How Do I Increase Ecommerce Conversion Rate?

A study says, over 90% of the average website visitors don’t have any intentions to purchase.

Many e-commerce businesses simply focus marketing on social media and opting for SEO services to rank higher on search engines. While that’s essential, it’s only half of the task. The other half is getting those people on the way to goal conversion. This could be either buying the product, successful form fill-up or signing up as a member.

In short, the website conversion or conversion rate optimization process is transforming the traffic you get to your website via SEO, social media ads, content marketing, and other digital marketing efforts into paying customers.

Find out the 6 distinct factors that will optimize e-commerce website conversion rate.

1. Convert time into money

Time matters, whether you’re trying to get the attention of the visitors on social media or on your landing page. So, you’ve done your study, and slowly but steadily, you are getting visitors to your website. But there’s one catch. Getting them to your website is only half the battle won. Keeping them there to browse your products is a completely different ballgame. Keeping visitors on your website long enough for them to take an action (a.k.a. make a purchase) can be even harder.

According to a study, 92% of first-time website visitors don’t have any intentions to buy. What’s even more alarming is that most users will leave your website after 10 to 20 seconds.

According to another study, most visitors seem to be using mobile to browse your site on the go, making it even harder for ecommerce businesses to capture the attention of their visitors.

So, what should you do?

This is where having a rich value proposition can hook the attention of the spectators.

As the ‘Weibull Hazard Function Test’ proves that, most visitors are ready to bounce almost instantly, even if they had started browsing to buy. The best way to stop your visitors from clicking away at this crucial stage is to give them an offer they think twice.

This can be in the form of a discount coupon, sweepstake for when they do purchase the product, or a promise of delivering them the best quality product or service available. That last part will have to be backed up by solid proof, whether it’s a testimonial from past customers or social proof in form of reviews and ratings of your product or service. The idea is to give the potential customer something to delight that they even considered clicking on your site and not the hundreds of other options out there.

2. Put yourself in your customers' shoes

Take a good, deep look at your website. How does it look and feel to you? Is it appealing? Does it provide you the answer you search for? And more importantly, does it have a clear call-to-action (CTA)?

Needless to say, you will have to put yourself in your audience’s shoes to get an answer.

The websites that have the best conversion rates are the ones who nailed the following:

• Simplicity – They don’t use flashy colors and unconventional text sizes to distract the reader.
• Navigability – They have easily located dropdown menus that are simple to navigate.
• Hierarchy – The most important information comes first and is presented in simple language.
• Consistency – All the thematically related pages appear uniform.
• Accessibility – Web pages should appear the same on handheld devices and PC screens.
• User-Centricity – Don’t cloak. Be clear to your audience, and they’ll repay it.

If the web page contains multiple products with an equal level of importance – problem. If the web page contains multiple products but with only one product highlighted – no problem. Allow visitors to filter through the product’s features according to size, color, style, price, etc. When it is designed and developed intelligently, your website should be coherent and lightning-fast.

Now, what does that look like?

Let’s take a look at any successful e-commerce website like Amazon or Flipkart. Go ahead, check them out if you haven’t visited. Your time won’t waste. I promise.

What will you see is exactly what the website creators want you to.

The case study given above ticks all the boxes of what makes a website that converts – simplicity, navigability, hierarchy, consistency, accessibility, and user-centricity.

The visitor is at once guided straight to the landing page and the information they are most likely going to be interested in:

• Free shipping (boosts your average order value)
• Price (no surprises or hidden costs)
• Call to Action (make sure your CTA is visible)

3. Optimize checkout funnel

For a better conversion rate, you need to shorten the checkout journey. We already know that the average load time of a website should not be more than three seconds. It has been found that conversion rates drop by an average of more than 4% with each additional second.

But, that’s just the time it should take for your website to fully functional on the user’s screen of choice.

The checkout process is the steps that every buyer has to take to complete the transaction. It goes from getting on your product page to complete buying the product.

Needless to say, your visitors who have an intention to buy a product will want a simple in and out procedure that doesn’t complex. So, the shorter the e-commerce checkout flow is, the more likely it is to convert a potential buyer into a paying customer.

For improved website conversion, you need to keep the buying process as fluid as possible by collecting minimal buyer information. Once they become a recurring customer, you can always ask them to provide personal information for a customized solution, at which point, they’ll be glad to share.

