30+ Tools Electrical Distributors Should Use to Boost Digital Marketing Efforts

Marketing these days can be a constant uphill battle. Customers are fickle and more tech-savvy than ever, making it incredibly difficult to hold their attention for long periods.

So how do electrical distributors join the fray and build loyalty online? Easy – they dip into their digital marketing toolkit and build an online presence that puts them front and center with their best prospects and customers.

We highlighted some digital marketing tools to help you hit the ground running. The list is far from complete and as this infographic from Chiefmartec.com shows, the landscape of marketing technology is vast, so knowing what to use is heavily contingent on a particular distributors’ needs. These platforms and products can help you create a marketing program that generates positive ROI and supercharges brand awareness in no time!

Digital Advertising Platforms:

• Google Ads – The OG digital advertising platform, Google processes about 5.6 billion (with a B) searches every single day. No matter where your customers are, Google Ads ensures your company is seen by them anytime they search for relevant keywords.
• Bing Ads – In a world dominated by a search engine that rhymes with “Boogle,” Bing Ads is the second largest global search engine, hauling in about 2.5% market share. It may not pull the same weight, but Bing gets about 1 billion monthly visits, making it a worthwhile (and less expensive) ad spend.
• Social Media Ads – Depending on your product offering, social media might be the way to go! LinkedIn ads can help promote whitepapers and other educational material or business-specific information. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok offer unique ways of incorporating creativity into your ads.
• Spotify Ads – Podcast advertising is on the rise. Spotify has already amassed more than 365 million active monthly users and has become a go-to for companies to connect with consumers in a new way. Choose your listener demographics, cities/countries, and music preferences, upload a soundtrack and image (or video if you’re bold), and launch it!
• YouTube Ads – YouTube has become one of the most used search engines in 2022. Take advantage of pre-roll ads, video pop-ups, or promoted homepage videos to target your audience with a few clicks and get your message seen!

Communication Tools:

• Microsoft Teams – Free, easy to use, and directly tied in with the rest of the Microsoft suite, Teams is a workhorse that makes collaboration simple.
• Slack – What if Microsoft Teams had a cooler, more tech-savvy brother with a need for speed? Now owned by Salesforce, Slack integrates with dozens of apps and programs, making it easy to share files, data, and GIFs quickly.

Content tools:

• Clearscope – This app is designed for content writers who what to get the most out of their work. Clearscope uses AI to make suggestions to optimize your content and bring more people to your site through organic searches.
• SEMRush Writing Assistant – SEMRush’s content marketing tool is a simple-to-use tool that makes writing blogs, web copy, and whitepapers simple. Just plug in your keywords and wait for SEMRush to do its thing. Get keyword suggestions, tone tracking, layout tips, and even check to see if you might be copying anyone.
• Google Trends – Not sure what topics to talk about? Google Trends uses data from the most popular search engine on Earth to help you figure out if “hot dog” is more popular than “hotdog.” But seriously, Google Trends is an incredible tool that shows the popularity of topics over time to see where you should invest time and effort.
• Google Search Console – Another helpful tool from the Google suite, Search Console shows you what queries (searches) people make through their search engine that leads to your site. This can help you find new keywords to rank for, expand your current list, or find new opportunities to target with other pages.
• Canva – From Fortune 500 companies to soccer moms trying to make a flyer for a weekend bake sale, Canva has the power to make anyone a designer. Graphics can be designed from a template or from scratch, with video and audio options available to make head-turning videos for social media.
• Placeit – If you want to show off your app or website but don’t have time or money to have a professional photographer or designer, Placeit simplifies the process into a few steps. From phones and laptops to coffee cups and billboards, you can put your site, logo, or products on hundreds of different things.
• YouTube Audio Library – Audio makes any video that much better. Avoid YouTube strikes and copyright infringement by using YouTube’s Audio Library. Easily accessible from your creator page, the audio library has hundreds of updating royalty-free songs that are free to use and share with your audience.

