Use these small business digital marketing checklist to audit your current digital marketing efforts or to guide the development of a new digital marketing strategy.

Half of the companies doing digital marketing were doing so without a defined strategy according to a recent study.  How successful can any business activity be without a strategized plan of execution or set measurement of performance? An effective digital marketing strategy not only helps you make the right online marketing decisions, but it also provides a framework that ensures you are engaging in key online growth activities. Creating a small business digital marketing strategy that optimizes your local search engine efforts is the key to building an online business presence that customers find first in search and trust.

Your digital strategy will have various channels, all of which need managing, but don’t create an environment of overwhelm.  Use these checklists to help guide you in developing a manageable digital marketing strategy that includes a tactical and measurable approach with built-in performance improvement processes.

Small Business Digital Marketing Checklists

BEFORE YOU BEGIN – Setting Up a Digital Marketing Strategy

[  ]  Set Marketing and Sales Goals

[  ]  Assign Digital Marketing Responsibilities and Accountability

[  ]  Ensure Every Webpage Includes Analytics Tracking Code

[  ]  Determine Your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

[  ]  Develop and Use a System for Tracking and Measuring KPIs

[  ]  Create Customer Personas Using Analytics and Employee Input

[  ]  Identify Customer Pain Points and How They Search for Solutions

[  ]  Identify Most Effective Channels for Reaching Ideal Customers

SEO – Search Engine Optimization Digital Marketing Checklist

[  ]  Complete In-Depth Keyword Research and Review Quarterly

[  ]  Create Content that Solves Pain Points and Answers Customer’s Questions

[  ]  Use Location Schema to Enhance Local Search Visibility

[  ]  Track and Optimize Website Performance for Conversions, Mobile and Speed

ALSO READ: Local SEO Checklist – 9 Basic Tips to Get Found in Local Search

 

Reputation Management & Marketing Checklist

[  ]  Have a System in Place to Gather and Promote Positive Customer Reviews

[  ]  Create, Correct, and Monitor NAP (Name, Address & Phone Number) Listings

[  ]  Create, Monitor, and Manage Citations and Business Directory Listings

[  ]  Be Active on Social Media and Engage Customers

[  ]  Post Helpful and Valuable Content along with Positive Reviews on Social Media

[  ]  Optimize, Manage, and Get Reviews on Google My Business Profiles

ALSO READ: How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

 

Advertising & PPC Digital Marketing Checklist

[  ]  Outline Advertising Targets and Set KPIs

[  ]  Define Frequency of Measurement (at least month-to-month)

[  ]  Ensure Analytics is Linked and Accurately Reporting

[  ]  Allocate Advertising Dollars in Marketing Budget with Seasonal Flexibility

[  ]  Do In-Depth Keyword Research for PPC Campaigns (pause underperformers)

[  ]  Research the Cost Effectiveness of Mobile and Video Advertising (for your industry)

[  ]  Run Online Advertising Campaigns with a Direct Response Focus

[  ]  Manually Adjust PPC Top Performers (bid up high converters with lower CPA)

[  ]  Optimize Campaigns Based on Visitor Metrics vs. Conversions

Email Marketing Digital Marketing Checklist

[  ]  Define Goals and Determine Audience

[  ]  Use Segmentation to Create the Appropriate Subscriber Lists

[  ]  Optimize Subject Line and Preview Text to Increase Opens

[  ]  Focus and Highlight “What’s In It For Me?” for the Reader

[  ]  Use Bold and Clear Calls-To-Actions that Drive to Your Defined Goals

[  ]  Optimize Design for Desktop, Mobile, and Webmail

[  ]  Check Links and Test Dynamic Content

ALSO READ: New Email Marketing – Higher Conversion Rates and Customer Retention

 

Social Media Digital Marketing Checklist

[  ]  Be Where Your Customers Are Online!Develop a Do-Able Social Media Marketing Plan

[  ]  Develop and Execute a Do-Able Social Media Marketing Plan

[  ]  Create and Curate Helpful Blog Posts and Valuable Content Offers to Share

[  ]  Research Paid Advertising on Top Social Media Networks

[  ]  Monitor Followers and Influencer

[  ]  Encourage and Track Engagement

[  ]  Join and Get Active Where Your Customers Spend Their Time

[  ]  Consistently Research and Use High-Performing and Relevant Tags

 

Investing in, and committing to a holistic small business digital marketing approach is the fast track to taking advantage of ever expanding and affordable online marketing opportunities.  Go these small business digital marketing checklists to develop a winning strategy or as a review to ensure the right online activities are in place to grow your customer base and sales.

