Hundreds of marketing tools exist to help your business from every possible angle: they help with researching your market niche, creating high-quality content, reviewing campaign analytics, and much more.
But if you don’t have a large marketing budget, it can be confusing to figure out which tools you should use.
Which ones are worth paying for, and which aren’t? And which have great free versions?
To help out, we’ve compiled a list of the best free or inexpensive digital marketing tools your team can use to drive success in 2020.
We’ve broken down our list into the following categories:
Read through, figure out which ones will be best for you as you grow this year, and comment if you have further ideas.
Digital Marketing Tools for Industry Research
The backbone of any marketing strategy is solid research on your industry and customers. Below are three cost-effective marketing tools to get you started on the right foot.
1. Data Scraper—Free, with Upgrade Options
If you’re looking for contact information from professional profiles, or social media connections to support display campaigns and/or outreach, Data Scraper is the tool for you. Data Scraper is a free Chrome extension that allows you to download any form of data from a website:
[Image source]
2. Think with Google—Free
Think with Google is a tool to help you see exactly what your audience is searching for online. It shows you what searches are trending, and it offers audience insights and information about the products and brands people are looking for in a specified category.
3. PickFu—$50 Basic Plan
With PickFu, you can share product ideas, ad copy, logos, and other designs with U.S. consumers in return for their feedback.
[Image source]
This tool starts at $50. With this base plan, you get responses from 50 consumers, each with written explanations about their choices.
Digital Marketing Tools for Keyword Research
Digital marketing tools are incredibly useful for figuring out which keywords to target. They can tell you what keywords your competitors are targeting and what phrases your business ranks for, and they can offer suggestions for new keywords.
4. Google Keyword Planner—Free
Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for beginners, offering basic volume and competition data. Just enter the specific keywords you’d like to investigate, and then view the results:
[Image source]
This tool is completely free. You have to set up a Google Ads account first, but you don’t have to spend any money on campaigns in order to use the planner. Check out this resource for more information.
5. Moz—Free, with Upgrade Options
Moz is one of the best SEO marketing tools out there, and its Keyword Explorer is in high demand.
The platform is very user-friendly, with both numeric and visual representations of a keyword’s monthly search volume, organic CTR, priority, and difficulty.
Keyword Explorer also delivers new keyword suggestions and excellent search engine results pages (SERP) analysis.
Moz’s free version of the tool allows for 10 keyword queries a month. Upgraded plans start at $79/month if paid annually, which allows for 150 search queries. The company does offer a free 30-day trial of their Moz Pro plan.
Looking for more? Moz offers a suite of six other free marketing tools to help with your SEO goals.
6. Spyfu—$33/month Basic Plan
SpyFu helps you understand your competitors by homing in on the keywords they’re targeting. Type in a competitor’s URL, and SpyFu will pull up how many keywords the site is ranking for, along with its ratio of organic to paid traffic and its estimated clicks per month.
[Image source]
The basic plan is $39/month (or $33/month if you sign up for an annual subscription). More expensive Pro and Team plans exist, but in all three plans, you get unlimited access to all SpyFu data.
Digital Marketing Tools for Content Design
Thanks to today’s design technology, you don’t need to be a professional photographer or videographer to produce high-quality content. Below are four digital marketing tools to kick your content design to the next level.
7. GIMP—Free
Looking for Photoshop-style software without the price tag? GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation) is your tool! It enables you to retouch photos, create logos or other graphic design elements, create composite images, and more.
[Image source]
8. PicMonkey—$8/month Plus a Free Trial
PicMonkey is great for photographers who have a low budget but want to edit portraits with tools like Smooth, Wrinkle Remover, Blemish Fix, and Teeth Whitening. These tricks are particularly helpful in Instagram ads, where the photo is the main focus of the ad.
PicMonkey also allows users to add their own stickers, graphics, and logos.
After a 7-day free trial, PicMonkey offers a Premium plan for $7.99 per month.
9. FilmoraGo—Free, with Upgrade Options
FilmoraGo is easily one of the best high-quality video-editing phone apps out there. It allows you to quickly trim a video clip, create subtitles and text, speed up the content, add filters, and add overlays.
FilmoraGo is free but has additional (optional) in-app purchases. It’s available for both iOS and Android.
10. Magisto—$5/month Basic Plan
If your content goal is making videos for social media, Magisto is an excellent tool. It’s specifically designed for social platforms, and the company is an official partner of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Magisto offers a smart, AI-powered video editor that will automatically edit your video based on your selected style and soundtrack. It also provides a selection of video templates to choose from.
Magisto starts at $5/month if paid annually. The company also offers a free trial for their premium plans.
Many brands still struggle to create high-quality, professional videos; these marketing tools can give you an edge over the competition.
Digital Marketing Tools for Landing Page Creation
Landing pages don’t need to be complicated. But because they are the first thing a visitor sees when they click on your ad, they need to be well-designed. That’s where these digital marketing tools come in.
11. Mailchimp—Free, with Upgrade Options
Mailchimp is a catch-all landing page creation tool. It takes you from start to finish, including setting up your domain and choosing from a variety of landing page templates. It even offers analytics on visitor demographics, clicks, and conversions.
