Digital Marketing Tools We Use to Grow Our Business – Part 2 of 3 im-rebels.com /digital-marketing-tools-we-use-to-grow-our-business-part-2-of-3/ Brian Gray
3/31/2017
Digital Marketing Tools and Services We Use to Grow our Online Business #9 – 19 (Part 2 of 3) Click Here to Go to Part 1 of Digital Marketing Tools Services We Use. A lot of people have asked us what particular tools and services we use for our online business and for our digital marketing and it’s not an easy question to answer in a short amount of time because we use a lot of different tools for different things. I sat down and compiled a list of the tools and services that we use the most both with our own online businesses and clients’ businesses. Some of them are free services and software, and some are paid. In this post, I’ll cover numbers 9-19.
We’ve tried and tested hundreds of different options, and these are the weapons we’re using in our digital marketing arsenal. Without further ado, let’s continue the list (not in any particular order)
9) Google Docs Since I started using Google Docs, I rarely use MS Office. I love how G docs, spreadsheets, presentations (slides), can be shared with multiple people and has options for commenting, editor controls, and it can link with Zappier (which was covered in Part 1 of this post ), so you can automate different actions with your Google Sheets and other accounts. For example, you can link your google sheets with ConvertKit, Typeform, Wufoo, MailChimp, Eventbrite ,
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Trello, Gmail, Slack, and more. You can easily access Google Docs via your Gmail as well which is very convenient. When you’re in your Gmail, just look for the 9 small squares on the right side of the screen and click it. By default, you’ll land on the doc page, and if you want to get to Google Sheets, or Google Slides, just click on the three small lines in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Then, you’ll get a drop-down menu that gives you the option to switch to Sheets or Slides. If you’ve not used Google Sheets or Slides before, basically Sheets works the same way Excel does and Slides the same as PowerPoint. All the formulas I know for Excel work in Sheets. You can also download all your docs, sheets and slides in all different formats including PDF, PPT, docx and svg (just to name a few). 10) EasyLinks Easylinks is a very handy tool that allows you to track conversions (using any link), create retargeting audiences from link clicks (even links that are not yours) and cloaks links. Lets say you want to track how many sales or opt-ins you’re getting from a blog post, or YT, or FB post, all you would do is create your link in Easylinks (cloud based, so it works on mac) and then add the conversion tracking pixel to your “Thank You” page. Then you’ll be able to tell exactly what sites are making the most money and you can focus your efforts on the most profitable sources. You don’t have to use your own links either. I could take an interesting article from another website, feed it into Easylinks, and then share that link to create a retargeting audience from people who click it. Or, if you have an affiliate link you would like to post in a place that blocks affiliate links, you can use the “link cloak” option, so no site can tell its an affiliate link, AND grow a retargeting list from everyone who clicks the affiliate link. Also, if you use solo ads for traffic, you can create individual tracking links for each solo ad vendor and track exactly how many conversions you had through your whole funnel. Personally, I’m not a big fan of EasyLinks sales page, but I’m defiantly a fan of the software.
11) VideoMakerFX I’ve tried a whole lot of different software out there, and the one I use the most to make video ads, video sales letters and explainers is VideoMakerFX. It’s great for sales videos, short promo videos, explainers, affiliate marketing videos, presentation videos, and a lot more. 2/5
Here is a video I made with VideoMakerFX, to promote my social media agency course. And here is a video I made showing how easy it is to make a video with VMFX.
12) Camtasia Camtasia is a great software for editing videos and doing screen capture with a talking head (from webcam or external camera). I’ve tried a lot of different video editing software and I use Camtasia the most because it is easiest to use and has all the features I need. Its defiantly NOT the most powerful video editing software out there, but it’s defiantly one of the easiest to use. I’m not going to write more about it because it’s already a popular software and you probably already know about it.