Ideally, this is what a checkout form should look like:

• Simple layout
• Multiple yet orthodox payment options
• No redirecting to another website to make the payment

4. Utilize virtual assistants and chatbots

Chatbots are completely revolutionizing the way everyday business processes are carried out on the web. One of the major reasons why chatbots, automated chat, or chat widgets have become an indispensable part of the e-commerce model nowadays is because they allow visitors to get the information they need on the fly. This is far more efficient than anything else since that’s the beauty of machine learning, AI, and IoT. But, you get the point, which is, chatbots offer customers the information they need regardless of the time of day or location.

Chatbots are intelligent enough to sense the context of the question and execute the right bot flow. However, chatbots cannot find answers or perform a set of activities on their own. On the other hand, a virtual assistant (for example, Google Assistant) can crawl through indexed resources and offer assistance for a wide range of conversations.

Both chatbots and virtual assistants are great for website conversion because they do not need refreshment breaks like humans, can work round the clock. This means your visitors get the information they are searching for in real-time, 24X7. For example, an e-commerce virtual assistant (VA) can help a visitor with product and research-based tasks.

This alone is enough to give your visitors a push in the right direction i.e., the path of conversion.

Chances are, your average consumer likes to use chat services. So, why not use chatbots to get a conversation started on your website?

5. Optimize CTA

A call to action (CTA) that’s easily identifiable and understandable prompts the visitor to take a particular action. Whether that’s to make a purchase or register for something. This CTA needs to be clear in its intent.

Placement

The CTA typically needs to be placed at the top of the fold. This is the place where the visitor can easily read it without having to scroll down. CTA’s that are placed at prominent positions are far more effective as compared to those that are below the fold or other sections of the page.

Shape and color

The shape and color of the CTA also matter very much. For example, in the name of consistency, many businesses make the mistake of designing their CTAs using a similar color and font size as the rest of their website. This only blends the CTA in with the rest of the content on the page, making it even harder for it to catch the attention of your visitors.

Being benefit-centric

All too often, we read CTAs that are just poorly written. A bad copy is like a spoiler. Bad CTA copy looks something like “buy here”, “click here”, “download”. All of these CTAs typically do not perform well because they are vague and not benefit-oriented.

To encourage the visitor to click on CTA without hesitantly, you need a CTA copy that is benefit-centric, as in, offers the visitor something in return for their action, and not just a promise of what might happen. Some good examples of CTAs are – “sign up”, “try for free”, “get started”, “learn more”, “join us” etc.

6. Deal fairly and honestly

An important factor while setting up a business is to remember that getting people to buy from you is all about creating trust. A conversion rate optimization plan for an e-commerce website is no exception. Think about it. You wouldn’t want to invest in a brand if you didn’t know where it was based, nor would you lend money to a stranger.

For the customer, buying online is pretty much the same thing. They want assurance. They want to know where you’re based, your authority in a niche, and even more importantly, that you’re not going to sell them snake oil. Since people tend to rationalize a purchase based on emotion, you need to make them reassure that you’re a real person, your products are genuine, and your website is legit.

The best way of doing that is by providing your contact information (NAP – name, address, and phone number), whether it’s a physical address, phone number, or email address, or all three. Your customers need to know that they will have somebody to talk to if there’s a problem. Getting fluid post-purchase service - is their main concern. So, address it professionally.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these 6 tips should help you get off to a good start with your e-commerce website conversation rate optimization. Since websites are created for different markets and along different verticals, you can always find ways of fine-tuning your landing pages and web pages for better conversion using the right combination of A/B testing, industry best practices, and the latest trends.

How Can I Start Digital Marketing?

Hi There,

I want you to visualize something with me.

Are you ready?

OK, close your eyes... No wait, never mind you have to read this. Keep them open.

OK, I want you to visualize this... What if this was your digital marketing strategy next year?

