Nowadays the tools to manage your online marketing campaigns are abundant, but how can you make sense of it all? Marketing tools expand every day, and it is hard to stay up to date with best free digital marketing tools. Will it be PPC, SEO, SEM or web analytics that will drive growth for your startup?
Your entrepreneurial journey is just beginning. As you find success, you’ll need to take your marketing efforts up a notch. When your Startup digital marketing, or perhaps even now, you will need to expand certain channels and begin others. Here are some of the most popular tools to help you do this.
SEMrush
Another staple SEO tool, SEMrush allows you to track the position of your priority keywords and likewise explore new terms to rank for.
The tool’s breakdown of keyword ideas, difficulty and variations are great for brainstorming content ideas and identifying search intent, too.
Unbounce
Unbounce is an amazing tool for quickly building, tweaking and publishing new landing pages to test. Built-in A/B testing and variant analytics can answer directly which creatives, calls-to-action and additional page elements are working (and which aren’t).
Even if you’re not much of a designer, you can use Unbounce’s proven landing page templates as a jumping-off point and then modify them to fit your style. The platform’s analytics spell out clearly which landing page variants are your top performers.
Optimizely
Emphasizing landing page experiments, Optimizely combines tools for visual creation and audience targeting to quickly run tests on different segments of your audience.
A no-code platform that allows you to test both major and minor edits to your pages, fine-tuning your site for performance doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking.
Hotjar
Hotjar’s platform provides a real-time visual record of your visitors’ actions and behaviors on-site.
Through heatmaps that clue you in on where people are (or aren’t) clicking. Synced to actual video recordings of your visitor’s journey, you can quite literally see what needs to be tweaked at a glance.
Clearbit
Using 100+ sources, including Salesforce and additional marketing platform data, Clearbit creates an up-to-date profile of your leads to make your outreach efforts go more smoothly. The details gathered include company, role and company size, just to name a few.
Rather than dig for details or rely on outdated information, the platform regularly updates itself every 30 days to ensure that your data stays fresh. This allows you to prospect with confidence and save serious time in the process.
Datanyze
Similar to Clearbit, Datanyze also uncovers crucial contact information about your on-site leads to fill out your digital rolodex. The platform also works brilliantly for prospecting on LinkedIn by pulling social data on decision-makers, too.
OptiMonk
OptiMonk’s platform allows businesses to grab the attention of customers and prevent them from bouncing through personalized pop-ups.
With an emphasis on lead capture and exit intent messages, the platform’s behavior-based targeting means that your pop-ups don’t have to be disruptive.
For example, OptiMonk encourages users to segment their marketing messages and serve them only when they make sense. From returning buyers to first-time window shoppers, the platform empowers you to create campaigns that speak to all of your customers rather than treat them as one-size-fits-all.
The upside of OptiMonk is that it’s known for its ease of use. Boasting a ton of templates with established average click-through rates, brands can customize their messages based on pop-ups that are proven to be effective.
Typeform
Typeform is a sleek tool for marketers looking to create attractive, minimalist forms.
Unlike more traditional pop-ups, Typeform’s intake forms are seriously stylish and don’t feel like ads at all. The platform’s simple editor and easy embeds are a nice added bonus, as is the ability to create quizzes and interactive forms.
MailMunch
A hybrid email marketing and landing page tool focused on list-building, MailMunch offers several engaging form types and emails to send to leads once they’ve opted-in.
The platform lets you segment your audience based on factors such as how often they buy and customer demographics. Additionally, their goal-based form-builder is straightforward and lets you work from a variety of templates.
Creatopy
Creatopy is a graphic creation tool akin to Canva, but emphasizes quite a few features specific to marketers.
For example, the platform’s design sets and brand kits allow you to seamlessly work with fellow marketers and keep your brand creatives organized. This is particularly useful for agencies managing multiple clients or social accounts.
Meanwhile, the ability to edit the same design within multiple formats (think: desktop banner versus mobile) in a single click is a huge time-saver.
