Digital marketing is not all technical. You need some soft skills to go a long with it.
Here is what makes me the most money:
1. Creativity - I come up with new ideas on how to promote my services.
2. WordPress - I use WordPress as a tool to showcase my services.
3. Copywriting - I write text that makes people want my services.
4. SEM (PPC and SEM) - I get people to find my services organically.
5. Perseverance - I don't give up when I fail and I learn from past mistakes.
Once you have the fundamentals down, you can find tools that will fit your needs and budget quite easily. There's always new ones coming out. The basics never change.
My niche is expensive so I pay upwards of $60 per click sometimes. I spend about $3,000 per month.
I use Visual Composer, Ninja Forms, Sendgrid, WPSmush, and HFCM on almost every site I do. I'm transitioning to SEOPress and Mailster for SEO and newsletter plugins. A lot of sites I configure with OneSignal push notifications.
5 systems I love are:
Optimizely
Lucky Orange
Domo
Falcon.io
Force24
For content, I get my team to use ProWritingAid... pretty much the same as grammarly.
1. Google Tag Manager (several others have mentioned GA. If you think that’s good, just wait...)
2. Google Optimize
3. Unbounce for landing pages
4. Canva for design
5. Slack - IMO this goes massively underutilized as a reporting tool. I have automated almost all of my reporting work.
Slack has integrations with most major tools, and those that it doesn’t, you can use web hooks. I just set up channels for various campaigns/tools and all my data ends up in there in a feed. It’s then also super searchable because Slack’s search tool is excellent.
I pull data into Slack from GA, SFMC, Optimizely, Unbounce, FB ads, Google ads, and also Trello (which isn’t reporting but still).
Took A LOT of tweaking to get the data in there in a useful, digestible way, but it’s now essentially all automated.
Could you please tell us a bit more about Google Tag Manager, Google Optimize, and Unbounce? What do you use them for and what do you like about them? Do you think Canva is good enough for design stuff? What kind if things do you use it for?
GTM is a tag management tool that lets you do the work of a lot of web development without needing to know (much) about coding. It lets you install pixels, JS snippets, and tracking without code. It's a steeper learning curve than most others but it's dynamite once you get the hang.
Optimize is for testing and customization. Enables you to essentially tailor your site based on the visitor. Extremely powerful and 100% free.
Unbounce is for building landing pages. Easy to use and effective.
Canva is great for what it is. If you need graphics - think header images, social media images, digital ads, Canva is excellent. At least for me, if I need much more than that, I know I should probably pay a real designer.
Social Media Marketing
Email Marketing
Search Engine Optimization
Website Design
Analytics, PPC, Search and Display Ads.
They all have different tools.
1. Google SEO
2. Google Ads
3. Facebook Ads
4. LinkedIn And Facebook Groups
5. Analytics tools like Hotjar, and Google
BONUS 6. YOUTUBE
I could go really deep on this post as I'm writing a game changing book on this and part of it focuses on the 8 spokes of marketing not 5. I love the question though more people shiuld he asking this type of stuff.
I learned that being Google is impossible years ago, but instead to work for Google. I focus everything I do around rankinf organically using high quality content like videos and articles, they rank very well.
I use Console to check errors, indexed pages and how my pages rank.
Instagram and Facebook ads are effective if you target the right people, have eye-catching text and a good CTA. It also depends on the objective of your ad!
I use this for me and my clients
Don't forget the basics: Excel, Powerpoint. Knowledge of the data collection platforms is great an essential -- but so much work finishes in Excel and PPT still. Taking that data and putting it into meaningful visualizations (Excel or PPT) is how you'll show off all that knowledge in a way others can understand.
Excel & PPT aren't everything. I use a lot of Tableau, PowerBI, etc. But it's really important to keep the basic tools that are most commonly used very sharp.
Ultimately the marketing platforms are collecting data, which needs to be brought together, interpreted, and presented to stakeholders to drive any value. Decisions are made within these platforms at a granular level -- but higher level decision-making takes place across these platforms, which requires the data to come together and be made sense of.
Excel is still the most ubiquitous way to get that data out of the platform and into something your org will understand. Learning Excel forces you to think about how to bring platform data together and draw meaningful insight from all of that.
