I'm a big fan of finding the latest and greatest digital marketing tools.
While digital marketing tools will only help you execute a proper strategy (they won't do the work for you), the right technology stack can really help you zoom past the competition.
Some tools out there are foundational -- things like email marketing, web forms, analytics, and a CRM. However, other tools are more specialized, including keyword rank trackers, or design tools.
To take your marketing strategy to the next level, we've outlined the following 17 digital marketing tools every marketer should have in their tool belt.
The Top 17 Best Digital Marketing Tools in 2021HubspotAhrefsAll in One SEOProofSurvey AnyplaceYoastSlackTrelloCanva BusinessGoogle AdwordsGoogle AnalyticsMailChimpAsanaBuzzSumoMeetEdgarBufferHootsuite1. HubSpot Marketing
Price: Free to $3,200/month for enterprises, depending on your plan
HubSpot has several tools to help you grow your business, no matter what stage you're at.
Starting out, there are several tools available for free. You can set up web forms, popup forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then, you can send email marketing campaigns, pipe all of your data into the free CRM, and analyze site visitors' behavior.
When you expand into the paid tiers, things get really sophisticated with advanced marketing automation.
From managing your content and social media to tracking emails and connecting with your leads, HubSpot is an all-in-one solution -- although it works well with other point solutions you may use (Typeform, HotJar, etc.).
Ultimately, the tool allows you to:Grow your traffic, convert leads, and prove ROI for your inbound marketing campaigns.Shorten deal cycles and increase close rates with the provided sales tools.
For a quick recommendation on five free digital marketing tools you can use together, check out our video compilation.2. Ahrefs
Price: Tiered pricing, ranging from $99 to $399
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool to help you punch up your website traffic. They have data for around 150 million keywords in the U.S., and even more for 150 other countries.
Ahrefs is great for competitive analysis, allowing you to check out who is linking to your competitors, what their top pages are, and more. You can see where their content ranks and, using the Content Gap tool, identify key weaknesses for your content areas.
The Top Pages tool lets you see which pages get the most traffic, and you can see the amount of traffic going to competitors' sites.
Ahrefs is one of my favorite SEO tools. It constantly impresses me with features I use daily, and I learn about new features all the time. It's easily the most robust product in this space.
Price: Starts free, paid plans start at $49.50/year
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is a top-rated plugin for WordPress websites, with over 2 million installations. The tool includes a variety of features designed to help you optimize your site and your content for search engines.
This tool provides an actionable checklist that helps you focus on fixing errors and making common adjustments to maximize click-through rates. Additionally, with AIOSEO, you can complete a whole-site audit, optimize pages for WooCommerce, and even improve your local SEO.
Price: Tiered pricing based on the volume of your website traffic, starting at $24/month
Proof connects to your CRM or website and uses social proof to boost conversions on your site. They implement social proof messaging (i.e. "25 people are viewing this post right now"), reviews, and videos geared towards targeted customers once they visit your site.
The popular Live Visitor Count and Hot Streak notification features boost customers' perception of your brand, and lets prospects get a look at how other people respond to your product. Additionally, it's super easy to install -- you just copy and paste their pixels into your site.
You can identify your visitors and examine their journey throughout your site, which can help optimize your site design for higher conversions. It integrates with an impressive amount of other software systems and is optimized for mobile.
Price: Free trial available | Pricing starts from $33 per month
If you’re looking for a powerful lead generation tool, Survey Anyplace is a software your marketing team should consider.
With their ReportR pack, respondents can walk away with a personalized PDF report based on their answers immediately after completion. They also integrate smoothly with your existing marketing stack either via webhooks, Zapier or Integromat. So you can easily transport leads through to your CRM or email marketing tool and start building nurturing campaigns.
Price: The Yoast plugin for WordPress is free, but the paid premium plans range based off the number of sites you need monitored
Yoast is a very popular plugin that works with both Gutenberg and the Classic editor in WordPress. Yoast is an excellent tool to help you optimize your content for search engines.
Yoast helps you choose cornerstone content, focus keywords to help you rank, individual content URLs, and internal links for an additional boost. The plugin also evaluates your page readability and gives it a Flesch Reading Ease score.
It's updated to reflect Google's algorithm every two weeks, so you can always stay up-to-date on your SEO.
Price: Free for small or medium companies, custom pricing for enterprises
Slack is one of the favored communication services in business today.
It operates in channels designated for certain information, so business conversations don't get distracted or cut-off by tangents about where everyone wants to go for team lunch. It facilitates, de-silos, and focuses collaboration between employees and teams.
It's an excellent tool for networking and meeting others in the digital marketing space, and gives you the freedom to join or leave channels as needed.
Because it's such a popular communication channel, it has wide-ranging integrations with plenty of other tools. You can tack on a seemingly unlimited amount of integrations and Slack applications to make the tool even more powerful -- for instance, many teams will pipe in A/B test results, analytics notifications, new customer or transaction notifications, or even sales or customer support bots. While undeniably powerful, Slack is easy to start using immediately.
Price: Paid plans range from free to $20.83 per month for enterprise
Trello is a content management tool that many organizations use for brainstorming and strategizing content -- in fact, we use Trello at HubSpot to know when our blog posts are scheduled for publication.
The reason Trello is so appealing is that it's free for small teams and businesses, and it provides a visual way to brainstorm and schedule content online -- even if your team is remote or global. Additionally, it's easy to assign multiple employees to a card, so you know who's in charge of writing, editing, or adding CTA offers to a post.
Users can create cards and include notes on the card topic, as well as create deadlines and assign topics to certain teams. Trello facilitates collaboration and provides clarity on projects in the pipeline.
Price: Plans start free, $12.95/month for teams, or custom pricing for enterprises
Canva is a drag-and-drop design platform that allows users to create images using custom pictures, icons, shapes, and fonts from the Canva catalog. It offers an aesthetically-pleasing, simple way to design your own logos, presentations, images, or graphs based off your team's needs.
Additionally, Canva cuts out the need for an experienced designer and enables you to create the exact visual you have in mind using their vast image collection.
Price: AdWords run on a pay-per-click model
Google AdWords is one of the most popular options for advertising your business on Google's search engine results' pages. Payment is based on either a pay-per-click or pay-per-call structure.
Google AdWords hosts the Google Keyword Planner, where you can research which keywords you want to include in your ad and your other content. You can set budget caps on how much you want to spend. Ultimately, the tool helps you funnel more prospects to your website.
AdWords is an excellent way to display your products or services on Google's results pages for very specific queries. For instance, let's say someone searches for "best CrossFit gym in Austin". Sure, you could work on your SEO and hope to appear organically -- but you can also bid on the keyword and appear at the top of the page, enabling you to capture tons of high intent visitors.