In February 2020, Chrome for Android and Chrome versions 79.0 and 80.0 accounted for nearly 60% of all web traffic, followed by Safari iPhone at 12.3%. Google Chrome is by and large the leading web browser, and it’s not surprising when you consider the convenience and functionality of Chrome Extensions.
The vast range of Chrome Extensions can be mind-boggling. Many extensions do share a common purpose, however, and that’s to make our lives easier. Luckily for digital marketers, many of these life-changing extensions are developed with our needs in mind. At OM Agency, we’ve been in the field for some time, and actually created our own Chrome extension to expedite one of our most frequent, tedious processes: writing code for custom Facebook event and Google Analytics event tracking.
We developed this extension to simplify one of our problems, and we use other extensions to streamline redundant tasks so we can spend our time on more strategic tasks. You might be familiar with a few of our go-to extensions, but if you’re not, we highly recommend taking a look!
Update: We’ve just launched a new Chrome extension! Click2CRM is a free productivity tool for sales professionals that simplifies the process of passing contact information into HubSpot. Manually recording and entering contact information into HubSpot is tedious, but with Click2CRM it’s as simple as setting up the extension, right-clicking an email, and letting Click2CRM do the rest!
Without further ado, here are OM Agency’s best Chrome extensions for digital marketers:
Ghostery
Ghostery, or any ad blocking extension, is a must for any human being on the internet. They don’t work on every platform, but they help make your web experience a little less distracting. Take note, ad blocking extensions like Ghostery can mess with Facebook Ads Manager and LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, so make sure you pause them if you plan to manage your ads.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere is an amazing tool for conducting keyword research. The extension is free and offers some great insight. Keyword metrics were recently locked behind a paywall to discourage bot spam, but the fee is nominal; you can get data on 100,000 keywords for only $10. You can toggle the extension on and off as needed to avoid using your credits when you’re searching for non-keyword related reasons.
MozBar
MozBar is a simple but indispensable tool for monitoring SEO. Moz offers a free and paid version of this extension, but we find the free version still has great features. When active, you can review page and domain authority within the bar,on-page elements, link metrics, and schema markup. There’s also an option to highlight on-page links based on whether they’re followed or no-followed and external or internal. The premium version offers other features, such as Page Optimization Score, so take a look if you’re interested!
LastPass
LastPass helps our team be much more efficient and productive. This service securely saves and stores passwords, as well as notes, addresses payment cards and bank accounts. It’s one of our go-to extensions when we bring a new member onto the team. It also allows you to share login credentials with others without actually sharing your password, so you don’t have to worry about your account security (or the embarrassing password you made when you were a teen that you still use to this day).
Event Code Builder (by OM)
We’d be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t mention our own Chrome extension. We created this extension to streamline the process of writing event-tracking code for Facebook and Google Analytics. We onboard a lot of clients, but typically once their event tracking is done, there isn’t much more to do with the code. When we come back to it, we have to take some time to remember how it’s done, which is tedious and inefficient.
Instead of spending time refreshing ourselves on the finer details of Google and Facebook event tracking, we (and you!) can now use our Chrome extension to easily generate custom Google Analytics and Facebook event tracking code. Stop doing all of your work in templates and get the Event Code Builder extension!
Click2CRM (by OM)
Our newest Chrome extension was born of necessity. We use several sales prospecting tools, but there are many times when we look deeper on a prospect’s website for more information or more contacts. Once we found those contacts, adding them to HubSpot was a tedious, time-consuming process. We tried to find a solution, but discovered there wasn’t a solution available, at least, not for free.
We took matters into our own hands and developed our newest Chrome extension, Click2CRM. It is a free sales tool that allows sales professionals (or anyone for that matter) to easily pull contact information from a website into their HubSpot account. You simply connect the extension to your HubSpot using the API available in their settings, and you’re ready to start collecting emails. Once connected, right-click on any email address and add any additional information such as Name, Phone Number, and Company. Then you click “Add to CRM” and the contact will be created in your account without ever switching tabs! Get the Click2CRM Chrome extension now and simplify your sales prospecting process.
Google Tag Assistant
Since we try to implement as much code as possible in Google Tag Manager, this tag makes our lives so much easier when we’re setting up a client’s GTM. It’s a quick and easy way to see which Google-branded tags are live on your site.
Facebook Pixel Helper
Much like Google Tag Assistant, Facebook Pixel Helper is another easy way to troubleshoot and analyze your site’s Facebook pixel and custom code. Again, another essential extension, especially if you’re running ads on Facebook.
UTM.io
Creating a URL with proper UTMs is essential to marketers. It makes attribution far easier, and is a relatively quick and painless process when you have a UTM creator like UTM.io. Simply paste in the URL you want to send traffic to and add in the UTM data you want to capture, such as campaign, medium, source, content, and term.
The extension will automatically populate your tracking URL, and you can then copy it and paste it wherever you need it! We’ve used other solutions in the past, like Excel formulas, but this is consistently the quickest and easiest way to create a tracking URL.
Screencastify
This extension is one of our favorites and has made our lives easier. It’s a very easy way to record tutorials for your team members or for clients, and you can even upload your recordings directly to Youtube or Google Drive in just a few clicks. We also use it to record videos for our Youtube channel and to send quick weekly reports to our clients.
The free version is somewhat limited. You can only record for 5 minutes at a time, and you can only record a certain amount of videos per month. We haven’t had an issue with the amount of videos, but we do feel somewhat limited by the 5 minute recording limit, so keep that in mind when you’re looking around!
ColorPick Eyedropper
As a marketer, you wear many hats, and sometimes you have to do some design work. One tool we’ve found indispensable is the Colorpick Eyedropper extension. This extension allows you to click anywhere in your browser, select a color, and easily find its hex code and RGB code.
If you’ve ever worked on a design asset for a client, be it a marketing email or their website, you may have found yourself digging into a brand folder (if it exists) or bugging your designer for the hex codes. You’ll save yourself time and expedite the process significantly by finding the color codes yourself with this extension.
Clear Cache
Sometimes when we make updates to a website, we don’t always see the changes. The quickest way to make sure you see the changes is to refresh your page, but this doesn’t always work. The next step is clearing your cache. Typically you’d have to go into your Chrome settings, click history, then follow several more steps to clear your cache. With the Clear Cache extension, you can clear your cache without leaving the page.
It’s just another way to streamline your processes and simplify your work.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a great way to make sure your writing is always at its best. We recommend Grammarly not just for marketing, but for anyone. With both free and paid options, Grammarly makes it much easier to say what you want in the best way possible.
Honey
Honey is another extension we recommend for just about anyone. Honey is an extension that collects online discounts from around the internet and compiles them into one service. Whenever you’re checking out online, Honey will pop up if it has any potential discount codes for you to try.
As an agency, we’re often responsible for purchasing software or services for our clients, as well as for ourselves. We’d be doing our clients and ourselves a disservice if we didn’t try to save a little where we can! Honey isn’t perfect, so don’t expect it to perform miracles, but at least give it a chance when you’re shopping online.
Got a favorite Chrome extension we didn’t mention? Let us know! We’re always looking for hidden gems to help us optimize our time and simplify our work. 🙂