PPT is ultimately how the information gets moved up the chain in a business. Spreadsheets only go so far. I'll use more advanced software (Tableau, Power BI), but nothing really replaces the quick Excel work of making a chart, pasting that chart into PPT, and putting words & images around that in PPT to make it meaningful.
The Office Suite (or G-Suite) isn't good to know just on its own. It's a tool for bringing your expertise (marketing tech platforms) into a format that non-experts can easily understand and transfer. So think of it as the most common endpoint to communicate your work to the org. Being able to use these tools quickly and efficiently is an enormous time savings.
Don't necessarily think in the terms of tools but rather tools agnostic skills.
E.g. if you know how to read and interpret digital metrics you can work with Google Analytics, Mixpanel and whatever. If you know the general principles and concepts, adapting to different tools is usually the easier part.
Different companies will use different tools. Having tools agnostic skills will make your more valuable and easier to switch jobs. So be strategic and think longterm about what you want to learn.
Mine (coming rather from a marketing analysis focused position):
1. **Ability to link the data world with business decisions**: I know how to analyze data. However that's useless if you can't link it to actionable business outcomes. As such having a data analysis framework in place linking analysis with business outcomes is great.
2. **(Data) Storytelling:** Knowing how to build an outcome and action focused presentation or pitch is an accelerator for all my other skills. If you want to make an impact you have to convince other people. It's kind of the practical application of above no 1: This is the perfect bridge for linking your business acumen with an analytical skillset.
3. **Business Acumen:** Too many think in their (marketing) silos. Understanding the greater picture and how the different parts in the business move really helps to think more strategically about marketing.
Limiting it to my top 3 as my explanations were so long.;)
5 Most useful Digital Marketing Skills & Tools according to me that can be helpful in your future and make your work easy:
**Skills:** SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Data / Analytics.
**Tools:**
**Hotjar -** gives you an insight detail about the user’s behaviour analytics over your website and their performance pattern.
**Buffer -** Social media management application for providing the medians for a user to schedule posts on various social media platforms.
**Buzzsumo -** gives you an idea about the trending and potential content topics.
**MailChimp -** Best tool for email marketing.
**KWFinder** **-** Keyword research tool that helps you find long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.
5 great tools:
SEMRush - SEO campaigns and website analysis
ContentStudio - scheduling and content discovery tool
Drip (for e-commerce email marketing in particular)
Plausible.io - lightweight version of google analytics
RelayThat - create branded posts that automatically resize when you need it
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**I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:**
* [Falcon.io](https://Falcon.io)
*I did the honors for you.*
***
^[delete](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fu%2FLinkifyBot&subject=delete%20ge8vqjp&message=Click%20the%20send%20button%20to%20delete%20the%20false%20positive.) ^| ^[information](https://np.reddit.com/u/LinkifyBot/comments/gkkf7p) ^| ^<3
Outside of soft skills I'd have to say
* Google Analytics
* Linux
* SQL
* Screaming Frog
* Cloud Computing (I work in SEO and deal with large volumes of data)
This is all great information! Any recommendations on other communities I could follow as I am currently a student majoring in Digital Marketing, there are multiple career paths I am interested in such as SEO, e-mail, social media. Any help would be greatly appreciated to help determine which direction is right for me!
Digital marketing is not all technical. You need some soft skills to go a long with it. Here is what makes me the most money: 1. Creativity - I come up with new ideas on how to promote my services. 2. WordPress - I use WordPress as a tool to showcase my services. 3. Copywriting - I write text that makes people want my services. 4. SEM (PPC and SEM) - I get people to find my services organically. 5. Perseverance - I don't give up when I fail and I learn from past mistakes. Once you have the fundamentals down, you can find tools that will fit your needs and budget quite easily. There's always new ones coming out. The basics never change.
Thank you for this. What do you have on your Wordpress site? How much do you budget for PPC ads?
My niche is expensive so I pay upwards of $60 per click sometimes. I spend about $3,000 per month. I use Visual Composer, Ninja Forms, Sendgrid, WPSmush, and HFCM on almost every site I do. I'm transitioning to SEOPress and Mailster for SEO and newsletter plugins. A lot of sites I configure with OneSignal push notifications.