13) GraphicStock and VideoBlocks These are two cheap, but good stock sites. Graphicstock has all sorts of stock images, psd, ai, vectors and other handy graphics. I defiantly get my $99 a year worth from Graphicstock. Videoblocks has stock videos, Adobe After Effects templates, and Apple Image files. They have a nice collection of After Effects templates that can be used for everything from logo animations to fancy presentations. If you’re looking for decent stock images and videos for a great price, then check out GraphicStock and VideoBlocks. I made this video almost completely with stock videos from VideoBlocks
14) XSplit Video Broadcaster Xsplit is a free tool that allows you to do a lot of different things with video. I mostly use it for streaming to FB Live and YT Live. It allows for streaming from screenshots, webcam, pre-recorded videos, and a lot more. Here is a longer post I wrote about how to use Xsplit to broadcast pre-recorded videos to FB Live, YT Live, and DailyMotion . And here is a video showing how to do it. Live streaming pre-recorded videos to FB Live and YT Live are just two of the many options that come with XSplit. The free version will allow you to stream to one channel at a time and the paid version lets you stream to unlimited channels at the same time. I have the paid version so I can stream live to as many FB pages and groups as I want, plus stream to YT and DailyMotion at the same time as I’m streaming to FB. Just be aware that the more live streams you run simultaneously, the more strain it will put on your system resources, and you’ll need a fast internet connection. Other extras you get with the paid version, are some things like a video editor, and background removal tool (for removing backgrounds from talking head videos). 15) KeywordShitter While it doesn’t have the most elegant or sophisticated name, KeywordShitter is a very handy, free tool that we use 3/5
a lot. As you might have guessed, it’s for keyword research. All you have to do is put in your keywords that you want to get ideas for, and then add any negative keywords you want to exclude from the results (not necessary, but you’ll get better results if you use negative keywords), and then press “Shit Keywords” and it will go out and find a ton of different keywords based on your original ones. You can then export these keywords and upload them to the Google Keyword Planner and get different search results and bid suggestions for each one. If you want to learn more about KeywordShitter, check out this longer blog post we did about it. And here is a video showing KeywordShitter in action
16) Prospector Pro If you offer services like social media marketing, web design, SEO, PPC or SEM, content marketing, video marketing, or digital marketing consulting then Prospector Pro is a must-have tool for your business. It’s a cloudbased software and runs in your browser, so it works on any computer. All you do is type in a keyword for a business you want to target (like restaurant, real estate, lawyer, chiropractor, etc..) and then type in the location you want to target and Prospector Pro will bring back tons of details about each of the businesses online marketing efforts, and it lets you filter out prospects based on their needs. So for example, if I want to target all the Landscapers in Los Angeles who don’t have a mobile responsive website, Prospector Pro will go out and find those exact businesses. It gets even better though because after it finds the prospects who need your services, it creates personalized landing pages and email campaigns that are specific to the prospect and it’s digital marketing needs. Check out this video showing how powerful this software is. 17) StealthSeminar If you plan on doing webinars to promote your business or engage your following, you’re going to want a reliable, easy-to-use system that doesn’t require a lot of learning and set-up. We love StealthSeminar because there is no set-up at all, and nothing to learn. When we want a webinar set up, we just email the guys at Stealth with all our information and they make the registration page and set up the webinar for us. It also has options for cool add-ons like automation for email campaigns in your autoresponder. We have ours StealthSeminar account connected with our ConvertKit account, which allows us to segment webinar viewers into different sequences based on their actions, or lack of action. We’ve tried a lot of different webinar platforms out there and we like Stealth the best because of its ease of use, and the ability to connect with our email marketing software to make everything completely automated. 18) Canva You’ve probably heard of Canva before, so I won’t go into a lot of detail on this one. It’s a free image editor for people who don’t know how to use photoshop. I don’t use Canva because I love Photoshop, but the other two IM Rebels, Shane and Mark don’t know PS, so they like to use Canva. If you don’t have Photoshop, then Canva is a good choice fo you. If you have some graphic design skills, then you’re better off using a more powerful editor like Adobe Photoshop. Canva is free for the basics, but if you want to use certain templates or images from their stock images, then you have to pay. 4/5
19) Grammarly Grammarly can work as either a chrome plugin or plugin for windows and anytime you write something, it will check your spelling and grammar for you. It works with most all websites I’ve tried it with and its suggestions are usually correct. All you have to do is install the chrome plugin, create a free account, and it will check all your writing automatically. Just be careful when you use it with WordPress, because if you click on it’s popup window for suggestions, for some reason it removes any html code embedded on the page (like videos). There is also a paid version of Grammarly which allows you to check your work in MS Office programs.
In my next post, I’ll continue with the list of tools that we use regularly in our business.
About Latest Posts
Brian Gray I love digital marketing and everything that comes with it. Besides making money online, I'm also partner of a successful communications and digital marketing agency and my client list includes EU, UN, World Vision, Hennessy, Vespa, Corona Extra, Krispy Kreme, Canon and Hyundai (just to name a few). I was in the education sector for over 13 years, and I loved it, but then transitioned into digital marketing and eCommerce (more freedom when you work online). I realized I didn't want to give up teaching, so I decided to teach online.
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