Visme
Visme’s platform is focused primarily on creating presentations and data visualization.
Because infographics and fresh data are among the most-shared types of content on social media, Visme is ideal for anyone frequently publishing research to platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn.
Beyond straight-up graphic creation, the platform lets you pull data from external sources (think: spreadsheets) to make presentation creation a snap.
Venngage
Venngage is another graphic creator with an emphasis on infographics. With spreadsheet imports and hundreds of chart configurations, you can customize your infographics however you want. Customize any infographics based on your branding with tons of built-in graphics to choose from.
MailChimp
Get this: email marketing is used by eight out of ten marketers.
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With more than 12 million customers, MailChimp has claimed its spot as one of the top email marketing providers and digital marketing tools in the world.
While there are alternatives, this tool remains one of the best, for many reasons:
- History dating back to 2001, well before most companies began using email marketing
- Self-service support options, ensuring that you can quickly find answers to all of your questions
- Free plan for those with less than 2,000 subscribers and those who don’t send more than 12,000 emails per month
When starting a business, it’s not likely that you will have more than 2,000 subscribers. For this reason, you can get started with MailChimp early using the tool for free as you get your feet wet with email marketing and then move to a paid plan as you scale.
HubSpot
When it comes to marketing, sales, and CRM software, HubSpot has become one of the top players.
For the sake of this post, let’s focus on its marketing software solutions. The company has this to say about this digital marketing tool:
From attracting visitors to closing customers, HubSpot brings your entire marketing funnel together.
You know just how important it is for your marketing funnel to be in good working order. With this software, you have access to tools that help with:
- blogging
- SEO
- social Media
- website
- lead management
- landing pages
- calls-to-action
- marketing automation
- analytics
There is no stone left unturned, when you rely on HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software.That’s why it’s a top choice for those who are starting a business.
With everything you need in one place, you don’t have to pull yourself in many different directions. This will help you to find success in the early days and help you as you grow.
MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a must-have chat marketing automation tool that gives customers a way to chat with you, and you with them automatically.
With 75% of customers reporting that chatting or texting with a business is a better way to connect than email or phone, getting your customer chat up and running can’t be ignored by any business.
MobileMonkey is a great choice for marketing and support because it connects to all your customers’ favorite messaging channels including:
- Instagram DMs
- SMS text messaging
- Live chat
- Facebook Messenger
With MobileMonkey, everything you need for customer chat from Instagram marketing tools to Facebook messaging lead ads to live chat is available in a single platform.
Not only can you use one inbox to view and respond to the incoming messages from all your messaging accounts, MobileMonkey makes it easy to set up automations to respond, collect lead info, and send leads straight into your other marketing systems.
I’m using MobileMonkey Instagram marketing tools to automatically reply to Instagram post comments and story mentions. It improves my Instagram engagement rate and boosts my content reach to gain more followers.
Trello
Trello is a digital marketing tool that helps you to manage projects and stay on the same page as your team–a sound digital marketing practice if you want to save time and frustration.
For example, you can share blog posts on Trello before you publish them. This gives others on your team the opportunity to review the post, weigh in with their thoughts and make changes that could strengthen the piece before it goes live.
In the past, before the days of Trello and similar programs, email was the best way to collaborate with your team. While this is still helpful, to a certain degree, it can lead to confusion, missed messages, and frustration.
With Trello, everything related to your online marketing strategy can be shared in the same place. It only takes a few minutes to set up a board. Even better, you can quickly invite your entire staff, all of whom can jump in on the action without delay.
Trello isn’t the only digital marketing tool of its kind, but it’s, by far, one of the best. When it comes to collaborating with others regarding marketing tasks, this tool is hard to beat.
Hootsuite
Social media plays a big part in the success of any company, regardless of size, age, or industry. In fact, I’d argue that social media marketing is a must to thrive in this digital era.
Digital marketing tools like Hootsuite allow you to schedule social media posts in advance, thus saving you loads of time.