Conversion Rate Optimization:

• Hotjar – One of the most difficult parts of website maintenance is ensuring your content is getting read. Hotjar uses trackers to record clicks, scroll length, and even cursor movements to paint a picture of how your users peruse your site. Knowing what buttons are getting clicked and where users go helps you organize your site in a way that converts more efficiently.
• Chatbots (IE Livechat, Drift, or Intercom) – Customers often come to a website, then leave. Usually, they’re looking around, learning about your brand, or attempting to buy something. But if they find a product or need to speak with someone but can’t, you could lose their business forever. Chatbots are a great way to engage visitors and direct them toward solutions using relevant questions. It takes time and effort to install, configure, and write the chatbot’s scripts, but they can be an effective conversion rate optimization tool. Leading platforms include Livechat, Drift, and Intercom.
• Callrail – It’s easy to optimize the customer experience when you know how customers find you. CallRail allows you to track inbound calls and get immediate visibility into the source of your leads. You get powerful insights into campaigns and keywords that bring visitors to your website so you can improve your marketing strategies.

CRM:

• Microsoft Dynamics – A crown jewel of CRM software, Microsoft Dynamics lets you store every interaction with your prospects and customers in one easy-to-navigate place. MS Dynamics also integrates with dozens of other platforms, allowing you to share data quickly.
• Hubspot CRM – If there was an award for software that does everything, Hubspot would win it, hands down. From emails and chatbots to automations, a CRM platform, website builder, content, and customer service, Hubspot does it all. The platform also integrates with hundreds of other software products so you can share data between software.
• Zendesk – When your customers have questions, the last thing you want to do is make it hard for them to get the answers they need. Zendesk is a powerful tool that simplifies the customer service experience through live chats, answer bots, user forums, and so much more.
• Salesforce – Salesforce is not only the leading CRM provider but also provides marketing and sales solutions (such as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Pardot, and Datorama).

Email Marketing Platform:

• MailChimp – If you’re new to email marketing campaigns, MailChimp is an excellent entry-level tool for getting news, promotions, and other information out to prospects, customers, and partners.

Marketing Automation:

• Hubspot – We’ve already said that Hubspot can seemingly do it all, and we were not kidding. Design and create powerful email automation campaigns that drive leads 24/7. Use its email marketing platform to send out highly optimized campaigns to the exact audience you want to reach.
• Act-On – When you want to amplify your marketing efforts, this is the software platform for you. Act-On allows you to market on multiple channels online, automate repetitive tasks, capture and supply better leads to your customers, and create personalized experiences to nurture customers through their entire lifecycle.
• Salesforce Pardot – Pardot is Salesforce’s marketing automation platform. It integrates well with Salesforce CRM and has innovative AI marketing features such as Salesforce Einstein, which provides lead scoring and customer behavior insights. It works great for SMBs and large businesses.
• Marketo – Marketo is an incredibly robust enterprise marketing automation platform but requires an experienced marketing team to implement and maintain.

SEO tools:

• Moz – A mainstay of the SEO world, Moz helps businesses of all sizes wrap their heads around SEO and learn to dominate the world of organic search. With Moz, brands can audit their sites, find keyword gaps, find backlink opportunities, and track pages over time.
• Majestic – A critical part of performing well in the digital environment comes from building backlinks. Majestic is a powerful tool that can tell you who links to your site, show link opportunities, and avoid black hat SEO behavior.
• AHRefs – Measuring your company’s performance online is nice, but seeing how your competitors are doing is critical. AHRefs makes it possible to see how much organic search traffic your rivals get, follow trends, create backlink and content strategy plans, and more. Think of it as your digital eyes and ears.
• SEMRush – SEMRush is a great all-around platform that gives you actionable insights and information to improve your site, build backlinks, and see what keywords drive traffic. This helpful tool also has a content marketing platform to produce high-quality content more efficiently.

Website analytics tools:

• Google Analytics – From traffic insights and content drill downs to a bevy of reports, this is the premier tool for any webmaster, SEO, or marketer who wants to up their performance. Analytics help you track where customers are coming from, what pages they look at, and where they concert – all with a click. Best part? Google Analytics is totally FREE.
• Google Search Console – Have you ever wondered what brought someone to your website in the first place? Google Search Console tracks organic search queries to find where your site ranks and supplies click information, conversion data, and even keyword rankings over time.
• SEMRush – Like Google Analytics and Search Console, SEMRush provides the information you need to track site visits, see where referral traffic is coming from and analyze keywords. The tool goes one step further by offering tips and tricks to boost SEO visibility and improve content across every facet of your site.

Digital marketing usually has different platforms to help with each stage.

Pick and choose tools that help you jumpstart your marketing program today and make it easier for you to compete in six months, two years, or even longer.