If you work in digital marketing or run a digital business, then you’ve no doubt seen ads for tools that claim to make the process of digital marketing easier for you.
But, if you’re on the fence about subscribing to a tool or purchasing one for good, are you doing it for the right reasons? Let’s take a look at just some of the reasons why you’d want to invest in a tool to make your online business activities a little easier.
You want to make the most of data
Free tools like Google Search Console and Analytics are great, however they don’t often provide the bigger picture. Tools like Ahrefs provide data for not only your website, but that of your competition too, so you can see exactly how your competitors are putting together their online growth strategies.
This is vital for aspects of SEO and PPC in particular, as you can reverse engineer the strategies of competition to understand how they use keyword targeting and link building to their advantage.
You want to automate certain aspects of digital marketing
The larger digital marketing suites are fantastic for setting up a certain aspect of automation to your online social media profiles in particular. Facebook and Twitter scheduling is a great way to get ahead of your social activity and not spend all day putting posts together, as is outlined in James’s SEMrush review.
And, the point certainly makes sense. Using SEMrush or any number of marketing suites is all about ensuring you’re streamlining as many of the more time-intensive processes as possible.
You can even use SEMrush to track brand mentions of both your business and your competition, again so you can keep track of any gaps in the strategies of competitors!
Tools that are branded as all in one ‘suites’ are often more expensive, so unless you have a full team who are going to be taking advantage of it then you can make use of the free version and still get the data you require.
You need to justify digital marketing strategies to a boss or director
Sometimes, no matter how good your ideas are, you’re going to need to have the data at hand to justify your reasoning for a new strategy or brand new marketing approach.
From keyword research and blog content to showing the areas your competition is missing, having the data to prove your hypothesis will only make it that much easier to justify a strategy moving forward.
Whether you’re persuading fellow directors or have a new idea you want to take to your boss, having the data at hand from specialist tools is going to make the job a whole lot easier.
Conclusion
Whatever the reasons are that you want to get your hands on a marketing tool, just be sure that you do your research and are getting the right one for the exact purposes you require.
This sounds really obvious, but often these tools are not cheap, and it can be a huge waste of money if you’re only using 10% of what a tool has to offer.
You can even often find free tools for more specific processes, so don’t part with your cash until you’ve had a look around to see what the free versions offer!
