7 Chrome Extensions Every Digital Marketer Should Know (Plus a Bonus Rec)

Update: This post was updated in October 2020.

If you’re a digital marketer like me, then you are always looking for ways to optimize – not just your conversion rates, but also your work pace!

As Conversion Optimization Manager in Outbrain’s growth marketing team, my job is to understand what makes people tick. Or, more specifically, what makes people click.

On the surface, it seems simple. If someone is interested in your product or service, they will eventually get in touch, or make the next move to become a fully fledged lead, right?

Not so fast. In the real world, conversions are challenging, and I spend every day digging deeper into the metrics, to try and understand why people behave the way they do online. What will get more conversions? A small tweak of a visual? Altering the functionality? A new headline?

To find the answers to these questions, there’s one thing you’ll need to do, and often.

Testing. Lots and lots of testing. To help you, I’ve chosen 7 Chrome extensions that I use on a daily basis to help me better understand the journey Outbrain customers take on our website. I hope they will help boost your conversions too. Check them out:

1. Loom
2. Zest
3. Quora Marketing Tool – Q-Stats
4. Grammarly
5. Podcastle AI
6. Eye Dropper
7. Save to Pocket
8. Bonus Rec: Outbrain Pixel Tracker

#1 Loom

Awesomeness score: 10.0

At the end of the day, a large part of successful marketing is personalization and human contact.

Loom is a fantastic extension that lets you easily record yourself and your screen to deliver a compelling video message.

I use Loom a lot for email marketing, and I’ve seen CTRs improve by 40%. You can use it for sales and onboarding too!

#2 Zest

Awesomeness score: 9.5

Before launching any new feature or product, research is a must. What could be better than discovering relevant content, specifically recommended by marketers for marketers?

If Zest is new to you, you’re totally going to thank me for recommending it. Consider yourself warned: you will need to limit the time you spend on this extension during work hours because this thing is addictive!

#3 Quora Marketing Tool – Q-Stats

Awesomeness score: 9.5

If you are running ad campaigns or any sort of marketing on Quora, then Quora Marketing Tool is a must-have extension. It gives you deep insights into consumer traffic on Q&A sites, in real time, so you can get placed in conversations happening now to boost exposure for your brand.

Forget about sifting through hundreds of questions trying to decide where to jump in. The Q-Stats algorithm works out the most worthwhile questions and ranks them for you. Big like! 

#4 Grammarly

Awesomeness score: 9.0

If AB testing improves your performance marketing, then Grammarly does it for your writing skills. English is not my native language, so I sometimes need a little (or a lot!) of help.

With Grammarly, I can churn out well-written marketing emails and more. For native speakers like yourself, Grammarly will bring you much closer to being a perfect writer.

To see how this tool works, you try using this free grammar checking tool on Grammarly’s website.

#5 Podcastle AI

Awesomeness score: 9.0

Podcasts are fast becoming one of the most popular forms of media, and as a CRO manager, that’s not something I can ignore. With Podcastle AI, you can turn any article or blog post into an audio podcast in an instant. And with text-to-speech conversion based on machine learning, the podcast mimics human speech and sounds pretty natural. It’s a great tool for me to create audio from articles that I don’t have time to read, so I keep up with the latest marketing news (and plenty of other stuff too). Less reading, more listening!

#6 Eye Dropper

Awesomeness score: 8.5

This is one of my regular go-to extensions, and I’ve been using it for years. Pick any color on the web and get its code number to use on Photoshop or Canva. For those times when you need to do a quick design or tell your designer which color to use, EyeDropper is the tool for you.

#7 Save to Pocket

Awesomeness score: 8.0

So much great content to read, so little time! If you want to save something for later, this is a great extension. You can save any web page to read another time, also on your phone or tablet, even without an internet connection.

I dedicate 2 hours every day to my ‘pocketed’ content, and it truly inspires my work. The only problem? Too many saves!

#8 Bonus recommendation: Outbrain Pixel Tracker

At Outbrain, making campaign success for our customers is the name of the game. That’s why we offer the Outbrain Pixel Tracker extension. If your Outbrain native ad campaigns don’t seem to be getting the conversions you want, you can easily test and troubleshoot your Outbrain pixel with the help of this handy extension. 

As for the awesomeness score? A 10 of course!

So there you have it.

Seven Chrome extensions that help me crush my KPIs. There are so many extensions out there, but these are the ones I turn to, day in, day out, to boost my own efficiency.

Here’s a quick recap:

1. Loom: Snappy video recorder makes great videos fast
2. Zest: Marketing content recommended by marketers
3. Quora Marketing Tool – Q-Stats: Optimize your Quora strategy in real time
4. Grammarly: Polished prose is so important!
5. Podcastle AI: Turn articles into podcasts that mimic human speech.
6. Eye Dropper: Get the code number for any color on the web
7. Save to Pocket: All the content you want to read later – saved!
8. Bonus – Outbrain Pixel Tracker: Test and troubleshoot your Outbrain pixel and get more conversions from your campaigns.

Which Chrome extensions are your favorites? Let me know in the comments!