Learning the art of notifying people that you and/or your services are available for purchase is the essence of marketing your business. There are more opportunities to market to customers who are aware of your brand and merchandise. It’s possible that you have a marketing plan set for the upcoming year. What are your top options for marketing tools, though?

We’ll examine the top ten marketing tools in this post.

One tool you can use to produce and promote your goods and services is a marketing tool. You have a lot of options to select from.

To increase sales, the majority of businesses employ a range of marketing strategies. To increase sales, you can combine direct mail, advertising, and social media management. Additionally, by utilizing a variety of marketing methods, you can concentrate on various aspects. Therefore, although some technologies are excellent for increasing sales, others are excellent for acquiring customer data.

In essence, it’s critical to consider which ones are most appropriate for your company to utilize. What are your company’s primary goals?

With this in view, we’ll look at the 10 best marketing tools to use.

1. Website and website analytic tools

Your website is the digital window to your business. All your products, services, information, and contact details are in one place, your online shop. Your aim is to drive traffic to your website and turn potential leads into customers and sales. 

A good marketing tool to track what’s happening when people visit your website is google analytics. This can be extremely useful as it gives you an overview of where your website visitors are coming from. Ultimately, it’s a list of very useful data gathered from your website traffic. 

2. Social media management tools

With social media, you can build an interactive online relationship with potential customers. By creating content such as blogs, you are giving them useful information about your products or services. You could post about a new product to draw attention to it. You can share images that are relevant to your business, and respond to any comments and questions. 

Your main aim here is to raise awareness of your business and build up your profile online. Potential customers will hopefully see, like, and share your content. 

3. Search Engine Optimisation

An SEO tool such as Hootsuite can help you to schedule social media posts in advance, thus saving you lots of time and effort.

If you use different social media platforms, Hootsuite allows you to bring all your social media into one place. For example, you can respond to comments and mentions through the dashboard rather than via each individual social media platform.

4. Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of attracting people who show interest in your company or product. Then, turning that prospect into a sale. They start as leads and hopefully turn into customers. 

Just one example of generating leads is to put a standard form on your website landing page. Maybe you can offer a discount or a free gift for completing the form. As people respond, you can keep a database of the customer relationship as you go.

5. Video Marketing

People naturally watch a video over reading text. It means that video marketing can deliver a higher level of engagement. Keeping your audience engaged means you have a better chance of turning these people into leads. Probably the best marketing tool for this is YouTube. For example, you could create some ‘how to’ videos that will provide potential customers with engaging content.

6. Email Marketing 

An email marketing tool helps you to create emails that will target the consumers you are looking for. An example of a good tool to use is Mailchimp. With Mailchimp, you can design and create an email that is on-brand with your business. It’s also helpful in collecting data about how many people have opened your email. You can see what content works well and what doesn’t.

7. Media Monitoring Tools

A media monitoring tool scans the web and tells you about any conversations that are relevant to your company, product or brand. For example, if there is a negative or positive comment, you can jump in and respond. This helps to build up awareness of your company as well as quashing any negative PR.

8. Customer loyalty scheme

Customer loyalty refers to the customers who keep coming back for more. Consider how you can reward them for this with a customer loyalty programme. Often, it’s much cheaper and requires less time to get an existing customer to buy from you than a new one. Giving back to them, via a discount code or even a quarterly prize is a good way to keep your customers happy.

9. PPC or Pay per Click

An online advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. A paid search ad appears when commercial searches occur on Google. For example, go to Google and search for local heating engineers. If any of them have utilised paid searches, you will see then appear higher up on the google ranking. Companies will then pay a fee for the advert if it’s clicked on by a customer. Hence the term pay per click. 

10. Content Marketing

By creating valuable and useful content, you are offering potential customers something they may be interested in. The aim is to attract your audience with focused content. An engaging piece of content doesn’t need to be overly long or clever. Readers will be responding to honest opinions and informative research around issues they want to hear about. You can then adapt your content across several platforms.

Read Also: Importance of Customer Service in Business Products and Services

The use of marketing tools has several advantages. The primary benefit is that it can save you a great deal of time and work. For example, you can minimize the amount of items you need to manage by consolidating all your social media components into a single platform, such as Hootsuite.

If you write an excellent piece of helpful material, like an article or blog post, you may use the same information for all of your marketing.

You are also collecting a great deal of data simply taking a few minutes to set up website analytics. This will assist you in learning more about your target market and how to make your approach more effective.

Most Popular Digital Products To Sell

A computer or mobile device along with an internet connection is all you need to create a digital product that is marketable. Physical materials, factories, or a sizable workforce are not required.

Digital goods are a fantastic source of passive income. It’s time for you to get creative and offer the world something amazing! However, what kind of digital product ought to you begin with? Prepare yourself for some inspiration and ideas for digital products. This is our condensed list of the best digital goods you can offer online.

1. eBooks

One of the most well-liked digital goods among consumers and creators alike is the eBook. They only need written content and a few appropriate photos, so they are rather easy to produce.

Distributing eBooks on big marketplaces or independently built online stores is easy. Customers may read them on e-readers, tablets, PCs, and even mobile phones, making them easily consumable.

