Digital marketing has grown exponentially over the past decade. And so has the pool of resources dedicated to managing these digital campaigns. From a time when all we had was Google Adwords and perhaps Mail Chimp, you can now select from a wide range of tools, specifically designed for your type of business.
But, we can’t use all these tools at the same time, right? It would consume all your time and, most importantly, would just get too confusing. So, we trawled the web and identified three critical resources that you should priorities for 2018;
- Social media management/marketing resources
As of the close of 2017, Facebook had more than 2 billion users, Instagram had over 700 million users, and Twitter had 320 million users. Whichever way you look at it, this is enough reason to have a solid social media management strategy.
There are two types of social media management tools; those meant for organic social media campaigns and those for paid social media. Organic social media resources that can help take your business forward in 2018 include; Sprout Social, Wyng, and Woo Box. These resources make your job easier by helping with activities such as user engagement, organizing hash-tag campaigns, and managing your referral programs. Paid social media tools to consider include; Facebook’s Power Editor and Twitter Native Platform. Both are excellent at advertising, segmentation, and marketing in general on the respective platforms.
- Email management/marketing resources
Despite being old-school, the return on investment (ROI) for email continues to grow at an average rate of 4% year-over-year, making it one of the most profitable marketing channels. Moreover, email marketing is cheaper than most digital marketing strategies and also more flexible. Find out the appropriate legal marketing budget to improve the returns of your marketing strategy and efforts.
For 2018, we recommend that you again go back to the basics and seek the help of Mail Chimp as your primary email marketing services provider. The beauty of Mail Chimp is the usability of the platform. The sliding price tag based on the size of your email list is a particularly attractive feature. Marketo and GetResponse are two another options if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform. They both offer a high level of automation that can prove invaluable.
- Content management/marketing resources
Finally, you need the best content management services you can find if you’re to realize your 2018 goals. Content management here covers both creation and distribution.
With regards to creation, there are many service providers out there that you can turn to. Just be sure to find the right provider for the specific type of content you’re looking for. If looking for blogs, find a good blogging agency, if looking for infographics, find a great infographic design service provider. As for distribution, it’s always nice, to begin with a guest posting company that can get your posts in front of the right audience. That aside, curation tools such as Feedly, Scoop.it, and Kapost would prove useful in getting the content to your fans.
With these three covered, you can then move on to find resources for web analytics, SEO, and web testing.