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

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Avoid Getting Reviews Blocked by the Yelp Filters and Understanding Yelp’s Recommendation Software

As the most used business review site in the U.S., Yelp has established itself as the “go to” site when a consumer wants to research a new small business.  As a business owner, you know the importance of Yelp reviews and building a positive online reputation. You may have also experienced the frustration of missing or losing a good review you know was submitted due to Yelp filters.

Understand first that Yelp does not delete reviews and employees can’t decide which reviews get shown.  That is the Yelp recommendation software at work filtering the millions of reviews submitted into two categories:

1. Recommended reviews that visibly rank on your business page.
2. Not currently recommended reviews hidden behind a grayed out link at the bottom of your business page.

Why Yelp Filters are a Good Thing

Yelp is a leader in the industry because they give people what want: authentic star-rated reviews.  To stay authentic (and ahead of people trying to game the system) Yelp has recommendation software that in it’s complicated and secret way keeps fake reviews from showing in business review results.  If you had a good review disappear or get blocked by the filter, it is an unfortunate casualty in the war against fake reviews.  The Yelp filters may have mislabeled your good review as possible spam, but that same software also protects you from competitors using made up profiles and angry customers looking to flood your business with low-star reviews.  Good or bad, reviews filtered into non-recommended status are not taken into account when calculating your overall review average.

Yelp filters and the review recommendation software are not disclosed in any meaningful manner.  Per Yelp! Blog there is a reason for that:

“We’re purposely not elaborate about all the variables that go into defining an ‘established’ user because it’s a Catch-22: the more descriptive we are about what makes an established user, the less effective our filter is at fighting shills and malicious content.”

However, through best-practices, user comments, and Yelp’s support center there is information out there that can help you get your reviews through the Yelp filters.

Getting Good Reviews Through Yelp Filters

Yelp recommendation software runs on an algorithm that has a standard of rules that establish a user and a review as an authentic submission.  In other words, there is a value given to everything from how complete the user profile is to how many words are in a review and when you add them all up the algorithm has either recommended a review or sent it behind the scenes where it will not affect Yelp users’ opinions of a business.

You can’t bypass the algorithm.  According to Yelp, their own employees cannot manually override the software.  However, you can greatly raise the odds of getting your good reviews past the Yelp filters by knowing some of the factors that could get your review flagged and exiled to “not recommended” pile where good reviews go to die.

Factors that could get a review stuck in the Yelp filters:

• Reviewer has an incomplete profile without a photo or additional information.
• Reviewer is an inactive user, one-time user, or first-time reviewer
• Very short reviews lacking details like “Best pizza!!!” or “This place sucks!”
• Strongly slanted or biased positively or negatively
• Posted from an IP location very far from the business even though it could be someone who came through on vacation
• Reviews from the same IP address which is why a Yelp review kiosk or tablet at your business could look like spam or fake reviews
• An unprecedented flood of reviews will look like review spam even though it may have been you just sent a mass email asking for reviews for the first time today

The Yelp Filters are looking only at the user submitting a review and the content of that review, and not the business itself.  As the business owner, you have no control over who leaves a review and what they say. Having an understanding of what makes a better reviewer and review, you will know how to answer questions like “Why doesn’t my review show up on Yelp?” and “I don’t know how to use Yelp. How do I start?”

Tips on what makes a great Yelp reviewer and review:

• Reviewers who have connected their Facebook
• Reviewers who have downloaded the Yelp app and use it to “check in” around town.
• Reviewers who have several detailed reviews of both positive and negative experiences.
• Reviewers who have Yelp friends and engage with reviews by marking them as useful, funny, or cool.
• Reviews that go beyond one experience to leave helpful tips for future customers.

