Hello fellow digital marketer! I am sure by now you are aware of how powerful free digital marketing tools can be. And I am sure you’ve also heard about the next big thing in the marketing world – And that is…! Yes…! Free marketing tools for small business.
Want to learn about free digital marketing tools? Or just about free marketing tools for small business? Check this blog.
Google Analytics
With a new business, it’s all about the numbers. How much traffic does your website generate? Where does the majority of that traffic come from? What are some key demographics of your target audience? All of these questions play a major role in the success of a startup, and tracking them is no easy feat. That’s where Google Analytics comes to play. Playing off their reputation for innovative and easy to use services, Google’s statistics tool is no exception. Users can view the countries their site has been seen in, the percentage differences in traffic drivers, and their key numbers, broken out by the day, week, month, or year. Best of all, Google Analytics uses clearly marked charts and graphs so that even the least tech savvy individual can feel confident with understanding their information.
EchoSign
Tired of filing cabinets full of loose documents that just keep mounting? EchoSign is the eco-friendly solution. Simply upload your documents onto the EchoSign server and send to the other party. With its E-sign capability, EchoSign makes signing contracts a hassle-free event, with no printer or scanner necessary. Simply type in your name and initials and EchoSign will save your signed documents on their server for you to reference whenever you need. Instead of throwing away hundreds of dollars on paper, printer ink, and a scanner, EchoSign saves you time, money, and work, all while creating an effort to improve our ecosystem.
DropBox
Who can relate to toting around a bag full of gadgets, because each one contains different documents? Dropbox is the multitasker’s savior, creating a virtual link between all of your Internet connected devices. Utilizing the cloud saving capability, users can save all of their images, documents, and video clips onto their Dropbox account, which can then be accessed from anywhere. Don’t worry about losing a document, or sending files that are too large. With Dropbox, you can easily share files to other users. Finally, one of the more unnoticed benefits to this file storage, Dropbox allows you to maintain organization for all of your files. Create personalized folders and save your documents accordingly; they’ll all be there when you land the next morning.
Wix
Wix has something for everyone. For those individuals who are less tech savvy and more design centered, Wix is a great resource for website and blog creation. With a “no coding” promise, Wix uses a drag and drop template so you can fully customize your site. If you change your company colors in a few months, Wix allows you to easily swap out your old template for an updated version. On the flip side, people with a stronger tech background can benefit from Wix’s newly launched market app, allowing users to mesh their personal apps onto the Wix platform. This is ideal for app creators, adding another potential marketplace for their product, as well as Wix users who will have access to a larger range of apps. With attractive perks like an online store setup, round the clock customer service, and easily trackable statistics, Wix makes website building seem like a walk in the park. The best part? Creating a Wix website is absolutely free.
Odesk
Starting a business often involves utilizing the skills of others. Without the means to hire fulltime staff, but with project deadlines looming, hiring a per-project contractor can be extremely beneficial. With no time to waste looking for that perfect candidate, Odesk streamlines the process for you. Take advantage of their huge database of contractors looking for work, and follow their step-by-step process to find the best fit for your company. Odesk profiles provide previous work experience, sample portfolio, and client reviews so that you can make an informed decision, and meet with only those candidates that would be a great asset to your team. You can then set up a virtual interview without even leaving your workspace, and easily assign your chosen candidate the project at hand. Odesk continues to aid you in the process with their tracking tool, allowing you to constantly watch your project’s performance, and make notes or additions along the way. Finally, don’t worry about the hassle of payment issues and dealing with bank paperwork. Odesk handles all of the transactions so that you can pay your contractor with ease, and enjoy your completed project, stress free.
