Recommended List of Digital Marketing Tools & Resources

I get asked this question pretty regularly.

To answer it once and for all, I have compiled this list of tools and resources I personally use and recommend.

As you can guess, some of these tools are paid, but many are free. If you have a question about any of them, feel free to drop me a line.

Now, onto the list…

The best tools for:

Website setup

Domain name

The domain name ashishdungdung.com is registered with GoDaddy, and I actually recommend you register your domain name with them.

They are good. In fact, I’m perfectly happy with them: they are priced right, are easy to use and I have never had an issue with them.

However, when you take my advice and go with the webhost I use and recommend, you will get your domain name for free.

So, why spend more money, if you don’t have to?

Web hosting

I proudly host my website with UpCloud and Digital Ocean and I couldn’t be happier.
This website is currently hosted on Digital Ocean.

Publishing platform

WordPress

As a publishing platform, I use WordPress and I honestly don’t know why you would consider anything else.

It is an open source software and it’s free. You can use it to create any kind of website, blog or an app. It has thousands of free plugins that extend the functionality of your website. It has a huge community of developers who can answer any question you have. And, it is used by 31% of the Web (that basically means, every 3rd website you visit runs on WordPress).

Oh, and Digital Ocean is already prepped for WordPress with a simple, one-click install.

Web design

My website is custom-designed, but it hasn’t always been that way.

My very first design was a free WordPress theme obtained from their official theme directory. It contains thousands of free designs you can use immediately.

Analytics

Right after you get your website sorted, you will want to make sure you can measure everything that needs to be measured.

Google Analytics

The must-have tool here is Google Analytics. Not only is it free, but it’s also extremely powerful. I rarely find myself needing more data than Google Analytics can give me.

I use Google Tag Manager to insert the Google Analytics code on my website and recommend you use it, too. This guide is not the right place to go into details on all the advantages of Google Tag Manager, but, trust me, it’s worth using it.

Fortunately, installing Google Tag Manager takes just a couple of hours or less and there are plenty of Google Tag Manager experts on Fiverr willing to help for very little money.

SEO

There are 3 tools I’m using for pretty much all my search engine optimization (SEO) needs.

Yoast SEO

The first SEO tool is the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, which is free. It has a number of features, but I regularly use only three:

  1. XML sitemaps – the ability to automatically generate XML sitemaps, which can be submitted to the search engines for easier URL discovery.
  2. Meta robots index – the ability to communicate to the search engines whether to index a certain URL or not.
  3. SEO title and meta description – the ability to optimize the snippet of individual URLs for higher rankings and better conversion.

Google Search Console

The second SEO tool I use is the Google Search Console, which is also free. This is a must-have for any webmaster because it’s the closest you will get to measure your performance in Google Search.

Google Search Console allows you to see which queries bring users to your site, analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search. It also allows you to submit your XML sitemaps and individual URLs to Google and review your index coverage to make sure that Google has the freshest view of your site. Finally, you can receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site, see which URLs are affected by these issues, and tell Google when you’ve fixed them.

The third SEO tool I use is SEMrush. It’s not free, but it’s one of the most comprehensive all-in-one digital marketing suites for analyzing websites –your own or your competitors’ – across pretty much all areas that matter (SEO, PPC, social media, public relations, content marketing, and more). Anytime I want to look for new good keywords or compare my site to any of my competitors’, I use SEMrush.

Promotion

Promoting my new posts used to be a tedious and time-consuming chore. That is until I found Agorapulse.

With Agorapulse, I can post to all my social media accounts, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+.

I can also pre-load posts and schedule them to go at the exact time I need. This is especially useful since I’m in Australia, plus I travel around the world a lot, but most of my readers are in the United States. So, I can schedule my social media posts to go live when most of my target audience is most likely to see them.

I also use their re-schedule feature, which allows me to continually promote my most important content. I use this feature, particularly on Twitter.

The other thing I like about Agorapulse is that it allows me to view all my conversations across all my social media accounts in one place. This way I don’t have to log into individual social networks and look for new notifications or posts.

Finally, Agorapulse also gives me detailed reports on all of my social media activity.

I can also pre-load posts and schedule them to go at the exact time I need. This is especially useful since I’m in Australia, plus I travel around the world a lot, but most of my readers are in the United States. So, I can schedule my social media posts to go live when most of my target audience is most likely to see them.

I also use their re-schedule feature, which allows me to continually promote my most important content. I use this feature, particularly on Twitter.

The other thing I like about Agorapulse is that it allows me to view all my conversations across all my social media accounts in one place. This way I don’t have to log into individual social networks and look for new notifications or posts.

Finally, Agorapulse also gives me detailed reports on all of my social media activity.

Conversion

Converting all that website traffic into subscribers and buyers is what it’s all about. Therefore, conversion rate optimization is very high on my list of priorities.

There are two tools I use constantly. In fact, they are integrated into my website.

Sumo

The first one is Sumo, which is a suite of tools designed to improve your conversion rates.

For example, you can have a popup window that shows up 1 second after the page is loaded, or when the user hovers over the address bar, scrolls down the page, etc.

You can also have a so-called welcome mat displayed across the entire screen when a page loads, or the user scrolls to the middle of the article, etc.

As well, Sumo lets you add a smart bar to your website displayed across the top or bottom of each page.

Oh, and this tool suite comes with social sharing icons you can add to the left side of your content, at the start and/or end of each post.

Leadpages

The other tool I use for conversions is Leadpages, which is a landing page builder, complete with forms and everything.

They have plenty of templates to choose from. All you need to do is drag, drop, click, and type. You get beautiful and functional landing pages without the need to hire a designer or a developer.

Email

My email list is one of my most important assets. Therefore, choosing the right email service provider is essential. I personally use Infusionsoft, but it’s a little pricey and there is a learning curve.

Commerce

Currently, I don’t have my own eCommerce store. Any products I sell, I do via partners’ websites, such as Udemy.

However, I did my own research into eCommerce shopping carts, so I have a pretty good idea of what’s out there.

If you want to build an online store, my best recommendation is BigCommerce. Compared to other solutions, such as Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce, BigCommerce has better out-of-the-box functionality, does not require paid add-ons/apps, and doesn’t limit growth.

Presentation

I need presentation design pretty much every month. Either, I have a new ebook coming out, or I’m getting ready to speak at an even or record a video. And almost every time, I turn to these folks…

Designing a presentation to be engaging and persuasive can be tough. I want my slides to come across as professionally as I can, and that’s why I use 24Slides’ presentation services.

With 24Slides, I simply send the content of my slides via their online platform, and within 24-hours I get back a completely redesigned presentation.

I will provide design guidance like sending them my website, which then allows their designers to get inspiration on the styling. So far, it’s always been great.

For people who have teams producing many slides each month, they have a dedicated team solution, where they’ll train a team of designers in your branding and preferences to be on-call to support you with overnight presentation design, regardless of how many slides you may have.