What Software Do Digital Marketers Use?

The key to digital marketing is the ability to collect and analyze large amounts of data, and to do this Digital Marketers use many different tools, like Google Analytics, SEMRush, and Tableau. These tools allow Digital Marketers to create specifically targeted ads to attract customers, plan campaigns, and assess website performance. Many people find these tools rather complicated to learn, so people who want to switch to a career in digital marketing often choose to take classes.

What is a Digital Marketer?

Over half the world’s population uses the internet, and businesses have noticed. Most companies and organizations have a website and use digital marketing to reach potential customers or clients. Digital Marketers use social media platforms, website content, email campaigns, paid and unpaid advertising, and video marketing to promote goods and services to a target audience.

Digital Marketers use data analytics to identify an audience likely to be interested in the products or services they sell. Next, they create a detailed description of that audience, focusing on the pain points and problems the product will solve. Then, Digital Marketers set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the marketing campaign's performance. Common KPIs are sales goals or increasing traffic to a website.

After setting goals and determining strategy, Digital Marketers create high-quality content to engage the audience and place it near the top of search engine pages. After posting the content on social media, Digital Marketers use tools like Google Analytics, SEMRush, or Moz to analyze its performance. Digital Marketers also interact with followers on social media in the company’s brand voice. 

Some Digital Marketers work for agencies and take care of many accounts, while others work for one company. Some are employed in-house, while others work remotely. Digital Marketers in agencies and larger companies often work as part of a team. They may only be responsible for one part of the workload, such as content marketing, SEO, or data analytics. Many people start their careers as freelance Digital Marketers working at home by themselves or in small startups.

Read more about what a Digital Marketer does.

What Software Do Digital Marketers Use?

Most of the software tools Digital Marketers use are for data collection and analysis, but tools for data visualization, keyword research, and content management are also on the roster. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (or GA) is one of the most common tools in the Digital Marketer tool box. GA is a free tool used to collect and track what users do, then create reports on those actions that can be used to improve website or app performance. Digital Marketing Data Analysts install a tracking code onto each page of a website to collect information about what visitors do when they are there. This information tells Digital Marketers what is working, what is not, and how website performance can be improved. 

The data collected by GA can be targeted to identify specific problems or shortcomings on a website or app. Digital Marketers can measure the customer experience from the moment a user enters the website or app to the time they leave. This includes how users found a site, any purchases they made, what pages they visited, and how they moved through the site. Google Analytics provides crucial insights and is a must-know tool for Digital Marketers.

Google Ads

Google Ads is another important tool for Digital Marketers. Google Ads is Google’s paid online advertising platform that Digital Marketers can use to promote a business, product, or service by choosing specific keywords to attract website visitors and increase sales. Google Ads is free to use, but you must pay for the ads you run.

There are two types of advertising in digital marketing, paid and unpaid. Unpaid, or organic, advertising relies on content to build a following among a target audience, but this process can take several months to accomplish. Paid ads work much more quickly. Digital Marketers can use Google Ads to create highly targeted ads to reach a specific audience and measure successes and weaknesses. 

SEMRush

Another popular tool for digital marketing is SEMRush. This software package includes many powerful SEO tools for Digital Marketers from generating keywords and phrases, tracking domain performance, researching competitors, and identifying trending topics for content marketing. SEMRush connects to Google Analytics and tracks site performance, but unlike GA, SEMRush is not free.

Moz

Moz is another SEO tool that lets Digital Marketers perform site audits, track search engine ranking, analyze backlinks, and search for the most effective keywords. It helps you to determine the best content and marketing strategies for your site, fix SEO issues, and research competitors. Moz allows automated checks to make it easier to stay ahead of problems.

Tableau

Digital Marketers can collect massive amounts of data, but then they need tools to help them understand what it means and explain the situation to stakeholders and other team members. This is where a tool like Tableau comes in. Tableau simplifies raw data into insights that make it easier to understand. Data analytics is complicated and tools like Tableau help with data blending, real-time analysis, and data collaboration.

Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is another data visualization and business intelligence tool used by Digital Marketers to turn data into interactive reports, dashboards, and visualizations that are used to present a visual snapshot of what’s happening at a business.

WordPress

WordPress is a very popular Content Management System that Digital Marketers use to create and maintain a website without any knowledge of coding or website design. Numerous templates and plugins are available to customize the site, including adding links and other functions for SEO. 

How to Learn Digital Marketing Software

You can teach yourself to use the various digital marketing software tools, but many people find taking classes to be quicker and more efficient. You can choose between on-demand video classes, in-person training, and live online sessions with a real-time remote instructor. On-demand classes tend to be the most affordable and flexible option. Some classes are free, so it is a good way to explore the basics and decide if this is a good career move for you. On-demand classes fit easily into your schedule because you can watch whenever it is convenient and go back and review the material as often as you need to. Sometimes you can access classes one at a time instead of signing up for a full slate of classes all at once. The downside to on-demand classes is that you don’t have an instructor to answer questions or provide help. 

In–person and live online classes do have an expert instructor who can interact with you and answer questions. Some people prefer to take classes in a traditional classroom setting. They like having an instructor in the room and to interact with other students and do a bit of networking. Unfortunately, that isn’t always available but a live online session offers many of the same benefits. Live online classes often run at the same time as in-person sessions. Through a video conferencing platform like Zoom, you are able to talk to the instructor and other students and see the same slides as the rest of the class. You can attend live online classes from anywhere with internet service, home or office, or your local library (bring your earbuds). You don’t have to commute to get the same high-quality instruction as an in-person class.

Other Skills Needed to Become a Digital Marketer

In addition to learning to use software tools, Digital Marketers need other skills to be successful, too. These include abilities that can be learned through training and experience–hard skills– as well as personality traits–soft skills. Some hard skills useful for digital marketing include content management, Search Engine Marketing, analytics, and business knowledge. Some soft skills are persuasiveness, creativity, curiosity, and flexibility.

Hard Skills:

Content Management

Creating content and knowing where to place it is one of the most important digital marketing skills. Content can take the form of social media posts, blog posts, emails, website content, ebooks, and videos. All have their own channels, users, and scheduling. Knowing where to put your content and when to post it is crucial. Understanding the different channels is something you can build over time, or learn through a class. 

SEO

Content can’t do what it is designed to do if no one sees it. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of choosing the best keywords to include in content in order for it to place near the top on search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO can feel like a magic language, but you can pick it up through tutorials and exercises or take a class.

Business Knowledge and Marketing Principles

A good business foundation is helpful for digital marketing. Understanding how business and advertising work helps with all kinds of marketing.

Soft Skills:

Persuasion

The ability to make a persuasive argument is at the heart of any marketing. You need to be able to sell the product or service beyond anything else.

Creativity

Being able to come up with new and engaging marketing ideas will make you a much more successful Digital Marketer. The internet rewards creativity, especially in digital marketing.

Curiosity

Curiosity is a good trait for a Digital Marketer to have because new tools and new platforms are always coming along. It’s important to stay on top of the newest developments and check them out.

Flexibility

It is also important to be flexible. Things change quickly in the world of digital marketing, and you need to stay loose and able to maneuver when search engines alter their rules or tools come out 

Learn the Skills to Become a Digital Marketer at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers many digital marketing courses that teach skills to help you switch to a career in digital marketing. Small class sizes and expert instructors help you learn digital marketing in in-person or live online classes. Plus, you can take a course over again for free at any time during the following year. 

Noble Desktop offers many bootcamps in digital marketing like Facebook Marketing, email marketing, Social Media Content Marketing: Blogs & Twitter, and Video Marketing: TikTok & YouTube. You can also choose the Digital Marketing Certificate or a Social Media Marketing Certificate course. Other Noble Desktop resources that can help prepare for a career in digital marketing include the digital marketing blog with valuable articles about social media marketing, SEO, and other essential tools for digital marketers.