OmniFocus
Starting a business is a challenging job, and one that calls for juggling numerous issues at a time. With so many projects and challenges on the table, it’s common for certain things to get overlooked. OmniFocus realizes the organizational challenges of the workplace, and has created an easy to navigate tool to help maintain a work/life balance. Their approach is three-pronged: capture, organize, and sync. OmniFocus starts by collecting all of your data, current to do lists, and anything that is on your mind. This could include stream of consciousness thoughts, or even just casual notes as they occur to you. Once all of this data is entered, it can easily be organized into a more proactive form, allowing for you to reach your goals in a clear and timely fashion. Finally, to avoid any crashing disasters, OmniFocus will sync all of your data onto their cloud server for you to reference from any location, at any time.
MailChimp
With a small business, it’s imperative to get the word out there about your service, product, or idea. Social media is one way to reach potential clients, but as for retaining them, MailChimp becomes a very useful tool. With easy to use templates and clearly marked filtered instructions, MailChimp helps you create email newsletters to distribute to your list of current contacts. Users without much tech or design experience can easily create a visually pleasing E-blast that will grab the reader’s attention and hold onto it. Sending these newsletters on a regular basis can help keep your current database undated on your new projects and can send a huge traffic flow to your website. MailChimp is a great tool for businesses of all sizes, to excite and entertain your current clientele.
Slack
Price: Tiered pricing, plans range from free to $12.50 per month
Slack is a collaborative messaging tool ideal for small teams. It runs “#channels”, which can be separated by topic so that important conversations on business topics aren’t interrupted by discussions on team bonding activities.
Themed slack groups are great for networking and sharing your new content with relevant, powerful players in your industry.
Slack is another online marketing tool that is simple to use, but ultimately offers some advanced features. For instance, since Slack’s developer network is so strong, you can likely find a Slack app for anything you want to accomplish.
It’s also not too difficult to build your own Slack apps — if you want to notify your teams of transactions, anomaly detection, or results from online experiments, building a Slack app might be a good solution for you.
Followerwonk
Price: Tiered pricing, from free to $79 per month
Followerwonk is designed to mine your Twitter Analytics, so if Twitter is one of your strongest platforms, this is likely a worthwhile investment.
You can find relevant Twitter accounts that you want to target, develop a content and posting strategy, and figure out your followers’ demographics to make sure you’re delivering quality content.
Optimizely
Price: Custom pricing
Optimizely is, at this point, the gold standard in online experimentation. If you’re doing conversion rate optimization (which you should be), this is the tool to consider.
Optimizely allows you to continuously run A/B tests and multivariate tests on your site to lift conversion rates and revenues. They’ve also expanded their feature set and run under the banner of “experiment everywhere”, empowering server-side product experiments and deep personalization capabilities.
Finally, with their acquisition of Experiment Engine, they have a powerful workflow and knowledge management solution to enable insight sharing and documentation.
It’s a pricey solution, so it’s best left for enterprise programs or those who are very serious about conversion optimization — but it’s a good one if you can afford it.
Convert.com
If you’re looking for an experimentation platform that is a bit more affordable, Convert.com is the way to go.
For most use cases, they’ve got feature parity with Optimizely. The vast majority of marketers will never reach the outer bounds of Convert’s feature-set, and it’s a more affordable option than Optimizely.
It’s also a joy to use. The user experience is great, and the performance is top-notch.
Sniply
Price: Tiered pricing, plans range from $29 per month to $299 per month
Sniply generates unique links to your content, so you can better track and analyze traffic sources. These links lead directly to your content and include a call-to-action on any page you need it.
Sniply also provides analytics so you can track visitors, bounce rate, conversions, or any other relevant data you might need.
Ultimately, these are my favorite online marketing tools essential for small businesses. From lead capture to SEO research to analytics, these tools are capable of helping you create a fully integrated and successful long-term marketing strategy. If you’re looking to get up and running with a simple but effective stack, these tools will help you get there.
Conclusion
In this post, I have listed down the best marketing tools for small business and digital marketing. These free marketing tools 2021 can be a real boost for a startup business, which cannot afford to invest a huge sum in digital marketing.