[Image source]
12. Gratisography—Free
Want your landing page to amuse your site visitors and inspire them to take action? Gratisography provides free high-resolution and whimsical photos that will make a strong impression:
Using images that are counterintuitive or strange is proved to be more memorable than using generic ones. The more your landing page sticks with your viewers, the more likely they are to explore further.
13. ColorZilla—Free
If you’re surfing the web and come across an amazing color that you want to use, this free Chrome extension will be just the tool you need. ColorZilla can get a color reading from any point in your browser, adjust it if necessary, and then paste it into your design:
[Image source]
Check out this resource for even more landing page creation and optimization tools.
Digital Marketing Tools for Social Media Management
Social media is one of the top ways for companies to build brand awareness and engage with customers. These social marketing tools can help get your ads and content the views they deserve.
14. Hootsuite—Free, with Upgrade Options
Hootsuite has been in the business of managing multiple social accounts longer than anyone. It remains the industry standard, with compatibility across 35 distinct social media networks.
With Hootsuite, you can easily add new accounts and view and manage them all in one custom dashboard:
The tool allows you to schedule and post content across several platforms at the same time, which is an enormous time-saver. If you have a larger team, you can designate multiple users on one account.
Hootsuite offers a basic free plan, which allows up to three social profiles and 30 scheduled posts. Upgraded options start at $29/month, with a 30-day free trial.
15. TweetDeck—Free
If your marketing strategy is centered on Twitter, TweetDeck is an excellent way to manage multiple accounts.
Using the tool, you can tweet, monitor, and follow new accounts simultaneously—as well as organize and build collections and keep track of lists.
Digital Marketing Tools for Analytics
There’s always room for improvement. Understanding where you’ve succeeded in your marketing campaigns and where you might have fallen short begins with excellent analytics.
16. Google Analytics and Google Data Studio—Both Free
Google Analytics tops our list of marketing tools for analytics. Google Analytics allows you to track everything about your users—down to the minutiae of what resolution screen they’re on. It’s indispensable to all levels of marketers.
[Image source]
17. Amplitude—Free, with Upgrade Options
If you’re a product marketer, Amplitude is an invaluable tool for visualizing user journeys:
[Image source]
The basic plan is free. It includes core analytics and unlimited data history and user accounts, and you can track up to 10 million user actions per month.
18. Facebook Analytics—Free
With its unparalleled trove of user data, Facebook Analytics is ideal for breaking down user demographics on a granular level. You can even track the times your audience is most active.
19. Segment—Free, with Upgrade Options
Segment is a customer data platform for tracking how users are interacting with your products and applications. It also allows you to build user personas and apply them in retargeting campaigns.
[Image source]
Digital Marketing Tools for Educate (yourself and your team)
Digital marketing tools are constantly changing, so there’s always more to learn. Fortunately, there are some great resources for staying up to date.
20. Sumo Blog
The Sumo blog breaks down the marketing strategies of the world’s most successful companies into a series of concrete, repeatable steps. For example, in the article pictured below, the blog laid out specific takeaways from Mailchimp’s success, which you can apply to your business.
[Image source]
21. AdEspresso Blog
Of course, we recommend the AdEspresso blog, where we are constantly digging into the latest trends, tips, and tricks to help marketers optimize their social media ads.
AdEspresso regularly conducts experiments to dig into the facts of social marketing. We gather the data and do the research so that you can benefit from the results.
You should also bookmark individuals such as Neil Patel and Ryan Stewart for meaty, data-driven articles.
Bonus Digital Marketing Tools
As promised, here are our final “bonus tools.” They don’t fit into a particular category, but we’d be lost without them.
22. Evernote—Free, with Upgrade Options
For project management, Evernote is an excellent, free tool. It allows you to create and organize notes as you brainstorm new content and bookmark ideas for new campaigns.
23. Sniply—Free for Increasing Conversions
Sniply is the perfect tool for driving conversions. When you share an article or piece of content, Sniply will embed your CTA so that people who open the link will see your CTA as a button on the page.
A free plan affords you a single team member and 1,000 clicks per month, along with customized themes, and email support. The basic monthly plan starts at $29/month but is discounted to $25/month if you sign up for a yearlong subscription.
24. SocialMention—Free, with Upgrade Options
With SocialMention you can effortlessly search through social media and news sites to see who is talking about your brand or your competitors’. Simply type in the name and a list of articles and social media posts will appear.
SocialMention is a great tool to help with your online reputation management. The basic tool is completely free, though you can upgrade if you’re looking for more features, such as storing your results history and signing up for daily alerts.
Stay Up to Speed with Digital Marketing Tools
You don’t have to have a big budget or large team to be the savviest marketer out there; you just need to be aware of the accessible resources at your fingertips.
With these inexpensive or completely free marketing tools, you’ll be set to create high-quality content and produce successful, data-driven campaigns.
What do you think? Are these your favorite free or inexpensive marketing tools, or are there others you would add to the tool kit? Let us know in the comments below.
- 675Shares
- 435
- 32
- 19
- 98
This content was originally published here.
Leave a Reply