When we look at it the wrong way, there’s an awful lot of marketing data floating around. How much traffic you got, sources, Facebook engagement numbers, reach and fans, if people saw your website on a desktop computer or on a mobile phone… Lots and lots of marketing data.
But when we look at it the RIGHT way then we suddenly realize that all this marketing data is awesome. Using the marketing data properly can improve your website and bottom line tremendously.
And there are so many online marketing tools that help make sense of all that marketing data. Want to know how people are reaching your website? Easy. Want to know how to improve your Facebook page? Done. Want to know what people are clicking on when they read your blog posts? There’s an app for that too. Well, not an app, but it’s the same principle.
This list doesn’t include ALL the online marketing tools you might want to have in your toolbox, but they are a very good start.
Start creating your own landing pages with Pagewiz
Google Analytics
Google Analytics probably doesn’t need an introduction, but I’ll do one anyway J. Google Analytics is a (free) monitoring tool that shows you information about your website’s traffic and visitors.
That’s an over simplification of course. Using Google Analytics you can see tons of information about your visitors. You can see what pages people visit and what browser they use. You can see whether they are browsing via a mobile device or using a desktop, and the list goes on.
Google Analytics is a must have online marketing tool for any marketer, as it helps you understand what people are looking for on your website and how to improve their online stay.
Just as an example, you can see what pages bring in the most traffic and create more of them. You can try out different landing page design, and see how it affects the user conversion rate. Or you can see the changes in traffic as your marketing efforts in social networks pays off. In other words, Google Analytics helps you meet your marketing goals.
Just like any other Google product, Google Analytics improves all the time. These days, they also provide you with real-time information, so you can see what visitors are doing right now on your website. Google Analytics also integrates with Google Adwords, so that you can collect marketing data about people who came to your website via ads, which helps you improve your advertising campaigns.
You can get started with Google Analytics here.
Hemingway – A Writing App
In today’s marketing world, we write a lot of marketing content. Blog posts, newsletters, emails, and more. I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for online marketing tools that will help me improve my marketing content writing. That’s how I found Hemingway.
Hemingway once said that to get started with your story, you should write one true sentence. In his own words, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’
So what does this have to do with writing marketing content? Through this delightful website that helps you write ‘bold and clear’ as they put it. The online marketing tool points out sentences that may be difficult to read, highlights adverbs that you included, and more.
The above paragraph, for instance, was graded 9 in readability. The grade level is, according to the site, ‘the lowest education level needed to understand your text. Aim for a Grade Level less than 10 for bold, clear writing.’
They don’t have a downloadable desktop version yet (although one seems to be in the works) but you can edit your text online to see the changes and how they affect readability. All in all, this is a good place to see if your blog posts are clear and concise, and how to improve them.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is the online marketing tool I use when Google Analytics just isn’t enough. Crazy Egg maps out user activity on your website in the form of heat maps. What are heat maps? Well, you can see where visitors clicked, or spent time with their mouse cursor. The longer the time, the redder the area. The shorter the time, the bluer the area. Simple, right?
Crazy Egg is a great online marketing tool that helps you see where you should improve your webpage experience. For instance, you can see buttons that aren’t clicked (because people don’t understand that they are buttons), images that ARE clicked (because people expect them to do things), areas of text that no one sees, or landing pages that people scroll past their values without looking at them.
Armed with this information, changing the layout of your website changes from guesswork to fact-based decisions.
Want to learn more? Check out their very neat intro video.
LikeAlyzer
With over 25 million small business Facebook pages active today, chances are that some of your marketing efforts are invested in the billion-and-change strong social network. But how well is your page really doing? That’s what LikeAlyzer attempts to answer.
Using LikeAlyzer is relatively simple. All you need to do is enter your Facebook page’s name, and after a little magic, you will see basic statistics and recommendations. The statistics tell you about your page, fans, and engagement rates. The recommendations suggest what you can do to improve those numbers. For example, if you should post more often, whether the length of your posts is sufficient, or if you should be posting at different times.
Another useful bit of information is how quickly you respond to your fans. As more and more people are turning to social media to reach out to businesses, their expectation for a rapid response is growing. The response time on your Facebook page can be a critical factor in a potential customer’s buying decision, so speed is obviously an issue.
LikeAlyzer also shows you how your page is doing compared to others in the same industry, which gives you a little insight into your competition. If you see pages that are doing really well, you can always check them out for inspiration.
4 Online Marketing Tools
And there you have it. Four online marketing tools that you can start using today to make sense of the marketing data that’s at your fingertips, but isn’t always easy to turn into actual action items, and one online marketing tool that will help you write better marketing content for your target audience.
Did we leave anything vital out? Sound off in the comments, and let us know!
Avi Kaye is a social media marketing consultant for software startups. In addition to PageWiz, he also writes for himself on his own blog, in between numerous cups of coffee.
