When it comes to choosing tools for digital marketing you have to ask yourself, ‘Will this tool lead to an action?’
Pretty Tools for Digital Marketing
Remember the ‘tool makers’ will have employed top marketing people and copywriters to seduce you into taking a subscription.
‘Action This Day’
If a tool doesn’t give you an action that will benefit your business by making or saving money then pass.
Ask Yourself:
- What is the outcome if I use it?
- Does that outcome provide an action I can easily use today?
- Can I quantify the money it will make or save?
- Does the potential gain outweigh the outlay?
The Danger of Tools
Tools often try to be ‘all things to all men’ – often a collection of free tools outperform the latest paid for tool.
Developers are very clever but not always great at providing an elegant ‘no brainer’ solution.
You are using someone else’s thinking.
Develop Your Own Thinking
They can’t help but make you think in a certain way. If you think in someone else’s way then you are trapped into their form of thinking instead of developing your own. Your own thinking will always win. Developing your own thinking rather than relying on someone else’s is going to mean hard work but also original insight. Insight based on your knowledge, experience and willingness to be different and that is more valuable than any tool subscription.
Eyes Down for Dashboards
I use a spreadsheet for tracking the important stats for each business I look after. The stats come from a variety of tools, most of them free, Google Analytics, Search Console etc.
The advantage is collecting the information and putting it in a form you respond to is a quicker way of learning and gaining insights than from a pretty interface.
Tools I’ve Paid for
Moz. Yep. Worth it for the user interface, the variety of tools plus a highly supportive SEO community. I mean, these guys are super helpful.
About Keyword Tools
They are all much the same. Yes. They are useful. I like Wordstream. Do I use them? Yes. I use free versions BUT I layer on other sources. Answer the Public, People Also Asked etc. But again no one tool is going to work. For keyword research use the free versions, layer on other search engines (if you are after product KWs then check out Amazon search, those suggestions are not accidental eh)? O’ and ask people what they world search for.
Remember that good old Google Ads Keyword Planner, gives you keywords that trigger ads o’ and they’ve taken to hiding terms that could be useful.
Three FREE Tools I like:
- First, builtwith, how competitors use technology.
- Second, domaintools, Whois Lookup, who are these people?
- Third, Google Search Console, let’ use that to make content.
Conclusion
No tool is a ‘magic bullet’, no tool can replace you and your learning, plus people make businesses not a super-doper tool with pretty animations.
Don’t take tools at face value. Combine your own and combine them for your needs. You and your business are unique, so use your thinking and your people to succeed.
About Conversion Detectives
Conversion Detectives is a full service digital marketing agency in Hertfordshire.
We find the best quality traffic for your website and convert more of that traffic into sales or sales leads.
Services
Digital Marketing Strategy | Creative Content Marketing | Email Marketing |
Lead Generation | Content Strategy | Social Media Marketing |
Video Marketing | SEO (Basics) | SEM |
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