You may have known about the benefits of employing online marketing in your business for a long time now. But, there has always been a little question in your mind about the investment involved and the returns they could offer you. Like many of you, I also had the same doubts before taking up an online marketing course. And, I decided to find out if it was a false rumor that free marketing tools don’t work or whether they really did.
Marketing tools are usually costly or difficult to find. But when you’re in the market for tools, right now, it’s difficult to shop around when everything is costly. This why I decided to put together this list of free online marketing tools. These will be helpful when it comes to getting started with small businesses or blogs.
Buffer
It can take a lot of time and energy to stay on top of updating several social media accounts. With Buffer, you can manage posts for multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard.
With all of your social media consolidated in a single location you also get consolidated analytics so you know how your posts are performing across platforms. This makes it easy to see which types of content are doing well and which aren’t.
Price: Free plan for a single user with up to 3 social accounts; Pro plan is $15/mo., 7-day trial; Business plans start at $99/mo., 14-day trial
lemlist
lemlist is unique among our email marketing tools because the platform is primarily focused on deliverability. Emphasizing the best times to send your messages (and how often) for the sake of more opens and clicks, lemlist is awesome for optimizing your existing campaigns.
Rather than second-guessing your marketing pushes, lemlist can be an eye-opener in terms of how to warm up your list.
Additional features include personalization tools to make your outreach emails sound less spammy and follow-up email sequences to encourage more replies from cold prospects.
Moosend
Moosend is among the most user-friendly and affordable of our digital marketing tools, representing a surprisingly robust email solution for those just beginning to build their list.
Codeless campaigns, simple automations and easy-to-read reporting are all built into the platform. Paid users can also take advantage of landing page features, including mobile popups and countdown timers.
All in One SEO
Price: Starts free, paid plans start at $49.50/year
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is a top-rated plugin for WordPress websites, with over 2 million installations. The tool includes a variety of features designed to help you optimize your site and your content for search engines.
This tool provides an actionable checklist that helps you focus on fixing errors and making common adjustments to maximize click-through rates. Additionally, with AIOSEO, you can complete a whole-site audit, optimize pages for WooCommerce, and even improve your local SEO.
Proof
Price: Tiered pricing based on the volume of your website traffic, starting at $24/month
Proof connects to your CRM or website and uses social proof to boost conversions on your site. They implement social proof messaging (i.e. “25 people are viewing this post right now”), reviews, and videos geared towards targeted customers once they visit your site.
The popular Live Visitor Count and Hot Streak notification features boost customers’ perception of your brand, and lets prospects get a look at how other people respond to your product. Additionally, it’s super easy to install — you just copy and paste their pixels into your site.
You can identify your visitors and examine their journey throughout your site, which can help optimize your site design for higher conversions. It integrates with an impressive amount of other software systems and is optimized for mobile.
Tailwind
Tailwind is a super simple yet supremely powerful content scheduling solution for Pinterest and Instagram. You can use it to save time with bulk image upload, really easy drag and drop calendar, multi-board pinning and pin looping, hashtag lists, and more. Plus, you can automatically optimize your Pinterest and Instagram schedules based on when your audience is most engaged.
Tailwind also comes with analytics so you’re never left wondering if your content is reaching the right people and getting a response!
You can try it for free, no credit card required.
Google Ads Editor
If you work on large campaigns or multiple campaigns in Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) on a regular basis, you’ll need Google Ads Editor.
The recently redesigned interface makes working in Google Ads Editor much easier, and the new suite of tools has almost everything a PPC marketer needs for bulk editing. Essential.
Cost: FREE
SendGrid
SendGrid offers a full suite of email marketing services, many of which are totally friendly to novices and email veterans alike.
For example, the platform offers flexible design options via visual, drag-and-drop editing, coding or a combination of both. In-depth deliverability and performance analytics are also built into SendGrid, cluing marketers in on which messages are performing and what needs work.
We know: there are more email marketing solutions out there than we can count. That said, a big upside of SendGrid is the forever-free plan for up-and-coming businesses as well as scalable pricing that matches your needs as you grow your list.
HubSpot Marketing
Price: Free to $3,200/month for enterprises, depending on your plan
HubSpot has several tools to help you grow your business, no matter what stage you’re at.
Starting out, there are several tools available for free. You can set up web forms, popup forms, and live chat software for lead capture. Then, you can send email marketing campaigns, pipe all of your data into the free CRM, and analyze site visitors’ behavior.
When you expand into the paid tiers, things get really sophisticated with advanced marketing automation.
From managing your content and social media to tracking emails and connecting with your leads, HubSpot is an all-in-one solution — although it works well with other point solutions you may use (Typeform, HotJar, etc.).
Ultimately, the tool allows you to:
- Grow your traffic, convert leads, and prove ROI for your inbound marketing campaigns.
- Shorten deal cycles and increase close rates with the provided sales tools.
Mention
Monitoring your social media presence can be a challenge if you don’t have a way to automate and streamline the process. This is where Mention comes in.
This tool gives you online media monitoring, social media listening, competitive analysis, brand management, and social media management.
Price: Free plan available; paid plans start at $25/month.
Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner is a similarly essential tool. Although you need a Google Ads account to use it, the Keyword Planner isn’t just for PPC; it can help identify a wide range of keywords and associated data for uses in your Google Ads campaigns as well as content marketing and SEO.
Cost: FREE
Loomly
Loomly’s self-described “brand success platform” is a tool that’s ideal for smaller social teams looking to organize and collaborate on content.
Built-in calendars, deadlines and workflows make both scheduling and brainstorming content a breeze. As an added bonus, Loomly actually curates fresh content ideas for users based on trending topics and Twitter conversations.
The clean, no-frills interface is easy to navigate and friendly to users who might not be the most tech-savvy. The affordability of the platform is enticing for solo businesses and smaller agencies looking to wrangle their social presence.
Ahrefs
Price: Tiered pricing, ranging from $99 to $399
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool to help you punch up your website traffic. They have data for around 150 million keywords in the U.S., and even more for 150 other countries.
Ahrefs is great for competitive analysis, allowing you to check out who is linking to your competitors, what their top pages are, and more. You can see where their content ranks and, using the Content Gap tool, identify key weaknesses for your content areas.
The Top Pages tool lets you see which pages get the most traffic, and you can see the amount of traffic going to competitors’ sites.
Ahrefs is one of my favorite SEO tools. It constantly impresses me with features I use daily, and I learn about new features all the time. It’s easily the most robust product in this space.
Conclusion:
You may be wondering whether online marketing tools are helpful and what their benefits are for marketers. The truth is that you can use a handful of free online marketing tools to boost your affiliate and content marketing campaigns and save money and time.