6 free online marketing tools to take your business to the next level
What are online marketing tools for small businesses?
Whether you’re looking to create eye-catching visual designs, write killer content or analyze the success of your marketing ventures, there’s a marketing tool out there to meet your small business needs. Options for free online marketing programs include:
- HubSpot
- Canva
- Google Analytics
- Buffer
- Mailchimp
- Google Trends
1. HubSpot
This popular platform organizes and streamlines your marketing and customer relationship management processes. Valuable free marketing tools include HubSpot’s feature to design a detailed marketing plan, including your mission statement, key objectives and goals for the next year – all information that sets a business up for success.
HubSpot can also help revamp your business website and generate original ideas for blog posts and articles. In addition to the free online marketing tools, HubSpot’s paid services also offer in-depth marketing assistance – something to consider when you’re ready to scale your business.
2. Canva
Canva is your one-stop design shop. It’s pre-loaded with more than 8,000 free templates to help you create professional marketing materials and online resources, including social media posts and website logos. The easy-to-use site lets anyone construct beautiful visuals, even with zero graphic design experience. To get started:
- Choose a template
- Edit your text and photos
- Choose your colors
2. Canva
Canva is your one-stop design shop. It’s pre-loaded with more than 8,000 free templates to help you create professional marketing materials and online resources, including social media posts and website logos. The easy-to-use site lets anyone construct beautiful visuals, even with zero graphic design experience. To get started:
- Choose a template
- Edit your text and photos
- Choose your colors
FedEx Office links to this popular graphic design website, so you can print high-quality materials—like brochures and business cards—to complement your digital marketing efforts.
3. Google Analytics
While some internet marketing tools help with creative visuals, Google Analytics handles the tech side of running your small business. When you connect the platform to your website, Google Analytics tracks a variety of data, including:
- Website traffic
- Visitor demographics
- Top-performing pages and articles
- How people find your site
- Days and times that see the most traffic
Google Analytics has more than 50 different reports you can track to see where your business is flourishing and where it’s not. Use the information you see to create the perfect marketing campaigns for your target audience.
4. Buffer
Social media is one of the hottest aspects of digital marketing and an excellent way to engage your existing customers while also attracting new ones. Buffer offers some of the top social media marketing techniques to enhance your online presence.
Streamline your social media marketing and put all your planning in one place by creating a content calendar that automatically posts your content at specified times. It also includes engagement metrics for your previous posts, so you can see what types of posts perform best and when you’re likely to get the most views. Buffer’s free services let you connect three social media accounts and queue up to 10 posts at a time per social media account.
5. Mailchimp
Email marketing can be up to 40 times more effective than social media marketing. Free email marketing tools like Mailchimp help you design sleek newsletters, promotional emails and transactional emails to grab your customers’ attention and encourage them to click. Mailchimp’s free platform lets you add up to 2,000 email subscribers and send up to 10,000 emails each month. It automates your email marketing efforts, saving you time and energy. Just keep in mind, Mailchimp doesn’t watch your usage—if you go over what their free plan offers, you will be charged.
6. Google Trends
A sure-fire way to bring traffic to your website and social media accounts is to provide timely, informative and interesting content for your readers. Google Trends is a content marketing tool that analyzes what people are Googling around the world so that you can create engaging content around trending topics. Use Google Trends for keyword research when designing your content calendar and choose topics related to your business. Staying up to date on what people are reading and pivoting your marketing campaign to highlight current interests will help you show up more often in search results.
Utilizing the right marketing techniques can help get your small business off the ground. As you plan your campaigns, implement these free marketing tools into your daily business routine to help increase your website traffic, social media engagement and email conversions.
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