Free Digital Marketing Tools
The internet provides an infinite amount of paths for marketing, which can make digital marketing one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs and startups. What software should you use? Which social media should you focus on? What is the platform that can propel you forward?
While expensive platforms can offer a lot, you don’t have to subscribe to these ones in order to improve your digital marketing plan. Keeping things cost-effective is always the smart approach and how you utilize what you have goes a long way.
Let’s take a look at some free digital marketing tools for you to consider:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A crucial element in your digital marketing plan is sustainability. It is recommended to have a CRM software, which helps you analyze, retain and nurture relationships with your customers. It also helps your team stay on track with what is happening and what the goals are.
HubSpot CRM: A free CRM for unlimited users offering email marketing and inbound marketing tools that improve SEO, allows you to manage sales process, workflow, as well as assign and track leads.
Mailchimp: Still one of the leading tools when it comes to email marketing, its free version offers website hosting, automation, custom domains, tracking through seven marketing channels making it a hefty marketing CRM.
Freshsales: Its CRM has an easy-to-learn interface that provides customizable organizational tools, time-zone sensitive reminders, as well as a comprehensive in-app telephony module with automatic call dialling, call recording and call routing. It’s free for up to 10 users.
Scheduling
Social media is the foundation of any digital marketing plan. In order to execute a smooth and effective campaign you need scheduling apps to help you manage your posts.
Hootsuite: The free version lets you schedule up to 30 messages across three social media profiles, offers a customizable feed to manage your posts, track engagement, and an auto-schedule feature that determines the best time to post for greater engagement.
Planoly: Focuses primarily on Instagram and Pinterest, with its free version allowing for up to two social media profiles and 30 uploads a month per profile. Helps keep track of all your content with the ability to add notes to your calendar.
Crowdfire: Emphasizing content curation, it has an integrated AI that explores relevant content based on your interests, giving you greater insight on how you can design your own content before publishing. It can also automatically customize your posts for each social media platform.
Royalty Free Images
Having the right image for your posts can give you the edge you need to really highlight your marketing campaign. However, not all of us have the photographic or design expertise to be creating original images for each post. And it is frown upon to simply google any image and add it to your post as it might lead to copyright infringement.
The best solution is to use websites with royalty free photos, such as: Pexels, Burst, Reshot, and Unsplash.
New and beautiful photos are added regularly to each of these websites and they offer a truly massive library suited for all your needs as entrepreneurs, startups, freelancers and creators.
You don’t need fancy or expensive platforms to propel you forward. It’s all about how resourceful you can be with the tools you have. Fortunately, there are numerous marketing tools available for free that can streamline the process, help you both develop and launch your ideal marketing campaign, and take you where you want to be.