5 Digital Marketing tools you should use in 2020

Anton Ioffe - August 31st 2020 - 6 minutes read

Running an online business is not as easy as you think.

If we compare the management and maintenance of a physical business with infrastructures, it looks simpler indeed.

But let's face it. It's no longer possible for a self-respecting company to ignore digital marketing.

Businesses can no longer ignore the Internet and have to integrate digital tools into their systems in one way or another.

Over the years, we have started to integrate smartphones, tablets, social networks, online payment solutions into our lives so much we can not do without it**.**

Unfortunately, many small and big enterprises don’t yet know how to use social media, SEO, or email marketing to reach the vast Internet market.

And that can be understood. These new ways of marketing are far from obvious to most of us. This, of course, requires knowledge (technical and practical) combined with a good marketing spirit.

Good news, many tools allow companies to exploit social networks, SEO, and email marketing. With some technical knowledge, anyone can use them to:

Do keyword research (SEO)
Create Newsletters (email marketing)
Create visuals and illustrations for social networks
Do a competitive analysis.
Edit web pages and analyze the performance of a website

In this article, I'm going to share my five favorite tools that I use daily to manage my online business. I don't know anything about it technically, and yet, I know how to use these tools. So why not you?

You may be familiar with one or two of these tools. Others may be new to you.

In any case, be sure of one thing. By combining these five tools, you will be fully capable of managing your online business and generating qualified leads through your website or social networks.

1) Ubersuggest

If I were to describe Ubersuggest in a few words, I would say that it is the ultimate tool for content marketing and SEO.

And I tell you from the start. It is entirely free (for now).

So what does it do?

It has one very useful feature: finding long-tail keywords from a keyword.

For example, if I search for the keyword "digital marketing," Ubersuggest will suggest several long-tail keywords like:

Digital marketing blogs
Digital marketing training
Digital Marketing Definition
Etc.

You quickly understand the importance of this tool for keyword research, which is essential when one wishes to rank contents in the search engines for a specific keyword.

It is also this tool that I use to analyze all the long-tail keywords linked to a generic keyword such as "Facebook advertising," "digital marketing," "content marketing," etc.

Today, Ubersuggest offers many more features that I will not show you all in this article (it would take far too long).

It allows, for example, to find content ideas from a simple keyword. If I type "Instagram stories," Ubersuggest will suggest articles that contain this keyword in their title.

2) Buzzsumo

I told you about Ubersuggest, which allows you to analyze your competitors' SEO strategy and discover content ideas based on a keyword.

This is not always enough to develop a content strategy. Social networks are also relevant. Content that works well on Google may not be as successful on social networks, and the reverse is also true.

What if you want to make sure that your next content will reap a ton of shares on social networks?

With Buzzsumo, it's far from impossible!

Buzzsumo is like the Google of shared content on social networks.

The principle is simple. You type in a keyword (e.g., "Facebook ad"), and Buzzsumo sends you back the most shared articles that contain this keyword.

You can see the details of the shares by the social network, and you can even filter the results to show the contents with the most shares on Facebook alone.

Besides, Buzzsumo also tells you who shared the article in question on Twitter by clicking on "View Sharers." These are people you can contact to ask them to share your content (if it is close to the one they already shared).

All these features have a cost; Buzzsumo does not offer a completely free plan. The first plan starts at $79/month.

This can be a problem if you are starting up or are not (yet) ready to invest in digital marketing tools.

In that case, use the 7-day free version and do as much research as possible before the end of your free trial to find as many ideas as possible.

3) Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an undervalued tool.

That's normal; it's completely free.

However, the information you will find there is precious.

If you are not familiar with Google Analytics, don't worry, it is straightforward to use. Concretely, you will use it to analyze everything that happens on your website, including :

The people who visit your website
Their behavior on your website
How they arrived on your website
Most visited pages
The pages that offer the most conversions

Of course, to obtain this information, you need to install the Google Analytics tracking code on your website. This will only take a few minutes. Most CMS allows you to integrate this code without too much difficulty.

Once the code is installed, you will be able to analyze what is happening on your website in more depth.

I like to analyze the "Source/support" report in the "Acquisition" section.

It's a report that gives you an overview of where your visitors come from.

4) SEMrush

Currently, SEMrush is probably the best competitive analysis tool on the market. In any case, this is the reputation that SEMrush has built up over the years.

I've already mentioned Ubersuggest, which offers quite advanced possibilities to analyze a company's SEO strategy, but that's nothing compared to what SEMrush allows you to do.

SEMrush allows, of course, to discover at a glance the traffic, keywords, backlinks, and most visited pages of your competitors (like Ubersuggest).

However, it also allows you to discover the paid ads on Google of a competitor, both on the search network (text ads at the top of search results) and the display (banners).

In other words, you can know the keywords your competitors are paying for, as well as the paid traffic generated by these keywords (I let you imagine the usefulness of this information).

I told you that you could see what a competitor's display ads look like.

SEMrush doesn't stop at Google; it also integrates social media.

With its "Social Media Tracker" tool, you can compare the number of subscribers and the shares you have with your competitors (SEMrush will even suggest competitors).

With the "Top Content" report, you can know which posts have the most interactions or the highest engagement rate during a given period, for a particular competitor or all combined.

This information is precious when you consider how social platforms such as Facebook or Instagram reward Pages that produce engaging content.

So how much does SEMrush cost?

You guessed it, SEMrush is not free! It costs $99/month, but it's definitely worth using it if you invest your time and money in SEO and SEA.

Note that SEMrush offers a somewhat limited freemium version, but it is useful to get familiar with the tool.

5) Canva

Canva is perhaps the most straightforward tool I know to create beautiful illustrations for social networks. This time, I'll tell you right away, Canva offers a free plan that is more than enough to get you started.

Used by community managers to create visuals for social networks, Canva can also be used to generate event covers, documents (e.g., ebooks, CVs), and more.

I love this tool, especially for these features :

Magic resize: you can easily resize an image you created in one or more formats to share it on multiple social networks (only available with the paid plan).
The addition of icons and stickers on the images (the most beautiful ones are available on a paid plan)
Filters to make the images more flashy!
The ability to integrate other members of your team and import visuals created with other software.

To conclude on Canva, its ease of use makes it almost indispensable for those who don't know how to use more powerful software such as the Adobe suite.

Conclusion

Feel free to try out all these tools and see which ones you want to integrate into your daily life.

Most of these tools offer a free version or a 7-day free trial. This seems to be sufficient to make the right choice.

What other marketing tools would you have added to this list?