We usually talk about all of the different online marketing tactics, strategies, services, etc. But what if, as a small business owner, you're somewhat familiar with these efforts and are looking to do majority of the work yourself? Luckily we have decided to do the hard work of researching resources for you and share some great FREE online marketing tools for small business:
Learning Tools: eBooks & Digital Guides
Expand your knowledge and familiarity of digital marketing efforts with the following learning tools:
Author: Moz
Overview: Whether you know nothing about SEO or are simply looking to build upon your knowledge, this interactive guide is the perfect starting point.
Author: Moz
Overview: Similar resource as for the above SEO guide, Moz does a fantastic job outlining how social media can benefit business digital marketing performance. Great starting point for anyone looks to transition from just posting updates to strategizing their social media efforts.
Author: Marketo
Overview: One of the leading marketing automation providers, Marketo publishes amazing resouces. Including this guide on email marketing: going beyond just sending promotions and tracking open rates. Learn how to really implement a robust email program.
Author: Marketo
Overview: Similar resource as for the above email guide, the engaging content marketing guide shows how to publish online content that will reach the right people in the right way. Develop "personas" of your readers and schedule your updates using an editorial calendar: everything you need to get started with content marketing.
Author: PPC Hero
Overview: Not an eBook or whitepaper, but an in-depth blog post/web page on all the details you need to know in order to get started with your first PPC campaign.
Author: Moz
Overview: Meta data is huge, as is semantic search, and Cyrus Shepard from Moz shares an easy-to-follow guide on how to setup social meta data for your website. Brilliant!
Social Media Management
Posting to multiple profiles can be time-consuming, as can tracking engagement, so here are some tools to help you manage it all:
Overview: Looking for to find niche keywords and topics around your services on social media? Look no further, social search helps you find blogs, images, updates and many other content types directly related to your search term. Best of all? It also calculates involvement of the topics (high vs. low) and similar suggestions.
Overview: Yoono is a great app for both mobile and desktop devices that lets you not only monitor your social media profiles but allows you to share directly from the app to your profiles. While limited in the social network support the main players are available: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
Overview: While subscription based services allow you to experience the full capabilities of Hootsuite, they still offer a basic free version which allows you to connect up to 3 social media profiles and gives access to limited analytics reports. Great option if your business is within that 3 profile range.
Overview: Similar service to Hootsuite, to enjoy full benefits it does require a paid subscription. However as a free service, users can add 1 account from each of the following networks and share updates to multiple accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn. Use this if you need just a bare minimum scheduling service.
Overview: SumAll is a business-oriented analytics service for social media efforts. While it too has premium features, the free service does a great job of providing in-depth information to help measure and guide your social media marketing. If you're looking to get a little more involved with social media reporting beyond what each network offers individually this is a good starting point.
Overview: Creating new social media profiles or company pages? This tool allows you to search virtually all of the social networks on the web before you decide on the username of your pages. Do the research for ALL social networks before creating the first page name only to find out that another social network does not have it available.
Search Engine Optimization
A lot of paid SEO services tools available as we all know, but here are some great free options:
Overview: Although this tool is meant to research keywords and topics for AdWords (PPC) campaign it can be useful for finding general keyword volumes. Best part? You can narrow down keyword focus down to regional location, including a specific city. This way you will know exactly how many times a keyword gets searched within the general area of where your business operates.
Overview: WordStream offers a few free tools for researching keywords including niche finder and keyword grouper to help you find a more narrow focus, while getting a variety of relevant topics all in one. This tools is fantastic if you're small business specializes in a unique field or service.
Overview: Using Google's Autocomplete, this tool gives you suggestions as you type your keyword ideas. If you're doing researching or just looking to see what types of topics are trending around certain keywords this tool could be useful.
Overview: Are you currently searching the keyword and scrolling through pages (assuming you're not ranked on the first page) to find on what page your rankings fall? Well do so no more, use this free rank checker tool by simply typing in your web page link and the keyword you're trying to rank for. Voila!
Overview: If you're really ambitious and would like to introduce semantic search features to your online efforts then this tool will make the code part a breeze. Simply select what type of semantic mark-up you would like to do and the program generates the code with all the necessary information. Quick and easy.
Overview: Getting links back to your content, posts and pages is cruical for search engine rankings, but not so easy to accomplish. This tool will help you find relevant communities and websites which could be potential link targets. If you're a bit iffy about link building and why it's important, check out the "Beginner's Guide to SEO" in the Learning Tools section above.
