The digital marketing industry moves so quickly that if you aren’t staying on top of the trends, your company may be left behind. In today’s world, when digital has become the way so many people conduct business, if you aren’t already using a variety of tools to make sure your marketing efforts are reaching your target audience in a meaningful way that will translate into sales, then you may be losing out to your competitors. With so many websites, blogs, and social media sites devoted to marketing, there is no reason to wait another day to begin your online education.

Where Do Marketers Get Leads?

If you need to generate leads but you don’t know where to begin, there are many incredible online resources where you can learn to market like a pro. HubSpot offers a free tool called LeadIn that will show you the ins and outs of optimizing your business’s website. Another tool they give you access to that you should be using right now is their Website Grader, which you can use to evaluate your lead generation sources. Wistia’s Turnstile will allow you to add opt-in forms to the video content that you post on social media sites and blogs so that you can use them to increase your free trial conversions.

Analytics 101

There are many places you can go to learn everything you’ll need to know about online marketing. One of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use of these companies is Moz. They are an industry favorite where you can go to receive top-tier content that will teach you how to use the latest digital marketing trends to your advantage. There are many blogs you can follow that will also keep you up-to-date on your skills. One of these is Occam’s Razor, which is a blog kept by author and Google digital marketing “evangelist” Avinash Kaushik. His easy-to-understand analyses and explanations often really do demonstrate that the most obvious answer often is the correct one.

Best Free Resources

Many of the top resources do involve a fee, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great websites out there that won’t cost you a penny too use. Sites such as Google Analytics and WordPress, to name just two of many incredible free-of-charge options out there, are valuable tools that can teach you a lot about how you can reach your target audience and how you can use real-time analytics to your advantage. Resources like CrowdFire and Buffer will help you to analyze your social media interactions so you can fine-tune them for maximum effectiveness. If you don’t have a huge budget but you need to learn more about how to drive traffic and increase fan engagement, then these are the places to do it.

Your Data: Use It or Lose It

Maybe you won’t lose your business if you don’t understand marketing, but it certainly won’t help. With so many incredible sources of data available, and so many places you can learn how to use them, there is no reason any enterprising business owner needs to take that risk. You can gain incredible insight into your company that will translate into sales in no time. If you don’t know how to leverage your data, it’s time to begin researching how you can use the latest tools to take your business to the next level. Chances are, your competitors already have.

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