• You are consistently publishing 2 to 5 articles a week
• You are refreshing your most important pages each month and building links
• You are running Facebook ads and targeting new audiences every day
• You are running Google Ads and targeting new audiences every day
• You are running display ads and targeting new audiences every day
• You are running YouTube ads and targeting new audiences every day
• You are running ads on Instagram, LinkedIn and consistently refining your landing pages
• You have a strategy for pop-ups on your website that you refresh each month
• You send out press releases on a monthly basis and studies quarterly
• You are growing your social media following each week and publishing quality content
• You are doing online media buys on a quarterly basis to drive big spikes in traffic and revenue
• You are constantly refining your conversion process each month and running split testing
• You have a strategy to remarket to your current customers
• You create similar and lookalike audiences based on your current customer base and target them
• You have defined your ideal customer up-sell process and you craft your digital strategy to nurture that

If you do this, how can you lose?!

In my opinion, you will not.

This works so well.

By hitting each of these points, you will create a diversified traffic portfolio for your website. You will have the means to turn the levers that generate traffic to each of these channels based on performance and your business will grow.

I suggest you do the things I mentioned above for your business. There is no reason to wait.

Two Words: Forget SEO!

No matter if it is building relevant backlinks from reputed sites or creating high-quality content that targets certain keywords - we are ALL in a constant race to optimize for rankings organically.

Of course, optimization is important to get you top rankings on Google, but instead of continuing to be trap in this maze of constant optimization, why not try something else - an effective yet not so popular ranking technique that you can consider.

As to what it is, here’s a clue. Go and check results against your targeted keywords on Google. It can be anything - keywords your business is targeting or something random like how to clean a bicycle.

What do you see? I’ll bet you in most if not all cases - VIDEOS.

Video results always appear on the First Page and it’s no fluke.

Search engines like Google generally prefer to display appropriate video results if there are any and guess what - they rank even new videos that don't have any backlinks.

Most professional webmasters and SEOs don’t realize this, but YouTube takes up a huge amount of space in Google’s search engine result pages. And this is on top of YouTube's own search engine which you can aim for to bring traffic and conversions.

If there's anything you can do, now is the time to take advantage of this trend and start creating your own videos - but wait a moment, it's not just videos you have to create.

Good SEOs may already have discovered this amazing way to rank on Google. Anyways -

Freshness, dwell time, likes/dislikes - these are all important factors that can help boost your SEO, and they're all-natural qualities Google picks up in a video.

The method is simply so easy that you can forget all about SEO link-building at least temporarily.

There's not as much tweaking and optimizing, all you need are targeted keywords, their LSI and you're good to rank your videos and enjoy organic traffic from Google and YouTube.

This is no joke. Just take a look around.

The amazing part is you can hold your position at the top for long.

Really, with publishing amazing videos, ranking on the first page of Google and YouTube has never been easier.

But you also need to keep some points in your mind, like -

• You need to know how good SEOs are using Google to get targeted traffic to their landing pages and how to convert those as leads
• You need to have a blueprint to optimize your video content
• You need to do keyword analysis to find untapped long-tail keywords that you can rank for using within the video title and/or description

Just imagine, all these top and permanent rankings, traffic, conversions, etc. are for your taking again, so quick try out now!

How Sleep Can Solve Social Media Marketing Problems?

Hi!

Many of the social media evangelists in my country may disagree, but sleep and social media have a direct connection.

If you do a Google search, you definitely can see many write-ups on how does social media affect your sleep or social media use & sleep disorder, or is social media affecting your sleep, etc.

My today’s post is just the opposite of those thoughts.

Whatever you do in a social media marketing job, it’s impossible to avoid problems and challenges.

Getting stuck in follower growth on the way to satisfy customer queries and maintain a good engagement rate per impression, falling out with your client, are examples of challenges we face as a marketer.

You could probably expand this list with dozens of extra KPIs - all taken just from the last few social media marketing campaigns!

Knowing that we’ll always encounter difficulties is the first step in dealing with social media marketing. We can prepare ourselves intellectually, physically and emotionally, so that the low times only temporarily drag us down but won’t sink us.

The next step in dealing with marketing problems is to come up with solutions!

Let’s say you’ve maxed out your campaign budget, and you’re now struggling to even generate the quality leads. If you simply turn a blind eye to the problem, the frustration will increase, your boss will enforce extra hours of work, and you may even end up withdrawing from the project. Not a good situation at all.

