We listed great free marketing tools that all business owners need to use in 2021. Whether you need to ramp up your project management, marketing, email or a combination of all, this guide will send you to all the right places.
If you are seasoned business owner or your COVID entrepreneur this guide will give you a breakdown of all the tools you will need in 2021.
Free Marketing Tools By Category
Project/Customer Management
1) #Trello – Social distancing and remote work is something a lot of businesses were not prepared to handle. Trello is a great resource to keep track of projects, tasks, collaborate on content and your employees working remotely. You can create boards, notecards per topic and users can take notes, update project status and assign cards to each other. (Best part: Free depending on the amount of users)
2) #Hubspot – It’s a platform that includes marketing (emails), sales and customer service management (CRM). You can set up build out forms, email templates, basic analytics reports and utilize their CRM all for free! Say goodbye to excel spreadsheets and handwriting tracking sheets of customers and hello to the world of online CRM!
Social Media/ Email Marketing
Social media is a marketing tactic so many businesses are using. But many are making mistakes which is costing them money, reputation and simply not generating the results they want. Before you start to implement new marketing tools, make sure you are not making these 7 common social media mistakes.
3) #Mailchimp – Popular and easy to use email marketing tool which includes traffic tracking, email templates, campaigns, automation of emails, integrations and free for small companies! Email marketing should be part of any business and MailChimp is the perfect way to start.
4) Design Platforms: #Canva – Create amazing graphics for posters, social media, reports and much more. It has tons of free images, graphics, automation and templates that you can work off to make graphics look professional. Free for starting plan! Other amazing free marketing design platforms are: Pablo, Crello, Adobe Spark, Easil and Stencil.
5) #Hootsuite – Have you wondered how brands are posting content online almost like it’s scheduled? Well, it is and you can start to do the same with this easy to use platform. Hootsuite is a social media scheduling tool. Instead of spending time thinking, shooting and posting online every day, set aside 1 day a month and preplan all your content in advance. Free for starting plan!
Website Management/ Analytics
6) #WordPress or #Wix – If you’ve not yet got a business website, you could seriously be missing out on customers. Create a free website with WordPress (more digital savviness required) or Wix (definitely any easier drag & drop platform). Very affordable.
7) #Screamingfrog – This platform helps identify and flag issues with your website (URL/webpages) to improve your SEO. SEO is not simple or the fastest tactic to see results but it’s important, at least to utilize this platform to find broken links. Free for starting plan!
8) #Google Analytics – If you have a website, you have to have Google Analytics. Google allows you to track and analyze customer data through an easy to use platform. It’s important to learn about what your customers are interested in, look at the most and at what point do they convert (sale, contact, email entry, etc). Yes, it’s free!!
9) #Unbounce – Easy-to-use landing page builder. They have beautiful pre-designed templates that will allow you to get your pages up and running without the help of code or professional web design. Free 30-day trial, $49/month. Recommended for medium-larger businesses.
Other useful platforms:
10) Grammarly: Check spelling mistakes, awkward sentences, and embarrassing errors. (FREE)
11) Google Trends: I’ve posted about this before, Google pulls search data and showcasing trends among various areas and customer bases. (FREE)
12) SEM Rush: Website competitor research tool which pulls information on keywords, ranking and discover new competitors in your space. (FREE)
13)Google Drive: Organize all your files in one spot. A simple way to share and collaborate on documents, see the revision history and let team members leave & resolve comments. (FREE)
14) Google Keyword Planner: Although it’s designed to help you build out paid advertising campaigns, Keyword Planner is an invaluable marketing tool to help you determine traffic levels for different search terms. (FREE)
15) Free Facebook Resources: My favourite is Facebook Audience Insights where you can analyze and view specific demographics, interests, and behaviour information about any audience.Other great Facebook resources you need to check out are: Facebook Ad Library (spy on competitor ads), Facebook IQ (access to detailed reports across different topics and industries) and Creative Hub (mock up ads before you launch).
16) Google Reviews: Google my business is a platform you can set up with your physical store/ business locations and ask your customers for reviews. This helps increase your business local ranking and search volumes. This is great for local businesses such as coffee shops, hairstylists, etc. (FREE)
17) YouTube – This magic place has information on everything and anything (yes, lots of funny cat videos). Use it to your advantage to learn new skills, watch tutorials on platforms and become your own digital guru. (FREE)
Thanks for reading and hopefully this has brought you some value. If it did, please share/like this article – much appreciated.
