With 2022 closing in the books, it's time to look ahead to what's next. As we head into a new year, it's time for me, as a Digital Marketing Manager, to take stock of where we are and where we're going.
This also means looking at our current digital marketing toolkit— and making sure it's up-to-date with the best tools for the job.
The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing. To stay on top, digital marketers need to be flexible and agile. The tools listed below are some of the favorites that I use in my work as a Digital Marketing Manager and Consultant.
Metricool
Metricool is a robust social media management platform that combines every feature you need to plan, publish, analyze and optimize your social media presence.
Metricool Review
This has got to be the most cost-effective social media management platform our team has ever used!
Its easy-to-use interface empowers you to become a digital marketing pro—no matter where you are on your social media journey. You can schedule content on Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, Tiktok, YouTube, and more. You can also connect your website to have an overview of your site's metrics within the platform.
Stories, Reels, Shorts, Static Posts—everything can be scheduled! And the reporting dashboard is easy to understand and can be exported to stakeholders.
My only complaint is that there's always a 5%-10% posting error monthly—always.
Sendinblue
SendinBlue is an email marketing platform that helps you manage customer relationships, build brand loyalty, and grow your business. In addition to responsive design templates and various email marketing features, SendinBlue offers an easy-to-use CRM solution for managing customer data and contacts.
Sendinblue Review
Migrating from a bare-bones email marketing platform due to cost, Sendinblue provided us with a richer email marketing experience for our subscribers. But what I appreciate from using this platform is how much time it freed up for my team and me.
The marketing automation is intuitive and easy to set up, which allows us not to segment our email list manually. Yes, we did it manually before, which took us hours. The lead magnets are also more engaging and eye-catching, and the CRM works well for our Sales team.
Overall, Sendinblue is one of the most productive platform shifts we did for our team.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 is an analytics service that enables you to measure traffic and engagement across your websites and apps. It's free, easy to use, and provides powerful insights into your business.
Google Analytics 4 Review
Google Analytics 4 is a great tool for both beginners and experts, especially for businesses with websites. It's an update from Universal Analytics that will be phased out in 2023.
To be honest, this took a longer learning curve for me, more than I initially anticipated. I've been so used to the previous UA UI that it took a lot of YouTube videos and online courses for me to gain the expertise and mastery for our point of business.
We're currently using it as our main Analytics tracking tool, and I now appreciate how it's less "fluffy" compared to the previous version.
Canva
Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool that makes creative collaboration easier with a team and the overall experience of creating graphics simpler compared to other software.
Canva Review
Need I say more? My team has been using Canva since the onset of the pandemic and we haven't looked back since. Canva's drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create beautiful designs without any design skills. And Canva's team of talented designers has created templates for every occasion — from social media posts to flyers and invitations.
I also appreciate the "comment" feature where we don't need to bombard our group chats and emails with comments on our images and do it within Canva instead.
Asana
Asana is a web-based task management application for teams that allows users to create and manage tasks and collaborate on projects. It is designed to help people working together on projects—whether they are co-located or distributed—to communicate efficiently and get things done without unnecessary delays.
Asana Review
Asana is the easiest way for my team to track and manage workflow. And with Asana’s flexible approach, we can choose the tools that work best for our team—no matter what projects we're tracking such as our marketing projects, events calendar, campaign list, etc.
It became the central hub or dashboard of our workflow and I appreciate how I can see an overview of my team's workload and their deadlines.
Google Workspace
Google's suite of productivity apps made online collaboration a whole lot easier.
Google Workspace Review
Coming from someone who's into spreadsheets, all of our reports, trackers, and website CRM are in Google Sheets. Our company docs and brand books are in Google Docs. All the files and content we post are in Google Drive.
It just makes sense to do it online where everyone on our team has access and can edit/comment in real-time. We still save local versions of our files, yes, however, adding Google Workspace to our toolkit saved a lot of time sharing and sending files from one another.
All-in-all, those are our software and platforms for our marketing efforts this 2023. While they may not work for everyone, they're certainly worth a try. We wish you the best of luck with your marketing endeavors and KPI achievement for everyone!
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