Email Marketing Tools
Aside from paid email marketing services such as Mail Chimp or Constant Contact, these tools can help you run effective campaigns:
Overview: Up to a 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails a month under the free account, ReachMail is a great option for small businesses sending occasional monthly emails. Custom email templates, list segmentation and many other options available as well.
Overview: Up to a 5,000 contacts and unlimited monthly emails, the free version of TargetHero goes a step above ReachMail and provides a great option for small businesses sending more frequent email communications. It also comes with as many useful features as ReachMail.
Overview: If you're a small business trying to do email on your own, the most likely case is that you've put together a pre-designed HTML/CSS template. If you've done some edits of your own but are unsure if the code is all clean, this tool will make sure that the code behind the email is clean as possible. Note: minimal to none coding knowledge required!
Overview: Contactology provides a basic free version of their "Email View" tool which basically allows you to paste your email template into the empty box, select the email client your recipients use and you will be able to see exactly how the email will appear across Outlook, GMail, Yahoo!, etc. !
Overview: How can you be 99.99% sure that your email won't land in the spam folder? One thing that can help is using an online spam checker such as this one to see which areas of your message may be considered as spam. If there are any spam results, simply edit your design and message before sending and ensure safe inbox delivery.
Overview: Subject lines are crucial in email getting opened, so make sure that your subject shows up properly is effective and compatible across various email clients. This tool provides you with all of those abilities, FREE of charge.
Design Utilities
Contract freelancers that help with custom small business graphic design are always available, but what if you need something put together quick? Here is a list of potential tools to help you out:
Overview: Do you have a hard time translating the true colour of your brand online? That may be due to the conversion from RGB (red, green, blue) to HEX (hexadecimal). You can just put in your RGB code (or vice versa) and get the exact HEX code put out by the web page. Neat for easily converting colours in multichannel design efforts.
Overview: If you're sick and tired of using Arial or Comic Sans for your design take a look at 1001fonts. Exactly as the name suggests it has thousands of fonts available for download - so make sure you grab something that coincides with your messages and spruce up the copy in your communications!
Overview: FREE vector images - aside from stock photography this is a fantastic way to get high-quality icons, illustrations and images that can be sized to any extent without losing their quality. While Vecteezy has a paid area, there are plenty of free vector images available for use.
Overview: Backed by Guy Kawasaki, the business guru, this free online tool allows anyone to become a designer. No really, that is their actual slogan - easy features and plenty of resources allow even the least creative person to put together fabulous layouts.
Overview: Don't have the budget for Adobe's Creative Suite (it is not cheap by any means)? Fret not, DesignPlus is the perfect alternative which allows for photo manipulation, drawings, editing and much more. Perfect software for both design and the budget!
Ready-to-Use Templates
Don't have time to put together a reporting template in excel? Need to put together an infographic? Have a peek at the FREE templates below, there might be something of use:
Overview: Hubspot does an amazing job giving away freebies for marketers and adventourous small business owners looking to DiY with some of their marketing. The amount of FREE templates and resources would be too great to list here - so I will just link back to their Resource Hub for you to poke around. It has everything from infographic templates to web reporting excel documents. Enjoy!
Overview: Over 100+ free social media icons with a variety of styles, colours and designs. Find the perfect fit for your online presence and simply plug-and-play!
Overview: Over 2000+ free web buttons that can be used for a call-to-action, guiding users or simply making your webpages slightly more visual. These are in PSD (Photoshop) format so ensure you have the right software to open the files.
Overview: Landing pages are a major factor in web visitors converting to a certain action (purchasing, filling out a form, etc.) and having the right layout/message is critical. Take these 15+ fully responsive landing pages as a fantastic starting point for customizing your landing page.
Overview: You've got a plan for social media, but how to execute it? This action-filled plan is more than helpful in getting the most out of your social media efforts. It has action plans for all of the major social networks including KPI measurements (key performance indicators) so that you can analyze your performance as you go along.
Overview: Another fantastic template from Marketo - this one helps you plan out your marketing for each quarter, and the PowerPoint document comes equipped with customizable features. Just plug in your numbers and information to let the template do all the work for you.
Overview: Building a blog or website is no easy task, but if you find a template you like it can be much easier. Take a look at these fully responsive Wordpress options for the casual blogger or a full-service e-commerce website! Your future website may just be a click away.
Phew - that took some time to put together! I hope that there is at least one new, helpful resource for your small business in one of the above categories. If you're feeling charitable, is there a free tool that you would like to share which did not make it on this list?
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