However, to prevent the above from happening, you could begin to take charge of the situation by:

• Analyze your campaign settings so you can cut down the cost incurred by irrelevant clicks and/or impressions
• Contacting the client to explain your view/research on insufficient resource allocation, and asking them to stay flexible with the campaign budget and/or charges
• Consulting with your supervisor, who would be able to offer support in dealing with the situation

Whether you took one of the above actions or all of them, either way, this would be 10x better than doing nothing. You would feel more positive about your campaign goal, your worries would start to minimize, and you’d be able to put your focus on increasing your campaign ROI through data-driven optimization techniques, grow in your professional career, etc.

In the example above, I’ve stated some clear actions to take to help resolve the problem you are facing as a social media account in charge. But, what if the problem is so puzzling that you can’t think of a way to deal with it?

Well, in this case, you need to use the power of sleep.

Research has shown that thinking too much about a problem can often stop us from discovering a solution to it. This is because we try to solve the issue through our conscious mind, rather than giving the problem over to our subconscious mind and its vast storage of information.

This is where sleep can help.

Sleep & Social Media: Keep On Connected

If you’ve wrestled unsuccessfully with a social media optimization-related problem for hours, then it’s a sure sign that you won’t find a solution with your existing way of thinking. Instead, let go of trying to find a solution, and let your subconscious mind get to work on your behalf.

A sound sleep is a perfect state for your subconscious mind to work out answers to your questions. What could be better than waking up in the morning with clear and positive ways to solve your problems?

Not only does sleep rest and rejuvenate your physical body, but it also gives your conscious mind a break and provides your subconscious mind with the necessary space to tackle your problems with social media account management.

I’ve personally used this technique many times.

For example, a few years ago, when I was thinking of starting my first business, I struggled to see where I would get the initial investment from. Sure I had some decent savings, but not enough to fund an ambitious startup. Despite hours, days, and weeks of researching ways of attracting funding, I felt like I was going nowhere.

It was at this point that I almost gave up on my dream. I stopped thinking about the business and the funding, and put my focus elsewhere.

But, a strange thing happened.

After just a few months of giving no time or energy to my business idea, I woke up one morning with a startling revelation.

Namely, I didn’t need loads of money to start my venture. I could begin it right now with my small savings, and then as the business grew, I would attract additional investment as and when needed.

I had never thought of this idea before, but it was dead right. This has been the exact startup model I’ve used to grow my project from just an idea.

Let’s consider another instance.

As the serial crises of 2020 redefine customer engagement, social media marketers are transforming their operations, accelerating digital transformation, and overhauling their marketing strategies. It’s essential to focus on the priorities, challenges, and trajectories of your client’s business.

The pandemic has exposed social media marketing’s unavoidability, and entrepreneurs are taking decisive action.

Meanwhile, you can identify your main competitors and study their social media posts - then adjust your social media messaging as needed.

So, to counter the crisis, you can -

• Explore your closest competitors and divide them by ‘threat level’
• Reverse-engineer rivals’ success and find untapped opportunities on social media platforms
• Fine-tune your social media optimization game

But the desired level of success may still out of hand.

When you are passing through such hard times in your professional life, try the sleep remedy. Simply switch your conscious mind off from all the surrounded drama to take a deep sleep so that you can find solutions to your problem by using your unconscious mind. So -

Sleep can indeed be a powerful tool for success for social media marketers at many times.

Do not hesitate to try out sleep and giving problems over to your subconscious mind for finding out a solution. I bet, soon you experience, how sleeping on a difficult problem help you get the answer.

Many may laugh out after reading this out, but I am telling you, using sleep is to solve problems that may new to you, however not a brand new idea. I am trying to be a seasoned dreamer-resolver. Are you too?

Cheers!
Partha

SEO Is Always The Lowest Priority, Until It Is Not

In today’s post, I will talk about my 5 reasons why I believe SEO is not anymore a smart marketing investment.

I think SEO is neither compulsory for businesses, nor it is anymore one of the obligatory investments that a business owner can make.

On the contrary, many still think of SEO as a needed investment for their business - its stock that will increase value over time and remain in your account.

Unfortunately, those days are gone when by investing in SEO you build long-term value for your website that will continue to accumulate over time.

Here are 5 reasons why we should stop investing in SEO now.