Hootsuite offers tons of features to help you grow your business. For example, you can:
- Identify influencers for your marketing team and leads for your sales team
- Reply to comments and mentions through the dashboard–there’s no reason to visit each individual platform
- Take advantage of pre-written responses
- Schedule posts when your audience is most active (even if you’re asleep!)
Social media marketing is not as difficult as it sounds, especially when you rely on tools like Hootsuite. With this particular tool, you can schedule and manage social media profiles for more than 30 platforms.
Imagine doing this by hand, without a central dashboard to guide you. It would be enough to frustrate even the most experienced entrepreneur, let alone a new business owner. Let Hootsuite take over like the social media marketing manager it is.
Google Analytics
As one of the top free tools from Google, Analytics should be part of your digital marketing strategy from the very start. In fact, I’d argue it’s one of the most powerful digital marketing tools out there.
It only takes a couple of minutes to add the Analytics code to your website, giving you the ability to track every action by every visitor.
This is considered by many to be nothing more than a traffic tool, but it can actually have a big impact on your marketing strategy, if you know what you’re doing.
Take, for example, the ability to see where your traffic comes from:
Maybe you realize that a particular social media campaign is driving tons of traffic to your website. With this data, you can adjust your future strategy, in an attempt to capture the same results.
Or, maybe you find that a particular set of keywords is doing wonders for your organic traffic. Again, you can turn your attention to these keywords, ensuring that you keep these in mind as you create content down the road.
Google Analytics isn’t one of those digital marketing tools you can ignore. Installing this early on is a key decision, in regards to your digital marketing strategy. The data you can collect is extremely valuable.
Sprout Social
Hey, you can’t blame us for putting ourselves on the top of the list!
That’s because Sprout Social is the ultimate control center for any business looking to translate its social presence into actual results.
As a social media management platform, Sprout helps businesses organize their content calendar and assets in one place. This allows you to publish and schedule your content across multiple platforms, all timed to perfection based on when your followers are most active.
Beyond social media management features, Sprout makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues and customers alike. Our Smart Inbox gives you a bird’s-eye view of all of your social messages so you can respond thoughtfully and in a timely manner.
Oh, and don’t forget about Sprout’s full suite of social analytics.
Optimizing your content’s performance doesn’t have to be a guessing game as Sprout identifies your top-performing posts and the success of your social campaigns. Coupled with robust social listening features, you can uncover trends, hashtags and opportunities to engage with new customers.
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.
Audiense
We’ve talked time and time again about the importance of social listening for identifying trends and potential customers.
Tools like Audiense take listening to the next level by helping companies both identify and segment their social media audiences. Doing so makes it easier to run laser-targeted ad campaigns and likewise dive deeper into your customer personas. Digging into demographics, personality straights and beyond, you’d be surprised at what you can learn from social alone.
Audiense’s platform focuses primarily on Twitter, making it great for B2B brands interested in prospecting and B2C companies looking to understand more about their target audience.
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.
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.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the gold standard when it comes to brainstorming keyword ideas and opportunities to rank.
The platform’s site explorer lets you check any URL’s top organic keywords, while also estimating how much traffic a competitor receives for any given search term. You can also identify a site’s top-performing content and sources of backlinks.
In short, Ahrefs is a fantastic tool not only for competitive analysis but also for making sure that your existing content is up to snuff for search.
Clearscope
Now, let’s say you’re interested in capitalizing on keyword opportunities and optimizing your existing content. That’s where Clearscope comes in.
Particularly useful for content writing, the platform provides a detailed editor to recommend keywords, headers and readability to help you write (or rewrite) high-ranking, well-balanced blog posts.
Whether you’re creating a content strategy from scratch or refreshing your existing blogs, Clearscope covers every nook and cranny of search optimization.
Conclusion
When it comes to digital marketing especially for a startup, cost is a factor. Therefore, you need to find a way to create a marketing plan that cuts your expenses as much as possible yet produces effective results. Digital marketing tools are essential because they provide free ways that you can even effectively increase ROI as well as speed up your growth as a startup.