Our Guide to Free Tools for Digital Marketers
We’ve all been marketers on a shoestring budget at least once. With COVID and the dramatic shifts in the marketing industry, we understand that every dollar saved could help. So whether you’re trying to get your marketing hustle on for the smallest investment possible or an agency looking to trim some operational costs – here is our list of free digital marketing tools. Curated and heavily used by our AMA PDX board members.
Website Content
WordPress
A popular blog, website builder, and content management platform. Straightforward blog interface with helpful plug-ins including Yoast for SEO. A great option for some experience with website building and management, not a streamlined or intuitive as drag-and-drop sites such as Squarespace.
Answer the Internet
Type in a topic you want to write about and Answer the Internet will provide a collection of ideas based on popular Internet queries. Great for establishing new pillars and developing long-tail keywords.
Website Maintenance
Pingdom
Never find out your website is down from customers again. Pingdom helps notify you when key pages are down with email or push messages ensuring you’re on top of any potential issues before they escalate. Essential on most days and potentially critical during key promotions or announcement periods such as Black Friday where every minute your site is down could mean thousands in lost sales.
Down for Everyone or Just Me?
Lets you know if you’re website is truly down for everyone or if it might just be a local problem.
ZeroSSL
ZeroSSL offers free 90 days for full domain protection and quick validation.
Analytics & Tracking
Google Analytics
From getting insights into where your site visitors are coming from to who actually engages with content or products, Google Analytics will digest a massive amount of information for you and your clients all for free.
Hotjar
Hotjar provides a suite of website user experience services including user heat mapping, polls, surveys, live chat features, and more. Marketers can leverage these to identify potential gaps in marketing campaign performance or content/messaging effectiveness.
Matomo
Privacy concerns have been raised about cloud-hosted solutions such as Google Analytics from businesses and consumers alike. For those who want more control over their data and privacy, Matomo’s On-Premise, self-hosted version is a good alternative to Google Analytics. Marketers who also need to stay GDPR or CCPA Compliant should also consider looking into Matomo as well.
SEO
Google Search Console
Google Search Console helps you find for what keywords your website is ranking, what URLs might have problems, and gives you an indication of what topics to focus on.
Many paid SEO tools are aggregating information pulled from these Google tools, and you can get a lot of SEO information right from the source. Besides Google Analytics these free Google Tools are what you need to set up your website for SEO.
Google Pagespeed Insights
Pagespeed Insights helps you find out what pages are slowing down your website – an integral part of SEO these days.
SEO Yoast
Generally used as a plugin on your website, Yoast SEO will analyze your webpage and offer SEO-rich recommendations to improve the content, metadata, etc.
Sistrix SERP Snippet Generator
This tool shows you how much space you are already using with your H1 and metta description and helps you to create the best possible snippet.
XML Sitemaps
Automatically generates a sitemap you can export for Google Search Console
Social Media
Mention Map
This Visualization Analytics Tool helps you see what you’re missing. Visualize and explore interactions, build critical relationships, and find out who is carrying out today’s conversations. Find new hashtags and followers that you might have missed otherwise.
TweetDeck
A customizable tool that allows you to manage and organize an unlimited number of Twitter accounts and keep track of Twitter lists, mentions, and lets you see multiple timelines in one place
Shared Count
SharedCount is a tool providing social URL analytics. You simply enter a URL to track shares, likes, tweets, and more
Hootsuite
Social media management platform that covers almost every aspect of a social media manager’s role. With just one platform you are able to do the simple stuff like curate cool content and schedule posts all the way up to managing team members and measuring ROI.
Later
Social media scheduler & link in Bio tool that helps you plan out your social media channels and turn your images into clickable, shoppable content with a custom link in bio. Available for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Alternative social media scheduling tools: Preview (Instagram)| Planoly (Instagram) | Buffer (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
Graphic Design & Stock Photos
Canva
A graphic design tool that allows you to create a variety of text and images for various documents, including social media posts, blog graphics, and infographics. It’s easy to use and is really helpful in creating graphics and layouts when you don’t have a lot of time or graphic design experience.
For streamlining the creation of your social media posts and graphics, Canva is your best bet.
Unsplash
Free stock photos with a blanket license. Giving a shout-out to the creator is optional but appreciated.
Pexels
Free stock photos and a great alternative to Shutterstock or iStock
Photo & Video Editing
Gimp
For those needing to dig in and customize images and graphics, Gimp is going to be your best bet as a Photoshop alternative.
Gimp can be used as a paint program, a photo retouching and editing program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, and an image format converter, among a number of other things.
InShot
Easy-to-use video editing app that also allows you to adjust photos and create collages. The easy-to-use features and tools are great for people who are just starting and love to edit their content on the go. The app is probably one of the most straightforward video editors available in the app stores.
Animoto
Easy-to-use website to create engaging videos (free and paid versions.
Email Marketing
MailChimp
MailChimp is an easy-to-use, beginner-friendly email marketing platform. There is a range of plans and features available, there’s even a free option for beginner email marketers. The interface is very user-friendly and it’s easy to create emails based on templates if you’re not sure where to start.
Collaboration & Project Management
Smart Sheet
SaaS offers collaboration and work management. It’s used to assign tasks, track project progress, manage calendars, share documents, and more.
Trello
Card-based project management tool. Great for at-a-glance project management and tracking to-do lists. In-app collaboration and file uploads help reduce emails.