Must-have digital marketing analytics tools

Finding the best path in building a strong and recognized brand is one with many obstacles that you will need to face. Getting past some of those will require personal skills while others will ask for knowledge and improvisation from you. And then, there will be those obstacles for which you will need the support of others. But if you truly wish to succeed in your endeavors, you need both skills and knowledge, as well as the right set of tools for the job. Ask any professional digital marketing agency NYC whether they would be able to do the work they do without the tools they use. The answer is simple – NO. In this article, we take a look at a list of must-have digital marketing analytics tools, some of which you might be able to use on your own while others will require a more skilled presence.

Digital Dot’s choice of top 10 digital marketing analytics tools

#1: HubSpot’s Marketing Hub

As part of the HubSpot marketing software franchise, the Marketing Hub has a well-established track record when it comes to tracking, measuring, and improving inbound strategies. This tool offers a great all-in-one inbound marketing solution for businesses to maintain control over their efforts. With the free CRM and closed-loop reporting that this tool offers, it makes it simple for companies to have a precise idea about their ROI.

However, the HubSpot Marketing Hub does come with a bit of a learning curve that businesses might find overwhelming. Fortunately, there are a plethora of educational resources in terms of blog posts, e-books, and online courses on how to use this tool. While you can get limited access to the tool for free, companies will have to sign up for paid plans to use key features that provide insight into:

• SEO
• Social media management
• Email marketing campaigns
• Landing pages, etc.

#2: SEMrush

As far as digital marketing analytics tools go, SEMrush is definitely among those that you will have heard about. A well-established piece of software, SEMrush is an online visibility management & content marketing SaaS platform. With a user base of over 6 million marketers across the globe, it easily falls under the top choices for professional SEO companies everywhere.

Whether you are looking to gain insight into the effectiveness of your competitors or to increase your organic traffic, SEMrush is the tool to implement. With link building and site auditing as its key features, you can easily discover ways to improve your SEO approach. The only downside is that all accounts only come with one user account. Of course, there is also the matter of cost in order to unlock its competitive SEO analysis capabilities, but overall – it is a very popular and commonly used marketing analytics tool.

#3: Google Analytics

A free and widely used website analytics tool, Google Analytics is a basic starting point for most marketers. The functionality of this tool lies in its ability to monitor and gather data in regards to your website traffic:

• Where visitors are coming from;
• How were online users referred to your website;
• How much time people spend on your pages;

Given that we’re discussing a Google product here, it is only logical that it be integrated with other Google tools, which can be beneficial for PPC agencies (due to integration with Google AdWords) and other types of digital marketing solutions. Basically, Google Analytics is a great way to keep track of the traffic your campaigns generate – focusing mainly on tracking conversions, events, sales, and organic growth.

The downside is that it falls under complex digital marketing analytics tools, so it takes time and a lot of learning to wrap your head around using it in its full capacity. However, this is an obstacle that you can overcome by simply hiring an SEO agency or an in-house SEO specialist.

• The basic version is free and contains a wide set of capabilities for your typical businesses. The premium version enables increased data analysis abilities with full support from Google and is mostly used by corporations and large enterprises.

#4: Matomo

Matomo (originally Piwik) is a completely free and open-source marketing analytics tool that comes as a good substitute to Google Analytics. Its focus lies in tracking website visits and its main feature is the customize data segmentation that it offers. You can create reports based on:

• User engagement with your website;
• Traffic source;
• Geo-location of users;
• Search engines and operating systems;

Additional features include the capacity to track marketing campaigns, conduct overlay analytics of individual pages, noting variables in custom behavior, etc. The basic version of it is more than sufficient to support individuals and businesses, whereas the premium version requires full privacy compliance and is a choice of corporations and government institutions.

#5: Google Search Console

The Google Search Console offers insight into the search terms that users typed into the search bar before they landed on your website. It is a solid marketing analytics tool that helps you gather data on the clicks and impressions of various search terms, each CTR, and the average position your website took for that term on SERPs.

Whether you are looking to boost paid or organic traffic on your website, Google Search Console is a great means toward that end. It offers marketers the insight necessary to identify potential issues with keywords that they use and whether or not they are worth the hassle in terms of importance and ranking difficulty. All this helps you work towards choosing better keywords for your business and customizing your content and campaigns to those keywords as well.

• Google Search Console is completely free and can also be integrated with your Google Analytics account and display extra data.

