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It goes without saying that digital marketing is a broad industry with a plethora of diverse areas. Much like many other technology-driven industries, it’s a dynamic and ever-evolving field. This can present a challenge to many participants closely following the industry and building their businesses and careers within it. Below are some of the areas of digital marketing:

• SEO & SEM
• SMM
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Lead generation
• Digital marketing analytics

With the advance of technologies, digital marketing models and practices that worked previously may become ineffective in driving any results. One important question that emerges is how can digital marketers and business owners stay abreast with the evolution and remain both efficient and effective. This is where the use of powerful digital marketing tools comes into the picture.

In this article, we will look at 5 powerful online marketing tools. Among them are free online marketing tools, while others contain paid features. It is, however, more common to see tools come with both free and paid options. The tools we mention here are not necessarily exclusive solutions and are given in no particular order of importance. At Brighta, we also get the most of some of these handy tools to assist businesses of all scales to succeed with their digital marketing plans and goals.

1. Hootsuite: This is an SMM platform offering a host of tools that allow social media managers to effectively run multiple accounts across numerous social media networks. By having a single convenient access point, users can schedule and send posts in parallel across most of the social media sites out there. The extensive list includes such platforms as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. It comes in handy for people who have to manage many profiles and frequently post updates. The key value here is that it saves time. Besides that, it also provides users with valuable insights into the reach and engagement level of their social media posts through its analytics tool. It offers integration of other popular apps used by social media marketers, therefore making it easier for them to work using only one platform.

Hootsuite offers a limited free plan that enables the user to access up to 3 profiles and 30 scheduled messages. Its more powerful options require payment and include other plans for businesses of different sizes so that anyone can find a fitting option.

2. SEO Moz: This would be better described as a set of tools that cover all major aspects of SEO and SEM. It comes with both free tools and paid options which offer more features and higher capabilities. The tools include Keyword Explorer, Link Explorer (link analysis and building tool), MozBar (a Google Chrome extension app that provides on-page metrics), and Site Crawl for on-site SEO audit. Its local marketing tools include My Business Listing, My Business Console, and Research Categories. Also, the paid options (Pro and Local) offer a monthly trial plan.

3. Mail Chimp: One of the well-known email marketing tools, MailChimp offers the ability to manage email addresses and basic contact information of subscribers from a single platform. It includes a list feature that lets users group the subscribers into lists and a newsletter or email template design tool allowing users to include custom elements like a brand logo. It also offers a mass-email sending feature, insights into the delivery rate, and the “opened” rate of sent messages in each campaign, as well as an ability to see how many users clicked on the link given in the letter. With its forever-free option, Mailchimp remains at the top of the list of free online marketing tools for email marketing. The free plan allows users send up to 12, 000 emails each month with a limit of 2,000 total subscribers. For most small and medium businesses this plan may work just fine. But, if a larger monthly volume and subscriber count become necessary, it offers a monthly plan and buy-when-necessary plan.

4. Google Analytics: Arguably the most widely known and used tool for digital analytics, Google Analytics allows its users to monitor important metrics across their digital platforms such as websites and mobile apps. It has so many features that getting them all into one paragraph wouldn’t be the most prudent decision. It is definitely the tool any marketer should look into.

5. Google Pagespeed Insights: This useful and free tool by Google allows you to enter a URL and get the necessary data about its loading speed on mobile and desktop platforms. More importantly, it offers information on where and how the speed could be improved. The importance of this tool is underscored by the fact that people will naturally avoid visiting pages that load slowly. This could prove especially costly for e-commerce websites. And, it should also be mentioned that Google’s search algorithm puts slow-loading web pages lower in the results.

Remember that your success with online marketing is closely tied to the use of tools that can help to deliver the desired results. For the purposes they serve, the above tools will surely bring massive results to your business online in 2019 and beyond.