Whether you work at a digital marketing company or in-house at a local dealership, the right tools make an automotive marketer‘s job much, much easier.
From automating small, tedious content and social media tasks to organizing complicated SEO campaigns, these are the tools every digital marketer should have in their tool belt to save time and get better results.
WhiteSpark Local Citation Finder
If you’re jumping into the crazy world of local SEO, citations are going to be your biggest problem child (unless you’re a brand new dealership). Finding the [potential] hundreds of listings out there for your dealership is the most frustrating part, as manual searches never seem to turn up all of the results that are really out there.
Discovering WhiteSpark’s Local Citation Finder, however, will be a giant relief for those of you who have spent countless hours recording listings with of your business’s information in spreadsheets.
Because not only does it save you the time of finding the sources of misinformation, it allows you to discover new citation opportunities and lets you see how your citation profile compares to your competition.
If you want to make progress in local SEO, this is a must-use tool.
Pricing: $20-$100/month
Raven Tools
For managing everything from analytics to SEO research, Raven Tools is a huge timesaver if your company or dealership needs an all-in-one tool. You can track Google Analytics, site performance metrics, and email without having to go from service to service.
The ability to manage keywords, rankings, and check up on competitors are a few of the other features most dealers will appreciate.
For a single dealership, you might not need all of the bells and whistles or convenience, but agencies and dealership groups will wonder how they ever got anything done before using it.
Pricing: $99-$249/month
Link Prospector from Citation Labs
One of the most difficult parts about linkbuilding is actually finding relevant sites to target for outreach.
Whether you’re looking to do guest posting, citation building, or just want to find automotive-related sites worth targeting, Citations Labs’ Link Prospector is a fast way to do research so you can spend more time on getting results.
Using a group of keywords, Link Prospector generates a large list of sites that are known for accepting the types of opportunities you’re seeking.
The tool doesn’t always get it right, so you will need to manually search each site to ensure relevancy and find contact information, but it’s still a huge time saver.
Pricing: Pay as you go – $2/search
BuzzStream
While finding prospects is the start of your linkbuilding efforts, organizing your outreach can be hard at times. If you’ve got a small operation, a simple spreadsheet may work, but if you want to take your outreach to the next level, a tool like BuzzStream is an absolute necessity.
Think of it as a CRM for linkbuilding. You can add all sorts of information about your outreach targets, such as contact profiles, site metrics, and even email templates.
It requires a lot of upkeep, but if you want to take linkbuilding seriously, this is the tool to help you achieve your goals.
Pricing: $19-$249/month
Hootsuite
One of the first and most popular tools for managing social media accounts, Hootsuite is a must-use for automotive marketing professionals who manage multiple personal accounts.
Whether you just want to keep up with Twitter or need to schedule posts across multiple sites, Hootsuite does it and does it well.
Pricing: Free with premium plan options (prices vary)
Buffer
While very similar to Hootsuite, Buffer offers a truly simple solution for automotive marketers who manage a lot of dealership social media accounts and need to make sure they’re all regularly updated.
One of my favorite features is the ability to let Buffer handle the scheduling for you. If you’re unsure about the right times to post your content, that’s a huge time saver.
There’s nothing that really separates Buffer from Hootsuite, or other competing tools, in terms of pure features, but it’s a simple experience that works. And for social media professionals jumbling a million and one tasks, that’s a must!
Pricing: Free (personal plan) or $50-$250/month for business plan
BuzzSumo
Content is a big investment for any business, and coming up with ideas can often be a long, tiring process for content managers and writers.
BuzzSumo helps save time during the idea generation process by connecting your team with relevant, fresh ideas for content. It allows you to see what’s popular in your niche, what’s trending on certain sites, and see what topics are getting the most engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Pricing: Free, with pro plans from $99-$500/month
While there are certainly more tools out there for automotive marketers to take advantage of, these seven tools will help you cover more than enough bases to succeed in any market!
Have a tool you’d like to suggest we add to this list, or think there’s one that can beat one we’ve already listed? Tweet @Wikimotive, @TheErinRyan, or @markfrost and let’s start a debate!