How to Pick the Right Plugins for Your Marketing Blog

WordPress remains the favorite platform for creators in every industry, marketing included. This seamless and function-packed digital toolbox helps you publish content regularly and position your brand to boost visibility and engagement.

No matter if you have an entire marketing business posting articles on your blog, or if you’re running a separate creative outlet to share your marketing expertise, WordPress is the way to go!

But the popularity of WordPress has also inspired the creation of so many themes as well as plugins to let you customize your brand experience. Choosing them can seem like a hassle when you’re not sure which functionalities you need for your marketing blog.

So, to make the process easier on you, we’ve singled out a few of the most important and effective plugin categories to make your blog one of the best marketing blogs out there!

Start by choosing a quality theme to build upon

WordPress themes make it easy for bloggers to create and publish content. However, blog sites are different from the rest. Blogs need a modern, sleek layout and they need to provide a beautiful user experience.

Even the best plugins on the market can’t replace a poorly chosen theme. So, before you start adding a bunch of plugins to your site, make sure that your theme is flexible, versatile, and adapted to your needs.

User-friendly and clean, Amalie can set the stage for your blog’s success. This theme lets you give your marketing topics a humanized look and feel, all the while improving your image and authority.

Similarly, the Didi theme is perfect for content creators who want to gain undivided attention. It’s stylish and contemporary, allowing you to eliminate any cumbersome features from your pages. With themes such as these, it’s easy to build up your marketing blog with the right plugins.

Consider a customized core website

An alternative to WordPress themes, custom WordPress development allows you to create a blog site that is entirely tailor-made to your specific needs. It’s especially useful for professionals and agencies whose digital presence is more intricate and requires more original features and layout solutions.

Customization also lets you tweak your site to work with specific plugins. If you plan to post interactive content, demanding visuals, and diverse content formats, the custom approach is a good option for those with the right budget. That said, custom solutions still need plugins to work to their full capacity.

Go with free plugins for essential features

Every marketing blog depends on a few core features, and some of them can be added with free or premium plugins and apps. Depending on how much you’ve already spent on your blog, it’s prudent to consider free plugins for WordPress that can improve your site’s functionalities without breaking the bank.

For example, Google’s free analytics tools have their own dedicated plugins for WordPress. As a marketer, you know how crucial it is to keep an eye on your site’s metrics and performance. This is where the free Google Analytics plugin can help you monitor and improve your blog.

Then again, if you wish to organize online events and host workshops to help people master different marketing tactics, you need Google Calendar. The plugin is not just free, but a godsend for organization and time management for marketers.

Finally, if you’re using your blog to acquire clients, then using free CRM software allows you to organize your contacts and add details to each one of them. This is useful to help you create highly targeted campaigns for people on different levels of your conversion funnel.

Now, if you want to get premium WordPress plugins, get them while they’re on sale like Black Friday, at the very least. This helps you save money in the process and get the most out of the plugins.

Boost your lead gen game

Every blog is a powerful lead generation asset – if you know how to optimize it properly. Posting high-quality, value-driven articles is essential for capturing your audience’s interest. However, you should also use your blog as a way to inspire engagement and direct action from your readers.

As a highly intuitive platform, WordPress is simple enough to adapt to your own lead generation needs and preferences. Whether you want to prompt people to download your free e-book or subscribe to your newsletter, you can use a form-building plugin for lead generation on your site.

Such an addition to your site makes your job so much easier! You can create engaging forms that are easy to fill out and that nudge your site’s visitors in the right direction. Go with a plugin that doesn’t require any coding on your part to avoid any mishaps. This, in turn, helps you boost your traffic and convert more people without investing hours of your valuable time.

Make sure to choose the latest versions

Your website, just like the rest of your business, needs to be up to date and fully optimized to function properly. When you’re selecting your plugins, you should be mindful of how recently they’ve been developed and how optimized they are for performance.

Even more so, be sure that they are a good match for your business for the long haul. Some agencies and businesses go through legacy system modernization plans for website migrations and other upgrades well in advance. That means that when you’re choosing which plugins to invest in, especially the paid options, consider how well they will push your brand forward.

If you, too, wish to migrate your site to a newer platform or a better hosting solution to get rid of any obsolete features, go with modern and highly effective plugins that match your new systems. Will those plugins work in the new environment? Will they be able to perform properly without causing any delays and glitches? Get some answers before you invest.

Use a plugin to invoice customers

Chances are, once your blog gets enough traction, you’ll be able to use it for generating revenue, too. You can prompt people to purchase your exclusive content, sign up for your educational courses, or hire you for your services. Today, payments that enable these transactions need to be seamless and user-friendly.

Your WordPress site can absolutely be used to charge customers for products or services. Just make sure to integrate the right billing software with your site to make the process as straightforward as possible for your customers.

This integration should help you manage your financial transactions smoothly, which will help you boost conversions and inspire people to trust you. The built-in templates and the ability to automate certain steps give you more time to focus on your most crucial tasks. Overall, you should be able to keep track of your accounting and invoicing without issues, and a simple but secure plugin can make it happen.

Simplify surveys on your site

If anyone understands and truly values customer feedback, that would be marketers! You want to gain better insights into how your website visitors perceive your brand and your content. They are often happy to provide that feedback but lack the means to do so in a simple and no-fuss way.

To gauge your audience’s interest in your business, you can use versatile survey tools that help you create tailored surveys to collect specific information from customers. These online surveys should load quickly, be optimized for all devices (especially mobile), and above all, be secure.

Your customers want to know that their data cannot be abused in any way in order to feel inclined to share their views and information.

The plugin you choose for this particular feature should also give you clear-cut analytics so that you know how your campaigns are performing. That way, the tool won’t just give you the ability to ask for feedback, but also improve the actual feedback cycle in its entirety.

Don’t forget security

Finally, WordPress requires a variety of security precautions to help you keep your site safe from intruders and data leaks. This is where different security plugins can help you bar the proverbial gates and make sure that your sensitive business and customer information is out of reach.

Some plugins help you scan your site regularly, others prevent hackers from breaching your defenses, and some serve to keep spammers at bay. Enable security plugins that will monitor your site non-stop and provide optimal protection for the kind of interactions you plan to have.

Leverage automated updates whenever possible

The beauty of WordPress itself is that you regularly get updates that can bring extremely useful new features and bug fixes. One of the latest WordPress updates from 2020 included a new feature that made all developers and site admins happy – the ability to automate plugin and theme updates.

So, now that you’ve selected the most vital plugins that will drive your marketing blog’s success, you also need to ensure proper plugin maintenance. Check if you’re using the latest WordPress edition on your blog, and enable automatic plugin and theme updates to prevent any security-related issues.

Over to you

There you have it! Although every blog needs different features, marketers often have a few key requirements in common that we’ve covered here. From simplified site management, making sure your marketing presence is up to date, all the way to security, WordPress comes with many flexible additions you can activate to add value to your site.

If you’ve already built your marketing blog on WordPress, be it with the help of a theme or with a custom approach, these steps will help you select the most vital plugins for the success of your site. In case you’ve chosen some additional plugins, too, make sure to share them in the comments to help other bloggers improve their on-site experience, too!

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