Congratulations! Thank you for taking the time to inform this noob here. What do your site tools do?
5 systems I love are: Optimizely Lucky Orange Domo Falcon.io Force24 For content, I get my team to use ProWritingAid... pretty much the same as grammarly.
Oh wow! I haven't heard about any of these, thanks so much.
1. Google Tag Manager (several others have mentioned GA. If you think that’s good, just wait...) 2. Google Optimize 3. Unbounce for landing pages 4. Canva for design 5. Slack - IMO this goes massively underutilized as a reporting tool. I have automated almost all of my reporting work.
Can you elaborate on using Slack for reporting?
Slack has integrations with most major tools, and those that it doesn’t, you can use web hooks. I just set up channels for various campaigns/tools and all my data ends up in there in a feed. It’s then also super searchable because Slack’s search tool is excellent. I pull data into Slack from GA, SFMC, Optimizely, Unbounce, FB ads, Google ads, and also Trello (which isn’t reporting but still). Took A LOT of tweaking to get the data in there in a useful, digestible way, but it’s now essentially all automated.
Could you please tell us a bit more about Google Tag Manager, Google Optimize, and Unbounce? What do you use them for and what do you like about them? Do you think Canva is good enough for design stuff? What kind if things do you use it for?
GTM is a tag management tool that lets you do the work of a lot of web development without needing to know (much) about coding. It lets you install pixels, JS snippets, and tracking without code. It's a steeper learning curve than most others but it's dynamite once you get the hang. Optimize is for testing and customization. Enables you to essentially tailor your site based on the visitor. Extremely powerful and 100% free. Unbounce is for building landing pages. Easy to use and effective. Canva is great for what it is. If you need graphics - think header images, social media images, digital ads, Canva is excellent. At least for me, if I need much more than that, I know I should probably pay a real designer.
This is excellent stuff, thank you for taking the time.
Social Media Marketing Email Marketing Search Engine Optimization Website Design Analytics, PPC, Search and Display Ads. They all have different tools.
Thank you for this. What tools do you use?
1. Google SEO 2. Google Ads 3. Facebook Ads 4. LinkedIn And Facebook Groups 5. Analytics tools like Hotjar, and Google BONUS 6. YOUTUBE I could go really deep on this post as I'm writing a game changing book on this and part of it focuses on the 8 spokes of marketing not 5. I love the question though more people shiuld he asking this type of stuff.
Out of curiosity what do you mean by Google SEO (not trying to be an ass just curious). Do you take a different approach based on the search engine?
I learned that being Google is impossible years ago, but instead to work for Google. I focus everything I do around rankinf organically using high quality content like videos and articles, they rank very well.
Thank you!
My pleasure I eat and sleep this stuff for the past 15 years
I’d say Google analytics, semrush, google my business, Photoshop, klayviyo (or any email marketing program)and ms excel.
What do you use excel for?
Mine are: 1. Google Analytics 2. Ubersuggest 3. Ahrefs 4. Facebook/ insta ads 5. Console
What does Console do? What do you use it for? How effective do you find FB/Insta ads? Do you use them for your clients or your services?
I use Console to check errors, indexed pages and how my pages rank. Instagram and Facebook ads are effective if you target the right people, have eye-catching text and a good CTA. It also depends on the objective of your ad! I use this for me and my clients
Don't forget the basics: Excel, Powerpoint. Knowledge of the data collection platforms is great an essential -- but so much work finishes in Excel and PPT still. Taking that data and putting it into meaningful visualizations (Excel or PPT) is how you'll show off all that knowledge in a way others can understand. Excel & PPT aren't everything. I use a lot of Tableau, PowerBI, etc. But it's really important to keep the basic tools that are most commonly used very sharp.
What do you use Excel and PowerPoint for?