Yelp is Important to the Success of Your Business

As a key player in building your online reputation, Yelp can help you expand your consumer base and reach new customers.  If you don’t have a review management process in place, you are gambling with one of your most precious assets.  Reputation Loop provides an easy-setup system automated to gather feedback from your customers after the sale, routing unsatisfied customers back to your business for customer service and your best reviews to review sites like Yelp to leave positive ratings.  Reputation Loop can’t fix your filtered reviews, but they can help you build a five-star reputation by ensuring only the best reviews are consistently post to the review sites that matter most.

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

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What is AdWords Express?

AdWords Express is a simpler mini-AdWords.  It’s designed for the small one-person marketing team who can do without all the bells and whistles of the full AdWords application.  The biggest benefit to using it over AdWords is AdWords Express automatically manages your online ads.  Freeing time by eliminateing the daily tasks it takes to manage campaigns in AdWords. You just fill in your business info, write an ad and AdWords Express does the rest. You budget and only pay for clicks, so pricing is simple. It’s a quick set up, much of it is on auto-pilot, and you can run the whole thing from your mobile app.  Just like AdWords, with AdWords Express when customers search for products or services related to your search phrases, your ad is eligible to appear next to, above, or below search results on Google. Plus, with Google Maps, your ad can appear directly on the map or beneath the search results. You can include your business address and phone number in your ad, and you only pay when someone clicks your ad. Unlike AdWords, Express will choose your keywords base on the categories and services you select to automate your advertising and those keywords cannot be changed by you.

Who Should Use AdWords Express?

Small Business owners who wear many hats love AdWords Express because it allows you to manage campaigns quicker and with less work.  Just set a budget and Google will come up with a list of keywords to trigger ads based on your type of business.  Google does a little ongoing management and maintenance to free up more of your time. They also provide free downloads of both an Android and iOS application to easily track your account.

Smaller business comfortable with only having simple ads on the Google network, including Google Maps, can greatly benefit from the easy to use functionality of AdWords Express.  You write your own ads, and they show next to, above or below search results in the sponsored ad locations.  However, you don’t even need a website!  You can direct your links to your Google+ page for more information on your business.

Home services providers should look out for new Home Service Ads coming soon. Currently Home Service ads are in beta and available by invitation only is select northern California cities. When this exciting addition to AdWords Express rolls out it will allow you to receive service requests directly from potential customers through your ads.  Customers will be able to call you or send a service request from the ad. The service requests will show in the AdWords Express app and from there you can reply, book appointments, and manage all your ad generated service requests by accepting, declining, or asking for additional information from the prospect. Read Google’s Home Service Ads beta update and review the link of test cities in California.

How does AdWords Express work?

Getting set up with AdWords Express is quick and easy:

• Write an ad for your business
• Decide on a budget
• Select the product or service that your business offers
• AdWords Express creates a list of related search phrases
• AdWords Express manages your ads automatically
• Review the effectiveness of your ads in your dashboard

Latest Updates to AdWords Express

Google constantly updates Express, making improvements and adding new features that make it even more powerful.  Here are the two latest updates:

AdWords Express Version 11.5 – July 2016

Expanded text ads – full support for expanded text ads.

Search improvements –  improvements made to the search bar.

Multiple account posting – post changes to multiple accounts at the same time.

Mobile app engagement ads – create and edit mobile app engagement ads.

Structured snippets – full support for structured snippets, allowing your ads to highlight specific aspects of your products and services.

Multiple account import and export – import a CSV file into multiple accounts and export more than one account into a single CSV file.

Aggressive targeting optimization – new ad groups created in mobile app installs campaigns are set to “aggressive targeting optimization” by default.

Optional landscape image for app install ads – upload an optional landscape image when you create an app install ad.

AdWords Express Version 11.4 – May 2016

Faster campaign creation – “Add campaign” button now has a drop-down menu that lets you select which campaign type to create.

App extensions – create and edit app extensions in AdWords Editor.

Review extensions – AdWords Editor now fully supports review extensions, which highlight third-party reviews in your ads.

