Every Digital Marketing Strategy Needs These Tools to Win the Internet

Digital Marketing Strategy Tools

web marketing toolsAs digital marketing strategists we straddle two spheres. Our role demands that we are creative and data-driven, that we not only look at the bottom line goals of the client but that we present the strategy and post reports in the way the client wants to receive it. We also know that digital marketing strategy isn’t just about whim and “let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks.” Digital strategy is about the numbers. We don’t need to toot our own proverbial horns because being a great marketer means the numbers (and presentation) speak for themselves.

Right?

Sometimes during our brain’s creative thoughts we may not be completely organized, or, in the essence of short deadlines, have the prettiest looking pitch, but we know our strategy is solid. So, here are six key things that help us that every digital marketing strategist should have in their back pocket to be able to stay in front of the competition, to deadline, making the best use of time. These may not be sexy or new, but they will help keep you focused and help with tight deadlines.

1. Editorial & Promotional Calendars.
Do you have your client’s overarching marketing strategy? If there are bricks and clicks opportunities do you know what is being planned when? Are there tie-ins to in store and online plans to make cohesive campaign strategies? Do you know why there was a lift in conversions or traffic if something is happening offline? You can tie everything in when you have reporting calls, you help your digital and traditional marketers in a company work together and help align the online and offline strategy. These are the pillars that every company likes – increasing teamwork and negating silos. The more you know, the more equipped you are to provide a strong strategy in the digital space.

Online Editorial Calendar and Promo Calendar Tools:

  • WordPress Plug-In.
  • Co-Schedule: a different, intensive and feature-packed WordPress / Google Docs plug-in with workflow management. You, bloggers/freelancers, and everyone else can work out of to ensure you are all working on the same strategy at the right time.

Free Template, File-Based Editorial Calendar:

  • My favorite is HubSpot’s Editorial Calendar . It is still really worth the free download especially in digital because you can track keyword and call-to-action usagehubspot. Simple.

 

 

 

 

2. Google Alerts. PR Listening & Brand Monitoring.

alerts

It’s free and a quick way to do some free PR listening and brand monitoring. Creating Google Alerts to watch the overall palimpsest for your verticals is likely one of the most important things you can do. By adding competitors too, you know exactly what’s happening in the space. Sometimes competitors don’t put the right security on documents, Slideshare’s and PDFs, so you can get more than you bargained for (maniacal laugh included). Knowing what’s happening in your client’s space is very important to stay ahead of the game.

I’ll admit that getting a lot of emails seems tedious but I usually find a juicy tidbit every day that I put to use at some point. A shortfall is the lack of social media listening in the alert content, but if you don’t already have a social monitoring tool you could use free ones such as SocialMention.com

Create your Google Alerts Here.

 

 

search-operators

Don’t forget when you create alerts to use all of the keywords someone may search for. For example, for our digital marketing agency, here are
some of the alerts I am following. (Some are semantically broad keyword terms and some are very niche. There are a lot more. I also follow some local terms semantically, plus all of the keyword pervasive terms for all of our clients.

  • Direct + Access + Digital
  • www.directaccessdigital.com
  • directaccessdigital.com
  • Eric Rodgers (track executives)
  • Don McNeill
  • Digital+marketing+agency
  • Performance+digital+marketing
  • Search+marketing
  • Canada+digital+marketing+agency
  • Canadian+digital+marketing+agency
  • “US state”+digital+marketing+agency
  • Product tracking.

You can use Google’s advanced search operators to get more specific search results. The best way to get the information you need is to use Google’s Advanced Search and add in negative keywords, etc. to get the right alerts you’re looking for.

batman

 

3. Advanced Excel Skills or Know Someone Who Has Them.

Here at Direct Access Digital we have a team of reporting master geniuses who have these amazing excel skills, where the intensive micro-data is crazy in a good way and the spreadsheets and charts look beautiful and make it easy to understand for the client and directly and for our in-house strategy team. Those skills save a lot of time. I have been taking some free online classes to upgrade my skills – including pivot tables. While this site isn’t pretty it has some easy to understand videos.

4. Charanerd-girlcter Traits.

If you work in marketing you will definitely know the stereotype of a particular type of personality we are supposed to have. I think we all know what this means. However, for digital marketing strategy you need to be half geek and half marketing. We like numbers, analytics, data, data, data and data, but we also are incredibly creative, and can find opportunity almost anywhere. Let’s be fair, our research skills online and offline are stealth super-sleuth-like. We also build and foster close lifelong business relationships and have a virtual rolodex as long as the circumference of the Earth, or Pluto at the very least. While we are liked generally, we are also the quiet geeks in the corner, we have a concentrated look on our faces, and we are always heads-down…plotting. Nothing we do is random. This makes us cool but actually geek-cool…so maybe not cool…let’s check the supporting data to decide? Multi-variate tests to decide…

Image Source: https://coffeemeetsbagel.com/blog/index.php/best-date-tips/fun-dating/why-nerds-are-the-new-cool/

 

5. Subscribing to Expert Blogs, eNewsletters and RSS Feeds.

Strategy doesn’t always involve reinventing the wheel. Looking to the experts for advice, recommendations, wins and fails, and so much more when putting strategy and projections together really helps. Plus, one idea begets another idea…
Social Media is great to learn things, but getting eNewsletters and digests make it easier to look when you have time and content is sometimes all in one place from experts.
Here’s the topline places you should follow at minimum:

Google

Bing

Digital Marketing

SEO

Content

Misc.

6. The Pretty Pitch Deck Tools

You’ve put the digital markeslideshareting strategy together and you have to put the pitch, the projections and more together. You need something that pops, that gets buy-in, that’s easy and fast to use to illustrate your data. Here are a few…the list is exhaustive.

Source: Slideshare.net

 

To win the internet, we know what specific tactics and budget you need, how to implement and we’ve done the research to decide upon the best strategy mix. We have a pretty solid hypothesis and rationale of what will and what won’t work for multi-channel and multi-device marketing. If you’ve worked on your client’s campaigns previously you have historical data and hopefully detailed post mortem analysis to be reasonably assured your campaigns will be successful. When you present the strategy and projections you are fully confident that it is the winning digital marketing strategy for that campaign and with some of these tools we put the data together in the way the client receives it.

About Direct Access Digital
Direct Access Digital is a digital performance agency based in Burlington Ontario. Direct Access Digital leverages the practical application of fully integrated Performance Digital marketing campaigns to generate leads, increase conversions and grow our client’s business. Ranging from location based marketing, to fully international campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, we are true partners in transforming your business.

With 20 years of experience in Performance Digital marketing and a growing team of industry leading digital campaign specialists, strategists, developers, creative designers, optimization specialists, copywriters, marketers and Canada’s first ever recipient of the Google’s Search Excellence Reward, Direct Access Digital provides your business with a better way, a real return on investment for your business and the tools necessary to grow your Performance Digital marketing initiatives.

Visit us at DirectAccessDigital.com or email us at contact@directaccessdigital.

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Direct Access Digital is an award-winning digital-performance marketing agency based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. It won The Google Search Excellence Award in 2014 and 2015 – the award is only given to two Canadians a year. Founded in 2011, DAD has evolved into one of Canada’s leading boutique agencies, and now serve mid-sized businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. Known for their expertise in all digital marketing verticals, from search engine marketing (SEM) to search engine optimization (SEO), local search, social media marketing, content marketing and more, their true hallmark is building strong partnerships with their clients and working diligently to deliver the tools, data and strategies that drive customer conversions and sales while aiding brand awareness.

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