In a Nutshell
pros
- Excellent website builder and design features
- Email and social management tools
- SEO and analytics wizard
cons
- Customization is not as deep as competitors
- SEO not available with basic plan
GoDaddy Marketing Tools at a Glance
Best for: SMBs
Key uses: Email marketing, SEO, social media management, analytics
Price: From $10 per month
Free trial: 1-month free trial
SEO
SEO is the cornerstone of all marketing campaigns, and GoDaddy has tools to streamline your search engine optimization efforts. It’s got all of the regulars like tags and keyword suggestions to boost your search rankings, but GoDaddy digs a lot deeper. You’ll also get tools to track your rankings in the SERPs and sitemap submission.
But the best part of this feature is that it’s an SEO wizard. GoDaddy analyzes your site and then walks you through every step of the SEO optimization process, so you know what’s going on, why it’s made the suggestions it’s made, and how it will improve your search rankings on the big engines. It’s very comprehensive and breaks things down so that anyone can understand it.
And since no marketing campaign would be complete without it, GoDaddy adds an analytics element into the mix as well. Called GoDaddy Insights, this unique tool works with anonymized data to give businesses a real-world ranking on how well their site is doing in the realms of online presence and marketing when compared to competitors.
GoDaddy then takes things one step further, offering a plan of action for what steps businesses should take next to improve their rankings. This is pure gold for marketers and one of the best tools of its kind in the industry.
Email Marketing
Another important marketing angle is email, and GoDaddy has you covered on this front. The system is designed so that you can easily and quickly create and track emails, and there are plenty of tools, including clickable buttons, authentication tools (protects against spam), and an entire gallery of high-quality stock images you can use within your emails. GoDaddy also offers custom reporting, so you can see which emails were opened, clicked, and shared by your leads/customers.
GoDaddy starts you off by providing a signup form builder to catch leads as soon as they come to your website. Then, you can use features like the HTML email creator, ready-made email templates, and themes to quickly design your emails and messages. Designs are all responsive, so they’ll look good on any device. You can turn your blog posts into email newsletters, set up event-triggered email responses, and schedule special events or promotion emails.
Social Media Marketing
The final leg of the marketing trifecta, social media integration, is a must-have for businesses today. GoDaddy lets you integrate with social media accounts, put up posts, and even schedule posts for the future. You can also respond to the customer reviews left on your social media channels directly from your GoDaddy website, a convenient way to stay connected to your customers. Currently, GoDaddy lets you sync websites with Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, and Google My Business accounts.
Website Design
As one of the biggest website hosting platforms in the industry, it wasn’t a far leap for GoDaddy to add a website builder and design element to its list of offerings. And it’s really gone all the way with this one. GoDaddy has pre-made themes for a quick design start and dozens of theme filters, so you can customize things to look however you want. And the click-and-drag editor makes it easy to reorganize your pages.
The Site Makeover feature is a great way for businesses to quickly see what their content will look like with all of the templates at a glance (instead of clicking on each template, adding the content, and previewing, you can use this tool to see how content looks on all the templates at once).
GoDaddy also has a lot of elements that you can add to your website design for added value. Things like promo banners for special events, members-only pages for exclusivity, and drop-down menus for better organization are small but important pieces of your marketing strategy. So, it’s great that GoDaddy includes them since not all website builders will.
Content Management System
If your site is going to be more professional or content-heavy, GoDaddy has a separate WordPress website plan for a full content management system. The tool includes a convenient Quick-Start Wizard for easy launching, responsive designs, and SEO tools bundled into it. You can get unlimited storage with the upper plans, free business email, and automatic daily malware scans (a nice touch).
Chatbot and Live Chat Software
GoDaddy has live chat software integration. What’s more, the service has a really easy tutorial to teach you how to set up your live chat software to show up on your webpages. You can integrate with popular live chat software brands like Pure Chat, LiveChat, and ArtiBot by just cutting and pasting the HTML code into your website’s backend.
Pricing
One of the reasons people love using GoDaddy for hosting and website building is because it’s so affordable. The trend continues with its Website+Marketing tool. GoDaddy offers three basic plans and a WordPress plan if you need something even more advanced. Here’s what you can expect from these plans:
The Basic Plan comes with an SSL certificate, custom domain name, mobile-friendly site, on-the-go editing, PayPal button, and GoDaddy InSights. You can list only one social media platform, though, use five responses per month, and send out 100 emails per month. This is good for really small businesses that want an online presence.
The Standard Plan offers everything from the Basic Plan plus SEO tools. It also increases your social media listing platforms to three, posts and responses to 20 per month, and emails to 500 per month.
Finally, the Premium Plan includes everything we already mentioned plus unlimited social media listing platforms, unlimited social posts and responses, and up to 5,000 email sends monthly. For $20, GoDaddy packs a ton into this plan. What's really nice about this service is that it's an all-in-one package. You get all of the design aspects along with hosting and account management.
Customer Service
GoDaddy really excels at customer service. There's a tremendous knowledge base with every question and answer under the sun (well, almost) on the website. You can browse and locate answers to common questions. Alternatively, GoDaddy offers phone and live chat support that's manned by GoDaddy Guides (a catchy name for customer service reps). The really impressive part of it all is that help is available 24/7/365. So, you're never alone.
Bottom Line
According to the Senior Director of Product Management at GoDaddy, Heidi Gibson, the company aims to "empower businesses, helping them manage their entire presence online (by) centralizing the management." With the introduction of Website+Marketing, GoDaddy has done just that. Offering everything a business needs to create and stay on top of their online presence, GoDaddy delivers the marketing tools that you need to succeed. From fast email marketing to unique design elements, smart analytics, and responsive templates, GoDaddy has really outdone itself on this one.