Mobile app installs – create mobile app installs campaigns for your Display Network ads in AdWords Editor.

Broad match modifier in duplicate keywords tool – find duplicate keywords tool now ignores the broad match modifier match type when you select the “Duplicates can have different match types” option.

Target CPA bid strategy – change your campaign’s bid strategy to Target CPA.

Frequency capping – to limit the number of times the same person will see your Display Network ad, edit the frequency capping campaign setting and export it for archiving and sharing. Note, CSV import and export aren’t supported.

Google Links to Learn More About AdWords Express

Compare AdWords Express and AdWords

Sign Up for AdWords Express

Managing Your AdWords Express Ads

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

The post Google AdWords Express – Automated AdWords for Smaller Businesses appeared first on Reputation Loop.

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Think you know all the free Google tools out there?  There is some new stuff you aren’t using yet!

Google has a lot of free tools they are just dying for you to use.  We’ll start with some you may not have tried yet and then give an overview of the rest of the free tools that can help you do business better.

Of course you want to know all about the free Google tools out there. When we talk about search engine marketing and SEO, all talk is of Google.  Why?  They dominate search, and when you learn how to do things the way Google wants them done, the reward is exposure and promotion to a larger audience than all other search engines combined. We can bemoan the unfairness of monopolies and tech tyrants, but who has the time (or power) to overthrow Google?  Better to play Google’s game and adopt strategies that help our businesses succeed.

For those who want to compete on the biggest platform for search, Google has been kind enough to offer many FREE tools that help your business more easily and effectively execute the tasks needed to improve how you do business and get the most out of online marketing.

Free Google Tools You May Not Know

*NEW* Google Data Studio

In beta right now in the US only, Google Data Studio has everything you need to turn your data into dynamic dashboards and informative, customizable reports that are easy to read and easy to share. With Google Data Studio you can create up to 5 custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing for free.

 

 

Google Gadgets

Say you were looking for an easier way to build an app that works with Google platforms and products.  Gadgets has an API with built-in JavaScript libraries that make it easy to create gadgets (apps) that can run on multiple sites like Gmail, Calendar, Maps, and any web page.  You could even sell your app in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Google Insights

Google Insights helps you turn all that data Google’s free tools bombard you with into actionable insight.  You can uncover trends impacting your industry with Google Trends, get a deeper understanding of your customers, and create content that engages your consumers.

Google Consumer Surveys lets you create your own surveys to get fast and accurate market research for free using default questions and as low as 1 cent per answered custom question.

Google Correlate finds searches that correlate with real-world data so you can compare blocks of time (in winter or on Fridays) or US states.  You can even find search terms that have a similar pattern of activity. It’s all very complicated, so Google made this 8-page Google Correlate Comic Book to explain it.

Google Trends shows you what is trending right now on the web, and it also lets you search topics.  You’ll get a basically useless graph of the last ten years of search but scroll to the bottom of your trend search results and you’ll see a list of related searches that could be helpful when needing keyword inspiration.

Google Tag Manager

If you ever had to deal with changing site code, this may be your favorite tool.  Google Tag Manager lets you launch new tags with just a few clicks so you can get the most out of your Google Analytics measurements and find the right marketing opportunities.  I’m not saying you can fire your IT gal, but you won’t need them to update or manage your website or mobile app tags anymore.

Google Voice

Google Voice gives you a phone number that is tied to you as a Google user and not your device.  With it, you can make and answer calls, send and receive texts, and read and listen to voicemail on your phone, tablet, or computer.  You just need a Google account, a touch-tone phone with a U.S. number (for texting) and a computer.  Calls in the U.S. are free, you can number port your phone number and use these feature, and if you have Sprint, you can enable Google Voice on your phone.  Check out the Google Voice YouTube channel for videos on their top features.

Google Books

Google Books works just like the regular Google search, but when it finds a book with content that contains a match for your search terms, it gives you a link to that book.  You could just search Amazon, but Google Books gives you links and prices for major retailers and even searches the libraries near you so you can borrow for free.  You can then browse those books and often buy or borrow from the Google Book Library or the Google Play Store.  For a marketer or business owner, if you have a book, then you should get it listed in Google Books for added exposure.