#6: Moz Pro

Fit for both beginners and experienced marketing consultants, Moz Pro falls under digital marketing analytics tools that focus on performance on search engines. This is a tool that gathers data on the rankings of your business and your competitors. It can help your SEO efforts in generating more traffic on your website through the analysis of:

• Internal and external links
• Metadata
• Keyword rankings
• Organic traffic

The pricing for Moz Pro is flexible, starting from its standard plan at $99 per month and reaching as high as $599 per month for premium features and capabilities.

#7: MailChimp All-in-One Platform

As an established brand name in terms of email marketing solutions, MailChimp took the next logical step in developing an all-in-one marketing platform that can provide an in-depth analysis when it comes to your campaigns. The tools that you get from this platform are AI-powered, customer-oriented, and most importantly – user-friendly. If you are delegating a large part of your marketing resources on email campaigns, this particular tool will come in handy.

#8: Looker

Although relatively new to the company of digital marketing analytics tools, Looker already has a strong foothold in its environment. With its proficiency in both SQL and Web-based data, this tool is offering modern business models an innovative approach to business intelligence. The tool is browser-based and has the operational capacity to process enormous amounts of data in real-time, capitalizing on time-efficiency. Certainly, there are still features that need to be tweaked or added to Looker, to perfect it further for the needs of its users. And there is also the matter of the price tag here – one that medium-sized and most larger businesses might not be willing to invest in just yet.

#9: SharpSpring

Known among marketing analytics tools for its flexibility, SharpSpring is a comprehensive platform that offers robust features, functionality, and performance. With the unlimited access it offers to users and more than competitive in terms of pricing, this tool offers a tailored approach to its users, all through the use of:

• Page and blog builders
• Behavior-based email marketing
• Social media management
• CRM integration
• Dynamic forms
• Universal CMS compatibility, etc.

The potential obstacles that users might come across are the overwhelming number of features that it offers, most of which still on a standard level that can’t match competitive tools. For non-marketers, it can be intimidating and challenging to navigate through.

#10: NinjaCat

NinjaCat is an all0in-one platform that can provide marketers with a holistic overview of their activities. With its data pipeline, interactive dashboard, and automated reporting templates – this tool is adaptable to the tailored needs of all types of business. That is where its main quality of scalability for agencies, small businesses, and multi-location brands comes into play. It saves time on manual tasks while providing an accelerated insight into your budgeting, campaigns, and ROI.

How to pick the right digital marketing analytics tools

Pricing

Pricing falls under the most commonly questioned criteria when buying software for your business. After all, your annual budget is limited and you need to allocate your resources accordingly, to get the best out of it. While some digital marketing analytics tools price per user, others offer a monthly plan. You need to determine which type of pricing is betters suited for your business model, as well as count in the costs of add-ons and updates.

User Experience

Whether you work with marketing consultants or agencies, you will want a platform that is user-friendly and easy to navigate through. Of course, personal experience can take you a long way here, but saving time and resources is of the essence, and a user-friendly tool can contribute to that. You need to examine the reviews of all of the digital marketing analytics tools before choosing one. Having an easy-to-use tool will make it easier to track data and leave more time to focus on improving your strategies instead of gathering data.

Customer Service

In digital marketing, you never know when something might go wrong. And once it does, you need to respond as quickly as possible to avoid suffering significant business losses. That is why you want to look into digital marketing analytics tools that offer full customer support, preferably through live chat. Feel free to inquire about the platform when you discuss it with the company reps before signing up for it.

Features

With so many different tools and platforms out there, it can be difficult to keep up with the competition unless you find an all-in-one solution. That is why the range of features that a marketing tool can provide plays such an important role. You want to be able to get as much as you can for the resources you invest. And so, you need to carefully go through all the benefits and features that a platform has to offer, to make sure that it can cover all your current and potential needs.

References and reviews

The opinions of other users can save you a lot of time from having to test out each piece of software on your own. Instead, you can follow in the steps of modern consumerism and turn to the experiences of others to make informed buying decisions. If an official review is too brief, consider reaching out and consulting directly with some of the companies that use the tools you are interested in. Get the insight you need to break the tie and decide between your favorites. Inquire about the user experience, downtime, maintenance, updates and upgrades, scalability, etc.

Integration

As a business with your own set of tools and software solutions, it is important to be able to put it all together with your marketing tools. And so, the ability to integrate digital marketing analytics tools with your current system can influence your day-to-day activities and the time you spend on tracking data and implementing changes. Make sure to check how it is integrating with other tools. Select one that allows you to collect, correlate, and analyze all the data in one central location.