The internet offers many free tools and resources to help grow business online and you should take full advantage of it.
When you are a startup or a small business without a big marketing budget, you might think I just don’t have the means to do it. However, there are many awesome free tools and resources to help you grow online.
But you wonder why so many tools and resources?
Because digital marketing covers the entire spectrum of your online presence. From your website to your social media, how to get found or discovered on the search engines, through both paid and organic reaches.
So, need to cut down a big tree? As any experienced lumberjack would tell you, the first thing to do is sharpen your ax. In the same way, growing your business by increasing online sales requires that you use the best tools available on the market.
Here are our 12 awesome free tools and resources to help you grow online, starting today.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google. It allows you to track website activity of users, provides information on the source of the traffic, what device did they use to access your website, how long they stay, etc.
What this does is give you an in-depth and understanding of who exactly comes to your website. It tells you how they get there, why they may be leaving without taking the action you want them to take, whether that action is to make a purchase, book an appointment or a call, etc.
Although there are premium analytics tools out there, google analytics is just the best among all of them.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free Google Ads tool. It is one of the “Must-go-to” tools for advertisers, you can’t just do without it if you want to create high performing ad campaigns.
It can also be used for a search to predict what the search volume will be for any given keyword. This then helps marketers and business owners determine which keywords to optimize their websites and blogs on.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a tool created by Google to monitor what keywords and topics trend around the world. It is conceptually similar to the Keyword Planner. Where it differs substantially is that Google Trends is focused on the behavior of audiences at very specific points in time. Understanding these trends can help you create viral posts and campaigns.
Canva
Established in 2012, Canva is a simple to use drag and drop graphics editor. The tool gives access to more than a million photographs, graphics, and fonts, much of which are available for free. Hence, your one-stop tool to create everything from letterhead and business card design to social media fliers and posters.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media account management tool that makes it possible for users to schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. It goes further to evaluate their outcomes and interact with their community.
Use a tool like Buffer, and you won’t worry about finding the time to update your social media channels on a daily basis. Simply schedule all your posts ahead of time, and Buffer will publish them for you.
Evernote
Do you ever find yourself in need of taking notes, make lists, organize where you don’t have paper and pen? Bingo. Evernote as created to simplify that task for us. This application software makes it possible for users to create notes which can be formatted as text, web pages or web page exerts, photographs, voice memos or handwritten “ink” notes.
SocialMention.com
SocialMention is a social media search and analysis platform, it collects content obtained by users from all over the world into a single stream of data. Basically, this is a PR tool that helps you keep tabs on what people are saying about your company, which enables you to make quick responses to potentially damaging stories and capitalize on any marketing goodwill.
Buzzsumo.com
Buzzsumo is a tool that works somewhat similarly to Google Trends. It helps marketers figure out what topics are trending so that they can make similar content. The application also makes it possible for you to create keyword alerts so that you know whenever certain keywords are trending. Most importantly, you get to be able to keep track of what your competitors are doing.
Google Alerts
Designed by Google, Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service. Use it to receive alerts through email, whenever contents of your chosen topic have been published. And that includes web pages, newspaper articles, videos, blogs or scientific research that matches what the user searches for. In short, Google Alerts are email updates of the most recent Google results.
Grammarly
Poor grammar is one of the fastest ways to lose an audience, despite the content itself being valuable. If proofreading is not your strong suit, then you need a grammar checker, like Grammarly. Initially launched in July 2009, Grammarly has the capacity to apply over 250 grammar rules in evaluating and correcting your writing and comes with hundreds of checks and features.
MailChimp
MailChimp is a marketing automation website and an email marketing service. Use it to create contact forms, opt-in forms, newsletters and more. It is also very easy to integrate them into you’re your websites Additionally, it provides many sources and materials to aid users plan and succeed in their email marketing campaigns.
HubSpot Tools
HubSpot has to be one of my favorites. It is a complete marketing and sales tools suite that provides social media marketing, content management, web analytics, and search engine optimization to help you create and manage your digital marketing campaigns. This company is also one of the best digital marketing companies out there. I don’t know anybody there, nor have I been paid to say that, it is an honest assessment.
The best thing about these tools is that their free versions are just enough for even the most inexperienced digital marketer or small business owners. Although their premium versions always provide more features and could enable you to do more, you might just be able to run with their free versions.
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