As an entrepreneur, it is more important than ever for you to create an efficient marketing strategy. Because startups often have low budgets, finding the right marketing stack that covers the variety of different sectors within a marketing strategy is crucial. Today, it is possible for you to access these tools without spending a dime.
Below, I’ve put together a list of the top free digital marketing resources that will help you maximize your marketing efforts to achieve success.
Wincher allows you to track how your website is performing. From there, you can run these through SEMrush or Google Adwords Keyword Planner for a more thorough analysis of your chosen keywords. Both offer free digital marketing resources such as keyword search volumes, relating keywords, competitor analysis for chosen keywords, and projected costs for any future Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns. However, unlike SEMrush, the Keyword Planner allows you to search for a group of keywords at a time, and gives accurate suggestions for alternative keywords that may perform better for startups.
Tracking traffic and analyzing visitor behaviour on your site is crucial to understanding what attracts your target audience and what needs improving. Google Analytics gives you a monstrous amount of information on users that visit your website. With these tools you can track where your traffic is coming from, how long visitors are staying on your page, and even see who is on your page in real-time.
Internet entrepreneur and digital strategist, Abhilash Patel, says that, “Google Analytics is more than just a free tool, it is an essential part of your marketing strategy. If you aren’t using it to track your web traffic, you are missing out on some of the most important insights into your campaign.”
Other free analytics tools include Google Search Console and Google Trends, who offer slightly different features. All of these are based on analyzing different aspects of the traffic that reaches your website, where it’s coming from, and how deep it’s going into your page.
Human editors and spell checkers are still required, but are not enough from a marketing point of view. Grammarly automatically spell checks anything you write or publish in an internet browser. The application can be downloaded as an extension on your web browser and be used everywhere apart from Google Docs.
Staying “live” on social media to keep your audience engaged is key. But, as this is a full time job in itself, Buffer allows you to batch the social media marketing process by allowing you to do all your composing in one go, and schedule it for a later date. Users can also create campaigns and analyze their success.
Hootsuite and TweetDeck also offer free social media management plans, with slightly different options to Buffer.
Email marketing offers a more personalized interaction with your audience. This form of marketing gives you more control over moving your customers through the sales funnel naturally. The free GetResponce plan is one of the most prominent email marketing tools allowing you to try for one month free, scheduling them according to your past performance. You can then build tailored campaigns to help turn prospects to leads, and eventually, leads to sales.
CRM tools make it easy to grow and track your sales funnel. The software automatically manages your sales pipeline, documents all points of contact with your prospects and current clients, logs sales, and allows you to see everything about each lead in one place. This tells your sales team at what point of the buyer’s journey your leads are at, which in turn enables them to focus their efforts appropriately.
From developing a website or blog, to managing your leads, and connecting your entire team, there are a number of free digital marketing resources that make every aspect of creating an efficient strategy easier. By making the most of these free tools, you will be able to catapult your startup to success.
Murray Newlands
Murray Newlands is an entrepreneur, investor, business advisor and speaker. Newlands is the author of “Online Marketing: A User’s Manual” published by John Wiley & Sons. You can find him online at his blog MurrayN...
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