A well-made online marketing tool can help you take a project from good to great or understand why your efforts to reach people didn’t pan out. But there are so many great tools available today that it often seems daunting to find new ones.

Some Boommers recently attended the Social Media Masters Summit in Chicago, a day of learning from brand marketers on the cutting edge hosted by Digital Megaphone. We came away with some great new insights, as well as some helpful marketing tools.

Here are three of the best new-to-us online marketing tools we discovered, and why we think they’re awesome:

• SpyFu. What if you could shore up your own keyword strategy by sneaking a peek at the strategies of your competitors? The SpyFu tool enables you to do just that. When you enter a competitor’s web address, SpyFu returns key data points like the number of organic keywords they rank for, their AdWords history, and their top 10 keywords. You can drill down into specifics of your competitors’ SEO, backlinks, and keyword groups. You can also use SpyFu to research individual keywords and their history. If you’re looking to revitalize your SEO or understand what you need to do differently to keep up with others in your industry, you should take advantage of what SpyFu has to offer. (SpyFu is free for limited usage, and has pricing plans for unlimited usage.)
• YouTube Creator Playbook. Making a successful, engaging video often involves guesswork about who your audience is, what they’re looking for, and how you can communicate your message to them. YouTube has attempted to take some of the guesswork out of video production with its Creator Playbook, a comprehensive collection of best practices for every stage of creating and promoting your videos. Topics include building your channel strategy, writing great titles and tags for your videos, and captivating your audience. As the undisputed king of video, YouTube has a lot of knowledge to draw on, so it’s the perfect resource for video novices. If you’ve been looking to get into marketing videos but don’t know where to start, the Creator Playbook can point you in the right direction. And even if you’ve been creating videos for a while, its optimization section can help you reach a wider audience.
• Canva. Good design is becoming increasingly important for social media engagement, but it can also be time-consuming and difficult, especially for a small marketing team. Canva is a simple design tool that makes creating blog graphics, flyers and social images virtually painless. Choose from a wide variety of templates, images and fonts in the Canva database, then put them together using their drag and drop tool. You can also use Canva to collaborate with your team and clients. If you don’t have a lot of time for or expertise in design, Canva could be a lifesaver for you. It’s also a great way to create a graphic for a quick purpose, like a time-sensitive social media update. And best of all, it’s free!

Have you discovered any great online marketing tools lately? Let us know in the comments!