5 best digital marketing tools in 2023
It’s a fact, there are a multitude of tools around digital marketing today. Finding the one that best suits your needs is not always an easy task.
If you want to take your marketing strategy to the next level and are looking for the tools you need, this article will help you to understand a little more. I have created a section with different guides about digitals marketing.
At werank, we’ve been lucky enough to test a number of digital marketing tools. Whether they are free or paid, each one offers its own features and benefits that will help you in your strategy.
However, after some research, you may have realized that there are a multitude of tools with different price plans and not always transparent usage models.
To avoid making the wrong choices and wasting your time when it comes to getting started in digital marketing, I have created a list of 5 must-have digital marketing tools for 2023.
Note: In full transparency, some tools presented in this article may be in the form of an affiliate link. This of course does not influence my choice and recommendations. You are free to use the links, or simply search for the tool directly on Google!
1 – Google Analytics (Analytics)
Price: Free (a paid version exists, but is reserved for websites with very high traffic volumes)
What is it ? A tool for traffic and interaction analysis of the users who visit your website.
In my opinion, it is the essential tool in your digital strategy. As soon as your website is online, you must set up Google Analytics. If you use a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, there are free plugins that allow you to integrate Google Analytics very easily.
It is a simple JavaScript code to copy and paste into the header of your pages.
Once installed, you can understand and analyse the path of your visitors and optimize the pages of your site to generate more traffic or revenue.
Update 2023: From now on, Google Universal Analytics is replaced by Google Analytics 4. You can quite quickly integrate the code of the tracking tool to analyse the various user interactions.
What I like about Google Analytics
- Free and very powerful all-in-one Analytics tool that allows you to analyse in detail the main sources of traffic to your site (direct, paid, organic, referring)
- You can also identify the different interactions of visitors to your site (pages visited, products viewed, buttons clicked, etc.)
- Traffic sources can also be easily analysed (direct, referral, social networks, SEO).
- A very popular tool with an active community, many tutorials and forums are available to help you use and learn.
- The tool is part of the Google ecosystem which allows standard integration with other platforms such as Google Tag Manager (for code insertion on a site), Google Ads (for advertising), Google Optimize (for A/B testing).
To sum up, if you have to focus on one digital marketing tool, for us, it is undeniably Google Analytics!
If you encounter any difficulties in getting started with the tool, don’t hesitate to contact me. I will be happy to advise you on the best practices to implement in order to better understand the use of Google Analytics.
2 – SEMrush (SEO & SEM)
Price: Free to $374.95 per month for large agencies and companies
What is it about? Tool mainly used for SEO strategy (improving organic visibility on search engines).
It is one of the leading tools when it comes to Search Engine Optimization strategy.
I chose SEMrush because, unlike most of its competitors, it offers the largest database of keyword analysis. This means that with this tool, you can monitor your website’s position on search engines.
For the technical part, you can use SEMrush to generate relevant recommendations on how to improve the structure of your website.
For the content creation and optimization part, keyword research allows you to identify opportunities and difficulties to rank well on keywords related to your topic.
You can also analyse in detail the different links (backlinks) that other websites make to your site. This is a very relevant signal that Google takes into account when ranking the different websites for a certain keyword.
Here again, SEMrush offers the largest database of backlinks. One more reason to include it in the list of essential digital marketing tools.
Finally, SEMrush has developed its offer and took the place as a tool for analysing the competition and the paid activity on the different channels.
This allows you to make accurate analyses of your competition and find out the different formats and channels they are using and then build your strategy.
Here is the link to SEMrush to discover the tool in detail.
What I like about SemRush
- A tool that offers a 360 degree view trough a dashboard on your SEO strategy, the technical part, the internal optimizations and the external activities.
- An important added value for content creation. You can search for keywords and find out the monthly search volume as well as the difficulty and the competitors already well-placed.
- Some updates are very frequent, having the ability to accurately monitor the competition is a major asset in your digital marketing strategy.
- You can also analyse the different signals (number of new subscribers, engagement, etc.) of your social media strategy.
- An integrated connector allows you to insert your reports directly into Google Data Studio and thus associate SEMRush data with Google Analytics.
3 – Screaming Frog (Website)
Price: Free to €175 per year for the paid version
What is it about? Screaming Frog is a tool to perform a technical SEO audit of a website.
Working on your SEO is essential in your digital marketing strategy. One could define SEO as a long-term investment. Once your website rank in the Google index, the return on investment can become very interesting.
If the SEO of a website doens’t have any improvement, the investments in design, user experience and quality content will not have a great performance. Simply because the majority of prospects will not find your site on Google.
