Tools and Platforms on Digital Marketing
Please use the attached document to finish the paper
Part I: Digital Marketing Tools
Units II, III, and IV have provided you with a good understanding of digital marketing tools. Digital marketing tools used today include email, websites, search engines, social networks/social media, mobile devices, and blogs. As new digital marketing tools come out daily, please feel free to include them in your submission.
For Part I, select and analyze a minimum of four digital marketing tools. Once you have completed the chart in the template, ensure that you discuss the following items in an essay format (not a question-and-answer format) under the chart.
Explain the main strengths of each of the digital marketing tools.
Analyze each of the digital marketing tools by providing a real-world scenario in which it would be the most effective.
Describe potential ethical issues that marketers need to be cautious of when using each of these digital marketing tools and specifically the use of web analytics.
Part II: Digital Marketing Platforms
Now that you have a good understanding of digital marketing tools, research digital marketing platforms currently being used to enhance the implementation of these digital marketing tools. Select a minimum of five platforms to research, ensuring that you are discussing the following items below in an essay format (not a question-and-answer format).
Explain the platforms.
Explain how effective the digital marketing platforms are in enhancing digital marketing tool(s).
Describe how effective the platforms could be in reaching and influencing target markets.
Your completed assignment must be a minimum of four pages in length, not counting the title page and references page. Adhere to APA Style when creating citations and references for this assignment. Include a minimum of two academically credible references beyond the textbook. Also, cite and reference the five digital platform websites that you selected to research. Utilize the CSU Online Library to locate at least one of your sources.
Unit IV Assignment
MKT 5302 Strategic Digital Marketing
Due Date
Part 1: Digital Marketing Tools
Aggressive and strategic marketers have been able to adapt to the changing markets and adopt the digital transformation positively by implementing and investing in digital marketing tools. These are tools that companies use to reach out to their prospective customers as well as promote their products through the use of digital devices and platforms (Chaffey, 2019). There are numerous digital marketing tools available in the market today, with more and more that are easy to customize being created more rapidly, thanks to technological advancement. The chart below describes some of the most commonly used digital marketing tools in the market today: Hubspot, Slack, Google Adword, and Trello digital marketing tools.
Digital Marketing Tool Analysis
Digital Marketing Tool
Strengths (minimum of 4)
Weaknesses (minimum of 2)
Hubspot
* All functionalities are free to use
* Creative use of logs- to track all interactions with customers
* CRM integration
* Tailored onboarding
* 24/7 customer support
* Offers a little bit of functionality for every facet, hence lack in-depth qualities
* Lacks flexibility
Slack
* Automation
* Offers faster execution of marketing campaigns
* Scalable
* High level of customization
* Role delegations
* Too many channels can get confusing and disorganized
* Highly addictive with a taste of a social media app
* Limited functionalities for the free version
Google ads
* Highly flexible
* Faster and transparent return on investment
* Attracts huge amounts of traffic
* Easy to set up
* Google ads are never for free
* Limitation on characters
Trello
* Free to use marketing tool
* Built-in automation
* Easy to integrate with other apps
Simple to set up and highly customizable
* Limitation on characters and descriptive
* Enterprise-level services come at a cost
Hubspot
Hubspot is a freely available digital marketing tool with inbound Customer relationship Management [CRM] (HubSpot, n.d.). The CRM embedded within the Hubspot digital marketing tool relies on a centralized database, making it a useful tool for a wide range of personalities within an organization. The information stored in the databases, including all the interactions with the customers, are trackable with the use of system logs, making it easy to customize interactions when the right analytic tools are invoked. The support team from Hubspot boasts of 24/7 availability to provide any technical support (HubSpot, n.d.).
To get started with the marketing tool, marketers can get the free version of the software and make use of the web forms, pop-up forms, and live chat capabilities to capture prospective data and their needs by monitoring the conversations. The information can then be channeled to the embedded CRM software to get an in-depth analysis of the perspectives. A practical example where Hubspot digital marketing tool can be used is in a business venture dealing with watches. Through the pop-up forms, marketers can get customer feedback on the quality of service, how the services can be improved, and repair services on the gadgets. The pop-up forms can be used to collect confidential information, and it is upon the marketer's discretion to determine the use of this information. Reckless use of prospective private data compromises ethics and laws. Conversation bots can be annoying sometimes and can undermine the autonomy of the customer, further compromising the ethicality of the software tool.
Slack
Slack is a relatively new digital marketing tool that has some similarities with most social media platforms because of its instant messaging capabilities (Slack, n.d.). With the slack tool, the marketers can create as many channels or workspaces as possible to suit the unprecedented growth of organization needs, thus highly scalable. Routine and repetitive tasks can be easily automated with the workflow builder app embedded with Slack.
Slack marketing tool can be used as an e-learning platform, especially during the unprecedented time of a pandemic like COVID-19. Different workspaces or channels are created to promote each course and to separate the administrative functions from access by the learners. By using Slack as an e-learning platform, an organization can promote new courses and curriculum to a wide range of customers. One shortfall with the use of Slack as a marketing tool is that it has social media taste, with all sorts of negativities, including abuses and misappropriation of personal information, posing as a threat to the morality of the marketing tool. Slack also has options for private slack channels (Li, 2016). However, any form of conversation within the platform becomes part of the company data for analytics, and the false confidence provided in the name of private channels compromises ethics.
Google Ads
Google Ads, formally known as Google Adword, is an easy-to-set-up digital marketing tool that everyone with a google account is entitled to. Given the vast audiences using the services provided by the tech giant, Googe Ads can gather huge amounts of traffic that are more of an asset to a marketer than mere internet traffic. Google Ads also offers a lot of flexibility in terms of budget and can be easily integrated with the numerous digital services offered by the tech giant to enhance its efficiency. Google Ads works for any kind of business, small or large because the useability of the advertisement tool purely depends on the marketer'...