and cheaply. On Fiverr, you can hire someone to do just about anything that can be done digitally/remotely for as little as $5 USD; photo editing, video creation, audio recordings, graphic design, copywriting, etc. If you have a video or Audio file created, you can hire someone on Rev to create captions for it that costs $1/minute USD.

 

In both cases, these tools are saving you time, so that you or your team can place and order and get back to work on other things.

 

Content Curation Tools

Marketers always need to fill their content calendars but it’s unrealistic to create original content for every post. Content curation is a great strategy to fill in some gaps, give others some exposure, and even spark some of your own inspiration.

Feedly

With Feedly you choose all of the different blogs, publications and topics that you’re interested in; meanwhile, the platform aggregates all of the recent content from those sites into a feed you can monitor. You can integrate your Feedly feed with a tool like Sprout Social to continuously share these articles with your fans and followers.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it is an awesome tool for easily finding and sharing unique, relevant content to your social networks, blogs and more. With Scoop.it you can find months worth of great in no time flat.

Kapost

Kapost is a platform that takes into account every step of the content marketing cycle. One fantastic function is the ability to assign different pieces of content to different buyer personas, which shows which stages of the content marketing cycle your prospects are most likely to convert on.

 

Website Analytics Tools

Most digital marketing tools out there have built-in analytics, right? For instance, Sprout Social has social media analytics that shows how your content performs on a variety of social platforms. However, it’s important to keep an eye on the data about events that actually take place on your website from clicks to conversions and beyond.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the gold standard for most websites these days. Google has advanced analytics that shed light on a variety of your website information, including who your visitors are, how they make their way through your sales funnel and what they do on your website in real-time.

Adobe Analytics

Adobe provides an enterprise-level analytics solution for companies who want to gather deep analytics on their website data and performance. The platform has cross-channel attribution functions, 360-degree customer analysis and predictive intelligence which enable you to observe and respond to customer actions in real-time.

Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics offers analytics tools that help you increase conversions across your entire website. The platform tracks your site visitors throughout their entire conversion journey and gives you reports on each part of the funnel. This helps you fine-tune your entire conversion process to increase sales and revenue.

Woopra

Woopra is an analytics platform that’s specifically tailored for eCommerce businesses. Looking to help battle the problem of cart abandonment, Woopra analyzes each step of your site’s checkout process to determine where visitors are dropping off and which traffic source is the most valuable in terms of checkout success.

 

Search Engine Optimization Tools

When it comes to digital marketing tools, SEO is where most of us need some major help. With so many tools available and several moving pieces of our search engine presence, finding the right fit is easier said than done. Thankfully, there are a myriad of tools out there to help simplify the ever-complicated world of SEO.

HubSpot

It’s actually difficult to classify HubSpot because it’s a tool for a lot of different jobs; social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages, customer support, and search engine optimization. HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others.

 

While a lot of these other tools help put your content in front of your people who may not be your customers, HubSpot helps to form connections that they’re looking for and solves problems they already have.

SEMRush

SEMRush has a ton of built-in digital marketing tools that help both paid search experts and SEOs track and improve their search rankings. One key use of SEMRush is to track your competitors. You can use the tools to pull your competitor’s backlinks, monitor their fluctuations in ranking and conduct a full competitive analysis.

So how does SEMrush stack up overall?

We found that the service checks all the boxes that a good online marketing tool should: reliability, economical, user-friendly, and feature-rich. In all areas of functionality and usability, the service excels at providing users with an online marketing tool that actually works.

Specifically, we fell in love with the variety of features the service offers. From the keyword magic tool that allows for users to search over two million keywords and truly optimize their online marketing campaigns to the social media poster that automates social media posting for the greatest content optimization, this is one service that delivers bang for its buck.

Read my review of SEMrush – SEMRush Review: Maximize Your Digital Marketing with the All-In-One Marketing Toolkit from SEMrush

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a spider tool that can quickly crawl websites, lists of websites or specific web pages to give you a complete analysis on their performance. You can use the tool to see if you have any broken links, broken pages, bad redirects and much more. Fixing most of these errors is a quick win for search marketers.

 

Affiliate Marketing Tools

The concept behind affiliate marketing is simple: allow others to sell products on behalf of your brand by becoming affiliates. In turn, all you have to do is pay them a percentage of every sale that they generate. It can be an effective channel because people tend to trust friends and brand advocates more than they trust a company when it comes to selling. Plus, there’s a safety net involved as you only pay for the sales that those people generate.

CJ Affiliate

CJ is one of the most popular choices for advertisers looking to get their products picked up and sold by publishers. CJ has one of the largest networks of bloggers and its self-service platform makes it easy to scale your affiliate marketing efforts.

VigLink

VigLink is an incredible tool for affiliate marketing. The site has a massive database of content provided by publishers which they scan in real-time and add links to relevant keywords they find. The use of this type of contextual advertising makes it much easier to drive sales.

Rakuten Affiliate Network

Rakuten is similar to VigLink, except that it advocates long-term relationships between brands and their affiliates. Long-term relationships with your partners help to build trust and knowledge of your product, which in turn makes it easier for those individuals to sell it.

 

If you are considering implementing any of these tools for your business and are not sure where to start, please reach out and we can discuss some options for you with my digital marketing coaching

While this is not a complete list of tools, I would love to hear what tools you would also recommend in the comments.

Have a tool you would like added to this list, please contact me to discuss.