1. SEO does not work.

This is a straightforward reason, but it is true. As of today, Google processes nearly 4 billion searches per day. With that number of search volume, there is no debating that, ranking in Google’s search results with PPC ads offers much better and realistic opportunities to get more targeted traffic for websites.

This is very important because more targeted traffic typically brings more leads and leads turn into sales that is ROI.

By investing in SEO if you want to raise your rankings in Google and expect more traffic to your website that can produce more leads and sales for your business is a myth now.

If not, then why almost everywhere I am seeing text/display ads now?

2. For mobile, SEO is becoming even more meaningless to all.

Yesterday, people had to wait until they got a computer to review something online. With mobile searches now surpassed desktop, today more people are comfortable doing research on the move. Tomorrow is even shiner for businesses because people will make a purchase through IoT devices.

With the growing usage of “near me” search queries, even the small local shop owners now see the opportunity to rank in their area. As a result, big businesses start showing their financial power by launching huge paid PR campaigns.

That means people not only can find more attractive ads online but also find any business info on their mobile screens in real-time.

Therefore, your noble thought about investing in Local SEO for your small business to grab the attention of people who are your ideal customers and are ready to make a purchasing decision quickly is vaporing even more quickly.

If not, then why paid ads are always above all?

3. Higher search engine rankings don’t prove your business credibility.

What do you do when you’re considering making a purchase online or offline? For most people, the answer is research - means checking all available buying options to get the best deal possible.

Most internet users - as high as 80% in some studies - look past paid ads and focus solely on organic search results. That means that when someone is doing web research for a product or service, they are much more likely to do business if you rank highly in Google’s organic search results. In order to rank higher, your website should have a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, which will help to drive sales once someone clicks through to your site.

However, having a high ranking doesn’t always mean that Google and other searchers have found your website to be relevant. A high rank on Google SERP also doesn’t signify trust and authority for your business always. If giving consumers a positive feeling towards your business before they even start searching around your site is important, then how most of the businesses are allowed to run paid ads (and they are making a profit too from it!) without at least considering Google’s search quality rater guidelines?

If not, then why the paid PR sites are rank higher in the news searches? Or sometimes, how they appear above the organic listings?

4. Rankings can change fast, and but your competitors don’t know it.

As per popular thesis, SEO is an ongoing process and the more you invest in it, the greater it will be. This is a good feeling at many levels.

If your website is already ranking moderately higher in search results that’s great - but it means you need to continue to invest in SEO in order to stay there - this is not true anymore.

With everyone competing for those top spots on SERP, your competitors are going to invest in paid ads and digital PR campaigns, and if they do and you don’t, they can start to outrank you - simple.

If you’re not currently ranking high in search result pages, you still have an opportunity to rise up. By investing in a sound paid digital advertising strategy including smart yet paid social media marketing tactics, you may be able to start outranking your competition and driving more traffic to your website.

Though that’s doesn’t guarantee the actual conversions from that traffic.

Ranking #1 is a constant race to the finish line, and whoever invests the most in paid ads and runs the diversified media buying campaigns will get there first.

If not, then why business owners are more and more investing in programmatic advertising?

5. SEO is an easily replaceable art.

Customers used to learn about products or services through advertisements on the radio, television, and print ads. People are still, also use to make buying decisions in stores and look for service providers in the phone books or local business directories.

While some people may still reluctant, many (and the numbers are increasing at a significant pace) are relying on social media for making purchasing decisions nowadays, and the tendency is it’s going to stay.

Online shopping and searching are not only here to stay, it’s going to keep growing and evolving and with that means optimization work for social media will continue to change as well. It’s important to start investing now on social media so you set your business up for success in the future and most importantly consumers are on social media.

If not, then why so many businesses are operating on social media without having a website at least?

Final thoughts

Traditional marketing is one-way i.e. brand to customer, which is not engaging. But marketing through SEO is multi-ways - brand to customer, customer to brand, customer to customer. SEO is the marketing practice that allows you to engage and interact with your consumers virtually.

So, SEO will remain here and will grow.

To make SEO work for you, do learn which sources are generating the most traffic, find your competitors' best conversion tactics, and view metrics, including conversion rates and top-selling products at first.

Need Help with SEO?

Click here to request a quote for SEO services.

How To Leverage & Scale Your Digital Marketing Expertise?