Screaming Frog can generate an audit of the various optimizations to be implemented. You can indetify the problem on Titles, headlines and different redirects very simply.
Thanks to this tool, you can easily prioritize the changes on your site and thus fully cover the needs of the technical SEO part.
What I like about Screaming Frog
- Easy to use tool that allows you to generate a very good technical audit and some SEO recommendations
- Identifying broken links, bad redirects or duplicate content becomes very easy
- Reports can be exported for direct integration into ticketing systems such as Jira or Trello
- The free version can already scan a total of 500 pages of a site
Interested in screaming frog? Discover the advantages of the tool on the official website
4 – Hotjar (heatmap)
Price: Free to €389 per month for the enterprise version
What is it about? Hotjar is a behavioural analysis tool for your website visitors.
Once installed on a site, Hotjar allows you to analyse in detail the behaviour of a visitor.
You can identify which elements (buttons, menu, click on image) visitors interact with most frequently on your different web pages. Thanks to these precise analyses, the user experience on the site can be quickly optimized.
Also, hypotheses can be validated or rejected thanks to the measurement of the time spent on certain pages, but also the percentage of scroll of each user.
The tool allow you to identify if a part of your site is being consulted or if you need to make changes to the design.
With certain usability optimizations, the number of leads or sales can increase very quickly.
In a campaign, I experienced that a link at the top of a landing page had a higher number of clicks than a button (call to action) at the end of the page.
I was able to establish this difference by recording user journeys and clicks measured on both elements.
I had the opportunity to identify this problem as being mainly due to an error in the CSS code that “hid” the button in the mobile version of the site.
Campaign Conclusion: If I had only measured the conversion rate of the page, I might have thought that the value came from the button, however, I was able to improve the conversion rate by 25% after identifying the error in the code.
For this reason, I’m now planning to integrate Hotjar on most of the sales pages.
What I like about Hotjar
- A free version of the tool that allows you to analyse up to 3 sales pages and give relevant information on visitor navigation.
- Precise information on interactions that are not visible in tools like Google Analytics
- Being able to record user paths allows for a global view of the use of a page or a website
The installation of Hotjar is very fast, do not hesitate to test the tool and give us your feedback.
5 – Sendinblue (Email)
Price: Free (up to 9’000 contacts) then different models depending on the number of emails and the size of the database.
What is it about? Sendingblue is an email sending and user database management tool.
With standard integrations in most CMS, Sendinblue is a central tool in the digital marketing strategy and more particularly in relation to email marketing.
Although often overlooked in the prioritization of different levers, marketing automation is a major asset in the overall digital strategy.
Having the opportunity to address prospects or customers by email with their consent is a serious advantage.
You can communicate around your brand and segment your different customers according to their email openings and their actions on your website.
Sendinblue allows you to create customizable emails according to the interests of your users.
The tool gives you the possibility to create forms to collect emails from prospects in pop-ups forms or directly integrated in the content of your site.
You can also offer content to prospects who have different expectations from your customers.
Finally, you will be able to create email campaigns that will launch email sequences to promote products or offers in an automated way.
With Sendingblue, you can also segment your database and identify which people are active with your emails and which opportunities for conversion exist.
What I like about Sendingblue
- A free version that allows you to learn about email marketing and measure the potential of personalized campaigns and lead generation.
- The possibility to set up automated campaigns through several email sequences. This allows you to optimize communication with your prospects and customers.
- The database can be segmented to allow better personalization of the messages and content sent.
Getting into the mailbox of a potential customer is not an easy task, with Sendingblue, you will have the opportunity to communicate in an optimized way with prospects, but also with your customers.
Conclusion on digital marketing tools
Choosing the right digital marketing tools can be crucial to the execution of a well-thought-out marketing strategy.
However, even with the best tools, if you don’t use them optimally or make the wrong choice, you risk wasting time. This effort and energy could be spent on other aspects of perfecting your marketing strategy.
That’s why you need the right person by your side to support you in your strategy and get results.
I advise you to test and get a first impression of the tools presented. I believe they are the best in their respective categories.
If you would like to learn more about the use of these tools, and especially if you would like to use them as a standard part of your digital strategy, it is a good idea to request the services of a competent person, so that you can spend your time on other important aspects of digital marketing.
However, if you have any questions about the tools in general or the digital marketing tools I have presented to you, don’t hesitate to contact me!
I take digital marketing tools seriously. I will be happy to discuss the best solutions that best fit your needs in your digital marketing strategy!