Free Google Tools You Know and Love – An Overview

Google AdWords & Keyword Tool

Over a million businesses use Google AdWords to advertise on Google’s network of search engines and websites.  Unlike buying a print or television ad, AdWords lets you target relevant customers by website type, audience type, or remarketing.  Add the powerful Keyword Tool and you can better plan our search network campaigns using historical data and estimates of how a list of keywords might perform to help you choose competitive bids and budgets.

Google My Business

Probably one of the most important free Google tool, Google My Business lets you manage your online presence across all of Google’s platforms.  Most importantly it lets you optimize your business’s online presence for search and maps.  Google My Business also lets you read and respond to customer reviews and gives your insight on how customers searched for your business.  The free Google My Business mobile app lets you access your Google My Business profile from anywhere.

Google Search Console – Webmaster Tools

The Search Console helps you monitor and maintain your website presence in Google search results.  Get a look at how Google and the world sees your website, make sure Google is crawling your content, and remove content you don’t want to be shown in search while monitoring and resolving malware or spam issues all in one place.

Google Analytics

With Google Analytics you get all the insight you could ever want into how site visitors interact with your website.  Beyond measuring sales and traffic, you’ll get the information you need to improve your website to increase site visits and conversions.

Google Calendar

It’s an online calendar that is everywhere you are.  Use it online and sync it with your phone or tablet and you’ll always know what your days look like.  You can share your calendar, print it, schedule appointments, invite others and even see other users availability.

Google Chrome

Chrome is Google’s web browser, and it is free to download to your devices.  It’s one of the fastest browsers out there, and it lets you instantly search or navigate from the same box.  Save time with autofill that lets you fill out those repetitive forms with one click without the hassle of small screen typing.

Google Docs

Google Docs is your free online version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. What makes it great? For starters smart editing that is compatible with Word, templates, forms, automatic saving as you type, available anywhere you are online thanks to Google Drive, search inside of documents, document sharing to work on documents together at the same time, and a ton of add-ons that enrich your experience and meet your specific document needs.

Google Drive

Google Drive let you save on their cloud 15GB of anything you want like photos, documents, recordings, and videos.  Google Docs saves there automatically and your drive is accessible from anywhere.  Get 100GB for $1.99 a month and 1TB for $9.99 month.

Google Mail

Gmail.  You know this free Google tool.  However, you may not know that there is Gmail for Work (part of the Google Apps for Work paid toolset) that lets you get a custom YourName@YourCompany.com email that includes Calendar, Docs, video meetings, 30GB of online storage and more. Use the free trial to see if you like it, and then if you love it, Gmail for Work is around $5 per month per user.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts lets you create an automatic search that notifies you by email whenever Google finds new results on the keywords you set.  If you haven’t already, set up an alert for your name and business name, so you know when they show up on the web.

Google+

Google’s social network is Google+.  With your Gmail account you can create a profile that lets you share links, videos, pictures and your own comments with the world, but more specifically with the circles you create and groups, you join.  Collections let you share and see posts based on topic, communities let you join conversations, and your home stream lets you see posts based on whom you follow.

 

That’s 20 free google tools to make your life easier (or drive you insane depending on how you deal with data overload).  Anything stand out as a must-have?  Let me know!

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

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Angie’s List is now free, removing the annual membership requirement to view full ratings and reviews.  Now consumers can access this service for free, opening the door to an audience even larger than its millions of current paid members.

In the past only paying customers could read Angie’s List reviews or leave their own, but now anyone can use a free membership to browse with the announcement of Angie’s List new free membership plan.  Why the change? In a March 2016 TechCrunch interview new CEO Scott Durchslag stated, “We get over 100 million visitors each month, but 90% of them have been bouncing because of the reviews paywall.” So they have removed the paywall and now offer a new membership tier structure that offers premium services like emergency services hotlines and handyman prequalification with paid subscriptions. Angie’s List looks to drastically increase its user base and compete with startups like Thumbtack, Handy, and Porch, which have free plans and tools consumers and contractors enjoy.