Hi Friends,

Knowledge is power.

Right?

Not really.

It's what you do with the knowledge that's matters.

Sadly, more and more digital marketers in India can't really do the jobs they trained/certified for. They lack the skills that clients/employers value and often have little to show for their digital marketing knowledge but a ton of debt.

The opportunities that higher education is supposed to create are rapidly disappearing all over the world.

But there is some good news:

The slow breakdown of traditional digital marketing training programs creates a massive opportunity for a lot of people especially if you consider yourself a lifelong learner or an expert in your field.

If you want to know more about this massive opportunity, the team Tenet developed a training program all about the disruption of digital marketing education and why it's a good thing for smart marketers.

The entire training program is available online, and you can register by sending an email request.

Some glimpse about digital marketing course -

• Let’s passionate about what you do.
• Become a part of the growing marketing community and set as is someone can trust. So, when you say something, the community listens.
• Be always on the cutting edge of what's really going on in the digital marketing industry, and how experts, entrepreneurs, and business owners can profit.

Here's the thing:

Digital marketing institutes as I know them will go extinct even IF they lowered the cost of tuition, changed their system, or updated their curriculum.

And the disruption is spreading beyond higher education.

People are demanding more learning options, and that means online courses on digital marketing offered by experts and professionals are going to become way more than a trend.

They're the future of education.

It's basic supply and demand.

This is the opportunity for anybody with less expertise to step up, start learning, impact the world, and build a hugely successful career in the field of digital marketing.

And in the course, team Tenet outlines what it takes to create the digital marketing campaigns people will like.

So if you're involved in digital marketing in any way, as a junior web marketing executive, business leader, SEO expert, PPC consultant, and especially as an owner of a small business, then you won't want to miss this digital marketing training program.

PS. You can subscribe to the blog for free updates on and around the evolving digital marketing world.

Best,
Partha

Which Social Media Tools Would Be Best?

Social media operation is quite counterintuitive work. It seems like anyone could do it: post something (anything!) on social media, chat with people, search for content ideas, and fill your company’s social media account with content without context. Sounds like a job for a child of today’s time.

However, if you seriously look for ROI to generate, this isn’t enough.

It may look straightforward, but it’s almost impossible to make social media campaigns effective without adequate resources - namely, money, planning, talented people, and the right tools for the work. This post will focus on social media tools.

These tools helped me a lot in various projects for many years. I’ve divided them into three categories according to the most important social media tasks.

A. Tools For Social Media Management

These social media management tools are the ones that help you manage the process that any social media campaign wants. They make the route easier, more organized, less bumpy, and, therefore, more effective. Here are a few from my list of favorites.

1. IFTTT

So you’ve prepared and scheduled posts as part of the content curation task. What’s next? To automate everything that comes before and after (and in between). That’s what IFTTT does for you. The name of this automation tool stands for If This, Then That. It connects all kinds of apps and services together to automate multi-step tasks in whatever way you want. For example, if you publish a blog, you can create an IFTTT “applets” that will see the new post and create a tweet as well as a Pinterest post about it.

If there’s a task in your workflow that you often overlook despite all the to-do notes, try IFTTT.

2. Buffer

Buffer is a trendy scheduling tool that allows digital marketers to schedule posts across a range of social media platforms. You can either customize each post to each platform or publish the same one ubiquitously.

You can use a Buffer Chrome extension to add any content you find on the Web to the Buffer queue. This adds a bit of flexibility and power to the whole process of content curation and sharing. Your posts will be circulated at the best possible times. You can also track shared links to see which content is most effective in terms of readers’ engagement.

3. Quuu

Already have Buffer? To make things easier for you, i.e., to reduce the task where you are the one in charge of finding valuable content to share, start using Quuu. This is a social media marketing tool that curates content on behalf of you: it captures constantly top-quality relevant content and adds it to the Buffer queue. This removes your burden of curating and sharing content that you always want to share (i.e., your own blog posts and promotional content).

B. Social Media Monitoring Tools

Organic social media marketing is divided into two processes. One is about the content that comes from you and your brand. It’s the content you create, the content you aggregate and share with your audience, and promotional content. SMM tools that automate and optimize this part of social media marketing are discussed above. The second aspect of social media marketing comes from the audience. It’s the mentions of your brand online, reviews, questions, compliments, and complaints directed towards you.

