As a self-taught marketer, I understand what it is like to start digital marketing from the scratch, especially during your initial years when you got to keep your costs low and yet be highly efficient.
That is why, I made a quick checklist if you will, to help you nudge your marketing spirits in the right direction. I have compiled a list of free digital marketing tools that you can use to save some time and grow your business through digital marketing. Some of these I use very often- for my clients and for my website. Just feel free to sign up on these and play around as much you like.
Content Tools
For an error-free writing anywhere- on your email, social media, documents, or even WordPress, this is a very important tool that I personally use for free. While the paid version may add some more features, the free version is a great way to practice your writing skills with. When installed with the Chrome browser, you can use Grammarly anywhere you type online.
Google needs no introduction. I heavily invest my time in crafting blog posts on Google Docs for two reasons. One, I don’t have to worry about saving it on my desktop plus it acts as a backup if my website goes for a toss! Second, in addition to an integrated grammar and spell checker, this tool also works with Grammarly. So if you have a Grammarly extension installed on your browser, Google Docs is a very handy tool to use.
This one is one of my favorites and entertaining too. Just enter a topic and Portent will give you ideas for social or blog content. Use the idea generator to write blog posts, create memes, or even develop videos.
This tool is yet another my most sought after especially when you are starting out in the blogging world and it comes in handy especially if you need to learn what kind of topics do people generally ask on the Internet. This tool gives an insight into numerous questions that have been asked in the past.
If you have to look up trending content topics or real-time topics that are popular then use Google Trends. Available for free, you can also compare topics over the period of time to see how much they are in demand, has it been growing steadily or if it was just a fad.
This tool generates social and content ideas too. Just enter three nouns and it gives you weekly (free) and yearly (paid) topic ideas. That’s a lot of brainstorming ideas for you!.
Image Editors
Canva has always been indispensable for me. From creating basic social media posts using pre-built templates to making logos or even resizing the images to fit different social media platforms, Canva makes life so much easier. It has both free and paid versions. If you are just starting out and would want to get the feel of how this graphic designer tool really works, then sign up for free and get a feel for it. It uses a simple drag and drop method to create anything you want, along with pre-built templates, fonts, color palette, graphics, elements, images, illustrations, backgrounds, and so on.
Similar to canva but less pre-built templates to work with comparatively. You can edit, resize, play around, customize the images though PicMonkey. Its free version also offers a lot other features.
If you are into quotes like I am ( although I mainly use Canva) but look this one up in case you need a quick quote post made for your social media. The navigation is very easy and it is super quick without any distractions and the best part is the resizing of the quote as per Canva guidelines. You can choose quotes for Instagram stories or profile or facebook anything. Also no sign up is necessary, yay!
Vector Graphics
If you are into vector graphics and infographics then check out Inkscape. It is a free and open-source vector graphics software that allows you to craft a range of graphic design such as logo, icon, illustrator, web graphics, and so on. You can use this software on multiple platforms i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.
Available for a free trial for 7 days only, this tool is the industry-standard vector graphics software that is used by millions of designers and artists to create everything from gorgeous web and mobile graphics to logos, icons, book illustrations, product packaging, and billboards.
Images/ Photos
Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license. According to Wikipedia, this website claims over 207,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 17 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 2 million photos. There are 10 new photos added every day!
You can use all images for free, even for commercial use. All images are completely royalty free and licensed under the Pexels license. Use them for any project. Free sign up.
As the name suggests, find and download free stock photos – all free for personal and commercial use.
Social Media Schedulers
Buffer has free and paid versions, designed for the web and mobile, you can manage accounts in social networks, schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, as well as analyze their results and engage with their community.
Helps you schedule posts on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, suggests posts at the best times for engagement and if you are starting out it helps you grow your community faster. You can start with a free version and later upgrade.
You can create a post and schedule it to publish on your FB Page in the future. Scheduled posts can be created and edited by other admins and editors who help manage your Page. Keep in mind that all times for scheduling correspond to your current time zone.
Use this tool to manage your Instagram account. Schedule and manage your Instagram posts. Upload posts from your desktop, tablet, iPad or Android.
For 30 days you can try this social media management tool for free. It has integrations with over 35 social media platforms and also helps you analyze which ones are working best for you.
SEO
A very simple and easy tool to get thousands of keywords generated at a single click. Great guidance for SEO beginners.
Fairly new, but this tool by Neil Patel is a game-changer. I use this tool to check on the keywords that my competition is using so that I can have a better insight into how to rank on Google. You can also lookup content ideas and the search volume of a keyword. If you have a Gmail account, you can easily use some free features and get to learn how to optimize your content.
This is hands down, one of the most popular digital analytics software. It is Google’s free web analytics service that allows you to analyze in-depth detail about the visitors on your website. It provides valuable insights such as demographics, which content got more visits, which landing page worked the most etc that can help you to shape the success strategy of your business.
Email Management
ConvertKit is a full-featured email service provider (ESP) created by that offers customizable sign-up forms and landing pages to help bring in more email subscribers. I absolutely love working with this platform as it lets me create landing pages, takes care of my emails, and voila has a smooth integration with WordPress.org. Bonus- it is free until your first 100 subscribers!
For users with modest needs, Mailchimp offers a robust free plan. You can have up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails per month to one audience. While you won’t get all the bells and whistles of the paid plans, you still get other features such as audience dashboard, tags, segmentation, behavioral targeting, landing pages, FB and Instagram ads, and so on.
Hope these tools can help you save some time and get you started on digital marketing. What other tools have you used or are using currently to save time or be more efficient in promoting your business? Write to me in the comments below.
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