Angie’s List Free Membership Press Release

Why You Should Claim Your Profile on Angie’s List

With over 700 categories (see Service Categories here) there is probably a category for your business on Angie’s List since it has expanded to include auto, health, pet and additional services beyond home services and contractors.  In fact, you may have a profile on Angie’s List created when a customer wanted to leave a review and not even know it. Everybody from Dentist to Dog Walkers and Midwives to Wedding Planners have a category on Angie’s List where you could be gathering reviews.

According to Angie’s List’s namesake and CMO Angie Hicks, her website is can credit its success to the fact that their members tend to give very detailed and meaty reviews.  These are the best kinds of reviews because they provide tons of keyword rich content that point to your business.

As a business owner, you can claim and control your profile on Angie’s list.  As a business on their platform, you can use free tools that let you communicate with customers, collect reviews, and gather leads.  With billions in revenue for its listed businesses every year, managing your Angie’s list profile effectively could result in getting your very small slice of that $315 billion pie they divvy out to business members.

Angie’s List Now Free – The Impact on Your Business, Customer Reviews, and SEO

As of this month, “Green” membership plans are now free for consumers.  This move to provide a freemium plan for internet users hungry for real-life customer reviews can have a huge impact on your business’s online reputation.  If you are in the home services market and managing your profile on Angie’s List you know the impact reviews on can have on your business, but even then less than one percent of the US population were members.  That meant that the vast majority of consumers couldn’t see the reviews posted to your profile. Moreover, a bad review meant a bad reputation on Angie’s List had a limited audience. Now everyone can see your reviews on Angie’s List, good or bad.

From an SEO standpoint, Angie’s List has always ranked well for your business name even though their publicly accessible pages only provide basic NAP (name, address, phone number) information.  With a strong domain authority and trusted name, adding more access to content-rich customer reviews should raise the rankings for business names (Angie’s List profile names) in search engine results pages. That will make Angie’s List a strong competitor for organic search results.

Not Managing Reviews on Angie’s List? Time to Start

With the expected rise organic search results, your Angie’s List profile and reputation is something that needs to be claimed and managed. Claiming your profile will allow you to control and verify the content and categories, send happy customers to leave a review, get notified of new reviews, and respond to reviews.

Like other review sites, Angie’s list accepts and verifies both good and bad reviews, and won’t remove a review unless the member who posted the review asks that it be deleted.  Good reviews raise your Angie’s List cumulative “score” which raise you in the platform’s search results, and bad reviews push you lower.  With Reputation Loop you can deploy a strategy to get positive reviews posted that have the potential to be seen by millions not only on Angie’s List but in local search results.

Reputation Loop provides reputation management services that help you build a positive reputation with five-star reviews and protects your business by intercepting bad reviews before they are posted online.  Contact us for a free demo on how we can help you manage your reputation on Angie’s List and other review sites like Google, Yelp, and many more.

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

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5 Free Digital Marketing Tools You Haven’t Tried Yet That Will Make You a Better Small Business Marketer

Free digital marketing tools can be a lifesaver for small business marketers and owners.  Marketing a small business is a huge task, and you need all the help you can get.  What is great about where we are today in digital marketing is you can get free tools from some of the biggest names in digital marketing.  Moz, QuickSprout, and Google all have really amazing free tools that you’ve use, tried, or at least heard of.  However, these are just the tip of the iceberg!

You want to grow your business, right?

You want to reach new customers, raise your conversion rate, and increase sales, don’t you?

You want to do all that in less time and with less work?

Using effective free digital marketing tools to that automate your activities, analyze your efforts, and show you where, when and how to improve your marketing is the smartest way to improve your small business marketing.

5 Free Digital Marketing Tools You Should Be Using

Wistia – Video hosting for your marketing videos

Wistia is professional video hosting for the non-pro video marketer. Yes, you can easily post your marketing and how-to videos on YouTube, but you have little control over what is happening once it is public.  With Wistia you get secure video hosting that lets you restrict where videos can be played and how they appear in search results and social media posts.  With Wistia’s analytics, you’ll better understand how viewers interact with your videos.  Plus, you get video marketing tools like email marketing integration that help you engage with your audience and generate more leads.  With the free plan, you get space for five videos and all the standard features like adding calls to action, easy embedding, and viewer bandwidth detection, so videos are delivered in the right format with the least buffering possible.