The great thing about writing eBooks is that you may share about anything you are interested in or knowledgeable about. Using an eBook, you can curate, instruct, or educate existing content that you can subsequently sell on your website.

2. Software

The software industry is huge and consistently growing. There are many opportunities. The global software market is projected to be worth more than 1 trillion dollars in the next few years. Massive!

People use computers and mobile devices every day. Code writers and product developers can make apps that people want and need to speed up business tasks and daily life. Software can be the most profitable digital product.

From large enterprises, to small businesses, down to individual users, here are just a few examples of the types of software products you can make and sell:

• WordPress plugins
• WordPress themes
• Mobile apps
• Fitness apps
• Project management apps
• Video games
• Windows Apps
• Mac Apps
• Linux Apps
• iPhone Apps
• Android Apps
• Web-based apps (Saas) more on that below

You can turn code into cash.

3. Web-based Applications (SaaS)

Web-based applications are similar to software, but are not downloaded from the web and installed on your device or computer. 

Instead this software is run in a web browser. This type of software is also known as SaaS (Software as a Service). These businesses may not be “digital products” in the truest sense, but can be sold the same way. And customers use and perceive them as similar.

Many software creators find themselves faced with the choice between building a web-based SaaS app or a distributed, installable program. The ecosystem for SaaS’s is huge. Here are some digital product examples for SaaS, many of them names you’ll be very familiar with:

• File storage services:
  • Dropbox
  • iCloud
  • Google Drive
  • MediaFire
• Music apps:
  • Spotify
  • Apple Music
• Email marketing platforms:
  • Drip
  • MailChimp
  • AWeber
  • ConvertKit
  • Constant Contact
• Customer/contact management (CRM) apps:
  • Salesforce
  • Nutshell
  • Pipedrive
  • Groundhogg.io
• Site monitoring apps:
  • Pingdom
  • Status Cake
  • Upime.com
  • New Relic
• Project management services:
  • Basecamp
  • Asana
  • Podio
  • Jira
• Online learning:
  • Udemy
  • Team Treehouse
  • LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com)
  • Skillshare
  • Coursera

SaaS products usually have subscription pricing (recurring payment models). Customers pay a monthly fee or annual fee for access to the tools/apps/services.

4. Graphics and Digital Art

Graphic designers and artists can create a wide variety of unique and valuable products. Selling digital files allows access to a huge customer base.

This is a great way to make money online because it’s repurposing skills you already are using for work. 

Digital product examples include:

• Logos
• Brand kits
• Design templates
• Adobe files and templates (.PSD and .AI files)
• Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo templates
• PowerPoint themes
• Original artwork
• Clip art
• Stock icons (vectors)
• Card designs
• Swipe files
• Patterns
• Brushes
• Backgrounds

5. Cloud Design App Templates

There’s a new segment of graphic templates that we need to mention all on its own. Web-based (cloud) design apps like Canva and VistaCreate are growing very quickly. 

These apps make it easy for non-professionals and professionals alike to quickly make beautiful designs using only a web browser. They are fantastic for beginners. They have tens of millions of users. And this will only grow as social media grows.

You can sell templates for this expanding market. Use the design skills that you already have. All you need is a free Canva for VistaCreate account! Be sure to consider this easy win!

6. Photography

High-quality, premium photos are one of the most sought-after digital products today. The biggest consumers of online photographs are bloggers and website owners.

There are many types of photos you can sell:

• Portraits
• Stock photos
• Drone photos
• Event photos
• Backgrounds

One challenge is that photography has become a crowded market. It’s hard to sell photos at a high price. It’s difficult to earn what they are worth (often they are given away for free). 

However, there are strategies to build a successful business selling photos. The first thing you need to do is make it very easy to purchase photos. Consider whether you should sell photographs individually or provide unlimited downloads to subscribers.

A good website is a vital part of a photographer’s portfolio. Showcasing your work beautifully is needed to raise your profile.

If you have competitive pricing, and excellent images, it’s possible to do very well selling your independent or client-commissioned photos on your own website.

7. Courses

Online courses are huge right now. e-Learning is an industry in its own right. There is a lot of innovation, huge growth, and momentum in this space. As it grows, we are starting to see traditional educational institutions explore new ways to make their content available to online learners. There are three basic ways to sell courses online:

• One-off course
• Collection of courses (often with a certificate, degree, or reward given out upon completion)
• Membership/subscription to a catalog of courses 

Courses are sold the same way as most other digital products. According to our user surveys, the number of people using Easy Digital Downloads to sell courses recently quadrupled in one year!

Online courses are the sole product of some online businesses. Other businesses use them as a complementary product. For example a training course used to help customers succeed with their main product/s.

It used to be really hard to make online courses. Learning Management Systems (LMS) were expensive and hard to use. But plugins built on top of WordPress make it easy and inexpensive to provide quality training.

Online courses are an amazing opportunity for anyone with knowledge or expertise to share. And YOU are an expert in something. So share it!

There are no limits to the audience you can reach! You are no longer limited by geography, technology or time.