Inbound Marketing Insights

The digital marketing arena is becoming more and more competitive. Fortunately, doing your job is also becoming increasingly easier (albeit a lot more time-consuming). Mostly because of the variety of tools meant to help you automate and streamline processes. Some of them are free, and some of them are paid. We put forward some of the ones we like to use and let you decide which route to go.

At the end of the day, it's important to decide, first and foremost, what is important for you as a company. Do you want to focus on SEO? PPC? Inbound? All of the Above? Or are you content with pushing a massive email marketing strategy?

Once you've answered that question, you can go ahead and pick the right tool(s) to help you do just that. Here are some of the ones we've tried in the past:

SpyFU: This multi-function application is essentially a search analytics tool that displays keywords that websites are using to be recognized by search engines. A useful feature is that SpyFu produces a list of what is believed to be your top competitors. This is useful for companies to see what their competition is like and how they can come out on top. It also shows how much money competitors are using on advertisements, and the data can be used to your advantage in terms of marketing strategies.

Semrush: This tool is similar to SpyFu because it makes it easier to find what keyword on any site is ranking. It also displays more detail regarding the keyword and other keywords related to that particular one. Once you search for a website, the tool displays keywords, position, volume, CPC, results and trends, website optimization issues, backlinks, and more.

WordTracker: Wordtracker is specialized for search engine optimization and allows you to search for keywords; it will produce a list of keywords and rank them in terms of volume of competitiveness. These two categories will help you determine what keywords are worth investing in because you want to find a good balance between volume and competitiveness.

A good example of a keyword that will have great visibility and traffic is one that has a 50/50 ratio of volume vs. competitiveness. You wouldn’t want to use a keyword that is too competitive because it is hard to compete against so many others competing for the same keywords, but you also wouldn't want to use a keyword that isn't competitive enough - as that means (usually) that it has a lower than average search volume. 

Screaming Frog: This program is useful in the initial stage of optimizing a website. It allows you to crawl, analyze, and audit the website to check links, CSS, images, meta descriptions, and more. By using this program to crawl a website, it is easier to see what needs to be updated. It also has a very good feature that allows you to fix broken links when it finds them, which is especially useful if you have a lot of links and want to constantly check if they are all working.

HubSpot: HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing software. From attracting visitors to converting visitors to leads, and turning those leads into customers and advocates for your brand, HubSpot brings your entire marketing and sales funnel together. The result of these efforts is less hassle, more control, and an inbound marketing strategy that actually works.

HubSpot allows you to bring your entire digital marketing strategy together in one platform to make it easier for you and your team to manage your inbound marketing assets, track results, and make real-time changes to marketing campaigns. A tool like HubSpot enables you to control your content, channels, and marketing performance while getting a truly complete digital view of the people who matter most to your company.

As you can see, many tools help you maximize your digital marketing efforts. To help determine what is best for you and your company, start with defining your goals and benchmarks, and it will make choosing your digital toolkit much easier.

This article was written by the London Management Centre, a consultancy company focusing on training courses in London in fields such as business, management and marketing.