Simply Measured Free Tools – Social media management and analytics

If you are on the bigger side of small business you may already be using Simply Measured.  Companies like Microsoft, Samsung and the Seattle Seahawks use it but with plans ranging from $500 to $2000 for Simply Measured’s high-level analysis and monitoring, it may be out of your reach.  Luckily, you can get some of the in-depth social media insight the big businesses use for free with Simply Measured’s Free Tools. You won’t get competitive benchmarking or a customized executive dashboard but here is what you do get with their free tools:

• Twitter Follower Analysis
• Instagram User Analysis
• Facebook Fan Page Analysis
• Facebook Insight Analysis
• Facebook Competitive Analysis
• Facebook Content Analysis
• Google+ Page Analysis
• Vine Analysis
• Twitter Customer Service Analysis
• Social Traffic Analysis
• Traffic Source Analysis

You will have to give your name and email address, of course, and they will try to get the Twitter endorsement, but these reports are otherwise free and can give you real insight on what is working and what is not with your social media marketing.

Hotjar – Heatmaps, clickmaps, and visitor recordings for site visitor analytics

Understanding how visitors interact with your website goes a long way towards creating the right marketing messages and positioning.  Hotjar is an all-in-one visitor analytics tools that gives you insight on what users care about and interact with on your website.  Heat maps and recordings give help you identify how users navigate your site and where there are usability issues. Also, a conversion funnel shows you where in navigation people leave your website and form analysis tells you when and why someone left your forms so you can make the improvement needed to optimize your top marketer – your website.  Hotjar’s free basic plan is 2,000 page views a day and management of three heatmaps, funnels, forms, polls, and surveys, up to 300 recordings, and data storage for three months.

Charlie App – Prep for meeting new people with snapshot of their social media, biographies, and news

Owning or managing a small business requires someone to wear many hats.  The line between marketing and selling often disappears as your calendar fills up with meeting after meeting with new people hoping to expand your business.  This is where the Charlie app can help you.  It links up with your Google calendar and using the email address of the person you are meeting with goes through 100+ sources and automatically sends you a one-page dossier on every person you are going to be meeting with a few minutes before the meeting.  Online, on the phone, or in a coffee shop you now know, before you go, a little more about the people you are going to meet and can move in confidently with insight on what is important to them and their business.  Pretty cool, right? There are a lot of pros to this obviously, but I need to point out that there are three glaring cons that limit its awesomeness: it is only for iPhone, only Google calendar (not Outlook), and its only free for a 30-day trial period.

Google Scholar – Scientific and fact-based research for industry content creation

Content marketing should fit somewhere in your digital marketing plan.  In a perfect world, you have writers and copy editors creating new content for your websites, blogs, and social media post every day.  In the real world, you are going to have to crank out some content all by yourself sometimes.  If you work in one of the industries that lean towards science, technological advance, and in-depth research, then Google Scholar can help you generate content ideas and give you the scientific research and data to support your writing.  As an example, a dentist looking for blog content might search for “fear in pediatric dentistry” and he’ll get back page after page or research, studies, and theses search results.

Dozens of content pieces from web copy to blog post, and webinars to infographics, can be created based on the scholarly literature returned in a Google Scholar search results page.

Small Business Marketing Free Digital Marketing Tools

As an important part of small business operations, digital marketing has become so popular and essential because it is one of the few areas where with just a little bit of work you can get really big results.  Usually faster and cheaper than traditional means of marketing.  Automation has made it possible for small businesses to compete at a very high level in the digital realm and these free digital marketing tools will help you harness the power of that automation to save you time, help you improve your marketing channels,  and give you a leg up on the competition.

 

 

About The Author

Zach Anderson is the co-founder of Reputation Loop (helping small businesses grow by generating customer feedback and online reviews) who loves online marketing and golf.

The post 5 Free Digital Marketing Tools You Don’t Know About appeared first on Reputation Loop.

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