While posting may be more important for increasing brand awareness, keeping an eye on what people say about you and responding appropriately is important too. It’s pretty much impossible to manually find all mentions of a brand on social media, as even on social media platforms people don’t always tag the brand. That’s why social media monitoring tools exist: to make communication with an online audience comprehensive. Here are a few that stand out:

1. Awario

Awario is a social media listening tool made for solopreneurs and small businesses. It doesn’t require a large budget, yet it covers all major social media listening features: finds mentions of your brand or any other keyword on all major social media platforms, including influential forums like Reddit; breaks mentions down into positive, negative, and neutral ones; shows you a list of influencers; and offers reports with all the stats on the authors that mention your brand.

2. Mention

Mention offers real-time social media monitoring, and you can set up alerts for your brand, your competitors, and your industry. With this tool, you can view and respond to each like, tag, or mention (ah, see what they did there?) right in the app. You can also sort mentions by importance or significance, and even set up filters, including by source or by language.

Mention also offers two options tailored to the different who need social media monitoring: small businesses focused on their own branding and agencies working on behalf of their clients.

3. Brandwatch

If your budget is much larger, then Brandwatch may be the tool for you. Brandwatch’s analytics data is highly visual: perfect to illustrate the meaning of social media marketing to clients, if you’re an agency.

Another feature that makes Brandwatch stand out is Signals. You have an option to set up an alert whenever a keyword is mentioned by the authors you choose. Signals alert on significant changes in the data set, such as a sudden peak in the number of mentions or an increase in negative mentions.

4. Talkwalker

Talkwalker is another enterprise-level tool that’s undoubtedly one of the most powerful on the market. It offers a huge range of filters, sub-filters, and platform coverage. Not only does it cover social media, news sites, blogs, and forums, but also broadcast, TV, and print. The data available is almost endless. It combines information from Google Analytics and social media, sentiment analysis, and image recognition to show you the most accurate report on every aspect of the audience.

Talkwalker is aimed at teams of marketers and PR pros, and it makes working in teams easy. It allows you to manage a smooth workflow within a department and easily share data across departments.

C. Social Media Advertising Tools

Social media marketing is tricky. Sometimes it seems as if everything can be achieved organically and for free, as long as your efforts are creative and authentic. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, and it becomes less and less common to achieve social media marketing success without any advertising budget. This is especially the case with Facebook. However, as appealing as Facebook makes advertising look, it’s pretty hard to make it work if you don’t have the right tools. So here’re the chosen ones:

1. Facebook Ads Grader

Although Facebook offers some analytics on ads, it’s often hard to tell whether your ads are worth the money, and if not, what has to be improved so that they could be more effective. WordStream’s Facebook Ads Grader lets you know just that: it provides a completely free assessment of your Facebook Advertising performance.

The report-based tool generates a detailed summary of the areas in which you’re succeeding and falling behind. The analysis includes metrics that show you how much the Key Performance Indicators differ based on who you’re advertising to; how your best and worst-performing ads compare to your competitors; whether you’re paying too much; whether you’re targeting the right audience; etc. It also shows if your campaigns, ad sets, and ads adhere to the industry standards established by Facebook. Basically, the Facebook Ads Grader is the easiest way to see if you’re getting the most out of your budget and how you can improve.

2. Qwaya

Qwaya is a tool to help create and manage Facebook and Instagram ads. It makes sense to buy it before you’ve even started investing money in Facebook Ads. Qwaya lets you schedule ads, offers analytics integration and team collaboration. Most importantly, it lets you A/B test your ads.

Anyone in marketing knows that testing is key to find the right message for your audience. Social media advertising isn’t an exception. With Qwaya, you can test every variable you’d like to make sure you’re not wasting your money and getting the best possible outcome.

3. Perfect Audience

This is a retargeting tool that can be used for Facebook advertising. Once you get over the clearly outdated design (sorry) and try the tool out, you might find it to be very effective for your business.

Retargeting is a big part of any advertising strategy – or at least it should be. Perfect Audience simplifies the process and helps you set up campaigns and view results. It provides info on impressions served, clicks back, conversions, and cost. The tool can be used for the Web and mobile as well as Facebook.