60 Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools You Should Be Using in 2018

So How Will These Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools Benefit Me?

We hear this all the time, and we are sure it sounds familiar to many of you as well. You are already stretched to the max just running your business! So how are you supposed to do this digital marketing that everyone is talking about? How can you get more hours in your busy day? Unfortunately we can’t give you more hours in the day; we are still trying to achieve that goal ourselves! But we can show you how you can save time by implementing a few of these must-have digital marketing tools for 2018. Sweet!

Before we get started, please note that this is not a post about building your digital marketing strategy. We simply want to give you a better understanding of the digital marketing tools available to you, and help you decide which ones to add to your digital marketing arsenal. You should only add the marketing tools that will actually benefit your digital marketing campaigns and strategies. This is definitely not a case where he or she with the most toys wins, so you have been warned!

The following infographic from Depositphotos outlines the 60 must-have digital marketing tools for 2018, grouped by category. Scroll down and we will elaborate a bit on each tool, and provide you with all the links you need to find and implement these must-have digital marketing tools yourself.

60 Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools for 2018

Infographic courtesy of Depositphotos

Why You Need These Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools

Manage Social Media

The first set of our must-have digital marketing tools for 2018 deals with a major concern many marketers have; how to effectively deal with your social media strategy and campaigns? These tools will let you manage all your social media from one place, find popular, trending or relevant hashtags, grow social media engagement and followers, and create an editorial calendar for better social media marketing results.

1. Socialdrift – Socialdrift is automated marketing tool to get real Instagram likes, comments, and followers.
2. Displaypurposes – With Displaypurposes you can quickly find hashtags for your posts. You type one hashtag and it generates 30 related hashtags you can copy.
3. Buffer – Buffer is a place to manage all social media pages. It allows to schedule posts, manage accounts and analyze your performance.
4. Buzzsumo – Using Buzzsumo you can explore most shared content, track the mentions of your brand and find influencers.
5. Embedsocial – Embedsocial can help you embed social media photos, online reviews, social media feed and Instagram stories on your site.
6. AgoraPulse – Using Agorapulse you can publish social media content and get reports to measure their effectiveness.
7. Planable – Planable is a place to preview social media content, schedule it and get feedback from your team.
8. Coschedule – Using co-schedule you can create an interactive calendar for all your projects.
9. Mention – Mention is a real-time media monitoring tool where you can track you brand, your competitors and customers. It crawls the web and sends alerts when it finds mentions.
10. Later – Later is a popular Instagram platform. There you can visually plan and schedule posts.
11. Loomly – Loomly is a social media calendar management tool that helps teams and individuals create and schedule content for social media networks. Managing your social media content has never been easier thanks to Loomly. Big shoutout to Sara @ Loomly for mentioning this!

Organize Your Emails

This may be one of the most popular parts of our must-have digital marketing tools. They let you track e-mail opens, send newsletters, tag links, and check of your emails for spam, phishing, and other threats. Especially the last one is a very cool feature in this age of endless email! But better make sure none of these will interfere with your current or planned email service and provider.

1. Hemingway App – It’s a must-have tool if you write a lot. With Hemingway you can make your writing clear, check mistakes and improve readability. You need it if you write emails, blog posts, and articles.
2. Litmus – Build, test, and analyze your email campaigns.
3. My Signature – My Signature is a free professional signature generator. It works for Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook and other services. It includes your photo, different forts and links to social media.
4. Beefree.io – Beefree is an easy and free tool to design beautiful emails. You can integrate these templates in any email tools you use.
5. Neverbounce – If you have a huge list of email addresses and want to find out if all of them work, you should use Neverbounce. It filters bad addresses, so all of your newsletters are delivered to your customers.
6. Raventools – Ravetools allow to tag links to track visitors from emails.
7. Mail-tester – Mail-tester allows to check spam score and quality of your email.
8. Streak – Streak is a CRM for Gmail. There you can create templates of letters, track views and email opens.
9. MailChimp – MailChimp is one of the world’s most popular email marketing platform. With MailChimp you can send newsletters, automate marketing, and analyze data.
10. Sendgrid – Sendgrid is a cloud-based email delivery platform. You can send password resets there, notifications and newsletters.

Improve SEO

This set of must-have digital marketing tools focuses on your search engine performance. It lets you perform SEO audits of your site, analyze your backlinks and the backlinks of your competitors, check your website traffic, and get in touch with bloggers and influencers. But be careful here; this area can quickly get technical. If you are in over your head (or feel that way) you should work with a professional.

1. Ahrefs – Ahrefs is a popular SEO tool where you can analyze your and your competitors’ backlinks, find keywords, and discover popular content.
2. Google Webmasters – Google Webmasters is a must-have tools if you have a site. You can track your site’s positions in Google, and see what pages perform well.
3. SemRush – Using SemRush you can analyze keywords, backlinks, and competitors.
4. DeepCrawl – DeepCrawl will help to make your site accessible and relevant. It runs an SEO-audit of your website.
5. SEOquake – SEOquake is a widget for a browser where you can analyze positions of the site, its domain authority, Alexa, and traffic.
6. GoDaddy – GoDaddy is a platform where you can buy a domain.
7. Pingdom – Easy-to-use tool to test the speed of your site.
8. Serprobot – Serprobot is a free tool to track your site’s positions in Google.
9. Justreachout – Justreachout allows to get in touch with bloggers and influencers.
10. Ninjaoutreach – Ninjaoutreach is a tool for blogger outreach and campaign tracking.

