In today’s world, there are countless options for marketers. From social media to email marketing, PPC to SEO, there is a variety of platforms and software that can be used to reach your audience.
While it’s great to have all these tools to reach potential customers, it can be difficult to know which tool is the best for your needs. Different companies specialize in bringing these marketing tools to businesses, and understanding the differences between them is important if you want to find the one that will best suit your needs. In this article, we will discuss the various online marketing software packages available and how to choose the right tool for your needs.
Email Marketing
The most basic and perhaps the most traditional form of marketing is email marketing. With this tool, you can send automated emails to your audience with content that is pre-approved by a human being. The ease of use and simplicity of this type of tool makes it extremely popular and widely-used. Some of the more advanced email marketing tools even allow you to send personalized emails to your subscribers, using the information they provided when they signed up for your list.
You may be familiar with the term A/B testing. With email marketing, you can conduct experiments to see what tactics work best for your target audience. With A/B testing, you can compare two different versions of an email to see which one generates the most clicks or opens the most mails.
Social Media Marketing
As the name implies, social media marketing (SMM) is all about using the various social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to reach your audience. For years, this type of marketing was considered ‘traditional’ compared to other online marketing methods like SEO or PPC. However, with the shift to digital marketing, SMM has become extremely popular and important.
The major platforms for social media marketing are free, but with some of the more advanced tools, you may need to pay a small fee. Most social media marketing tools also allow you to conduct A/B testing. This means you can compare two different versions of a social media campaign to see which one gets the most engagement (likes, followers, etc.). To make your life easier, many companies have made it their mission to provide you with the best social media marketing tools. Some of the more popular ones are:
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
- Buffer
- Polaris
- Revision3
- Mad Hippie
- Tastemade
- Mashape
- CharityWater
Search Engine Marketing
As the name implies, search engine marketing (SEM) is all about using the various search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) to reach your audience. This type of marketing is a bit more complicated than the previous two, but the results can be just as effective. For example, you can create a list of popular keywords and phrases and utilize them in the location-based searches that these search engines conduct.
Some of the tools designed for SEM are:
- Google AdWords
- Bing Ads
- Yahoo! Search Marketing
- Ask.com Search Marketing
- Market Samurai
- Jupiter
- OpenX Marketing Platform
- EMC Remarketing
- Marketing Charts
- HubSpot
- Velverette
- KissMetrics
- Clarity.com
Pay Per Click Marketing
Paid per click (PPC) marketing is all about spending money on paid advertisements (such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc.) to have your product or service appear at the top of the results page.
You have probably seen ads like this one:
When someone clicks on these ads, they are directed to a site where they can learn more about the product or service that is being advertised. You may be familiar with the term ‘retargeting’. With PPC advertising, you can conduct retargeting experiments to see which ads get the most clicks.
Online Marketing Automation
With the advanced tools and platforms designed for marketers, it is now possible to automate the process of getting leads and converting them into paying customers. Some of the more popular automation tools are:
- HubSpot
- MailChimp
- AstroAds
- Drip
- HubSpot CRM
- Mad Hippie
- Marketo
- Penny pincher
- Yieldify
- Convertri
- Cascade
- Venngage
- ActiveCampaign
These are just a few of the tools available to marketers. Each one is designed to make the process of getting leads and converting them into paying customers easier. Which one you will choose depends on your expertise, experience, and what you are looking for in a tool. Keep in mind that no tool can do everything for you, and you will have to learn how to use each one effectively.