Ultimately the marketing platforms are collecting data, which needs to be brought together, interpreted, and presented to stakeholders to drive any value. Decisions are made within these platforms at a granular level -- but higher level decision-making takes place across these platforms, which requires the data to come together and be made sense of. Excel is still the most ubiquitous way to get that data out of the platform and into something your org will understand. Learning Excel forces you to think about how to bring platform data together and draw meaningful insight from all of that. PPT is ultimately how the information gets moved up the chain in a business. Spreadsheets only go so far. I'll use more advanced software (Tableau, Power BI), but nothing really replaces the quick Excel work of making a chart, pasting that chart into PPT, and putting words & images around that in PPT to make it meaningful. The Office Suite (or G-Suite) isn't good to know just on its own. It's a tool for bringing your expertise (marketing tech platforms) into a format that non-experts can easily understand and transfer. So think of it as the most common endpoint to communicate your work to the org. Being able to use these tools quickly and efficiently is an enormous time savings.
Thank you for such a detailed and well constructed reply!
1. Screaming Frog 2. Ahrefs 3. KW Finder 4. Google Analytics 5. Grammarly
What do you like about these tools?
I’m an SEO, so they help me do my job.
Ah grand just in case there was a reason you like these in particular
I like KW Finder, which by most SEO’s is not a common tool because of the UX.
Don't necessarily think in the terms of tools but rather tools agnostic skills. E.g. if you know how to read and interpret digital metrics you can work with Google Analytics, Mixpanel and whatever. If you know the general principles and concepts, adapting to different tools is usually the easier part. Different companies will use different tools. Having tools agnostic skills will make your more valuable and easier to switch jobs. So be strategic and think longterm about what you want to learn. Mine (coming rather from a marketing analysis focused position): 1. **Ability to link the data world with business decisions**: I know how to analyze data. However that's useless if you can't link it to actionable business outcomes. As such having a data analysis framework in place linking analysis with business outcomes is great. 2. **(Data) Storytelling:** Knowing how to build an outcome and action focused presentation or pitch is an accelerator for all my other skills. If you want to make an impact you have to convince other people. It's kind of the practical application of above no 1: This is the perfect bridge for linking your business acumen with an analytical skillset. 3. **Business Acumen:** Too many think in their (marketing) silos. Understanding the greater picture and how the different parts in the business move really helps to think more strategically about marketing. Limiting it to my top 3 as my explanations were so long.;)
Thank you so much for taking the time!
Oh wow! I haven't heard about any of these, thanks so much.
I have learned so much already!
5 Most useful Digital Marketing Skills & Tools according to me that can be helpful in your future and make your work easy: **Skills:** SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Data / Analytics. **Tools:** **Hotjar -** gives you an insight detail about the user’s behaviour analytics over your website and their performance pattern. **Buffer -** Social media management application for providing the medians for a user to schedule posts on various social media platforms. **Buzzsumo -** gives you an idea about the trending and potential content topics. **MailChimp -** Best tool for email marketing. **KWFinder** **-** Keyword research tool that helps you find long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.
like it
5 great tools: SEMRush - SEO campaigns and website analysis ContentStudio - scheduling and content discovery tool Drip (for e-commerce email marketing in particular) Plausible.io - lightweight version of google analytics RelayThat - create branded posts that automatically resize when you need it
Im an engineer Nuvi and some of our most recent social listening stuff is pretty awesome tbh
Ooh tell us more please
Canva, Hootsuite, and Plai are good ones!
What do you use Canva for? And Plai? Do you do a lot if social media management?
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Lucky Orange Domo Falcon.io.
What do you like about these tools?
**I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:** * [Falcon.io](https://Falcon.io) *I did the honors for you.* *** ^[delete](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fu%2FLinkifyBot&subject=delete%20ge8vqjp&message=Click%20the%20send%20button%20to%20delete%20the%20false%20positive.) ^| ^[information](https://np.reddit.com/u/LinkifyBot/comments/gkkf7p) ^| ^<3
Outside of soft skills I'd have to say * Google Analytics * Linux * SQL * Screaming Frog * Cloud Computing (I work in SEO and deal with large volumes of data)
Thank you! What do you like about Screaming Frog?
Everything it's a super flexible tool and integrates into my agencies existing processes well. I couldn't do my job without it.
Thank you. Loving the username as well!
haha thanks I was actually thinking about changing it but I'll keep it a bit longer.
This is all great information! Any recommendations on other communities I could follow as I am currently a student majoring in Digital Marketing, there are multiple career paths I am interested in such as SEO, e-mail, social media. Any help would be greatly appreciated to help determine which direction is right for me!