Create Ads

The following set of must-have digital marketing tools let you create ads, do keyword research, retarget your audience, and even place native ads. Once again, we recommend you play around with these before deciding which one is the best fit for you!

1. Facebook AdManager – Facebook AdManager allows to create Instagram and Facebook ads and track their performance.
2. Google AdWords – Google Adwords is a Google platform for advertising
3. Google Keyword Planner – With Google keyword planner you can do keyword research and selects the best keywords for your website.
4. Answerthepublic – Type a word on Answer the public and you’ll get a nice graph with content ideas.
5. PixelMe – PixelMe generates a shortcode you can add to your page and retarget your audience.
6. AdEspresso – Use AdEspresso to create and analyze your campaigns in one channel.
7. Quuupromote – Quuupromote is a useful tool to promote your content with influencers
8. Spyfu – Spyfu allows to download competitors keywords and ads.
9. Taboola – Taboola is an advertising platform for native ads.
10. Adroll – With Adroll you can place social ads, email ads and display ads, and manage them in one place.

Create Designs

Next on our list of must-have digital marketing tools are these easy-to-use tools to design blog images, print materials, sites, and logos. But be careful here and make sure you end up with something that is unique and reflects your brand voice and image!

1. Crello – Crello is a design tool with templates for your blog images, ads, animations, and print materials.
2. Wix – Wix allows to create a site without coding skills.
3. Depositphotos – On Depositphotos you can find royalty free stock images, videos, and vectors for your designs.
4. Prezi – Prezi helps to design beautiful presentations and track their success.
5. Venngage – A tool to create infographics
6. Google Fonts – Google Fonts is site where you can find the best fonts for your designs.
7. Adobe Color – Adobe Color is a great tool to discover color palettes and colors for your designs.
8. Tiny Png – Tiny Png is an easy-to-use tool where you can compress your images.
9. Iconfinder – Using Iconfinder you can find free icons for your designs.
10. Freelogoservices – Freelogoservices allows to create logos without expensive programs and design skills.

Improve Productivity

The following must-have digital marketing tools focus on productivity. They will let you manage all your marketing tools from one place, better organize your tasks and collaborate with your team more effectively. But be careful and make sure you and your team will actually feel comfortable using any of these tools. Maybe try out the free trial versions if available before making a final decision?

1. Station – Station is an app to manage all marketing tools you use. All of your apps are smartly organized, workspace is clean and distractions are reduced.
2. Trello – Trello is a must-have tool if you want to organize your tasks or your projects.
3. Slack – Slack allows to collaborate with your team effectively.
4. Uberconference – Using Uberconference you can organize conference calls and meetings.
5. Idonethis – Idonethis is a productivity tool that creates progress reports and helps you get motivation.
6. Kapost – With Kapost you can create an editorial calendar and manage content.
7. Hootsuite – Hootsuite allows to manage all social media in one place.
8. Hellosign – Hellosign helps to fill out the documents and sign them in Gmail.
9. Timedoctor – Timedoctor is a productivity tool that tracks time spent working.
10. Dropbox – Is a cloud-based service to keep your documents and to share them.

Why You Should Use These Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools!

Let us put it this way; if you do not have a digital marketing strategy you are pretty much guaranteed to fail at digital marketing. And unfortunately many businesses seem to do an ad-hoc version of digital marketing. That may even get them the odd prospect or lead. But they are wasting a lot of time and effort.

Building your own digital marketing strategy will take time and effort. But it is worth it! Because once you have an effective digital marketing strategy in place it takes much less energy to produce results. And we are pretty sure you would much rather use that to run your business. So get started now! Otherwise you can keep wasting your time and money. And that will only benefit your competitors!

And all of these must-have digital marketing tools will help you overcome two major obstacles to digital marketing we hear from business owners: “I don’t know how to do this!” or “I don’t have the time to do this!” Most, if not all, of these tools have instructional videos, helpful tips and how-to’s, and other resources to get any business started with digital marketing. And all of them will help you streamline your digital marketing efforts, which will make digital marketing much less of a drain on your time.

So do yourself, and your business, a big favor. At least look into implementing some of these must-have digital marketing tools for 2018! You may just surprise yourself.

If you are new to digital marketing we recommend that you hire a digital marketing consultant to help you select and implement any of these must-have digital marketing tools in your current or planned digital marketing strategies. These may include your current online marketing efforts, your content strategy and creation, your website and social presence, and how you track your customers and prospects.

Hiring a professional will cost money, yes. But it will give you clear insights on areas that you must improve in order to build an effective digital marketing strategy. The continued growth and success of your business may well depend on it. And that makes it too important to trust to an amateur, don’t you think?

Need Help With These Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools?

Here at ESPRESSO.digital, we offer digital marketing services, including creative services, web design and development, and search engine optimization.

Contact us to find out more about our digital marketing services, and how our team can help you implement and make the most of these 60 must-have digital marketing tools for 2018.

Do you have any favorite or super awesome must-have digital marketing tools not featured above? Please leave your comments below so our audience can benefit as well, and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And help your audience become better digital marketers by sharing these must-have digital marketing tools with them!

Thank you! We appreciate your help to end bad business websites, one pixel at a time!

By ESPRESSO Team Highly Caffeinated Digital Creatives @ESPRESSOcreates