7 Free Digital Marketing Tools Effective for Startups

Are there free digital marketing tools? Yes, and they are life-savers for a startup with little budget. As a small business owner the idea of taking your business online can be scary. With the little budget you have to grow your business, anything that’s cost effective works just fine. 

If you already know what digital marketing is you can tell it demands a good amount of cash to get a breakthrough. 

And with the number of expensive digital marketing tools out there, can a startup get a chance to run a successful digital marketing campaign let alone implement their solid digital marketing strategy?

Well I have good news for you.

In this article, I’ll share some of the free digital marketing tools I use for my small business. They’ll help you take your small business digital and also make your marketing campaign a success.

Let’s check them out.

Canva

Canva is a design tool that comes in handy when you need a template to inspire your designs. It is a rescue tool for a non-graphic designer like me. 

Want to create good quality designs for social media, blog posts, and presentations without having to come up with design concepts yourself? Then use Canva.

Their templates are easy to edit and the platform is user-friendly. It’s a cloud-based tool, meaning your work is automatically saved online and you can continue right where you left it. 

It allows you to download your work in different formats and sizes. If you want to design a logo, an ebook, an infographic, or edit a video Canva is your go-to free tool.

Grammarly

This tool helps you spell check your write up and helps you keep your content tone and grammar in line with your brand. It is the most popular spell check tool, it is used by over 30 million people around the globe.

Grammarly works in the background when you’re typing on your favourite apps and social media platforms. It underlines wrongly spelt words and words that are not in context with your topic so you can easily spot them and make necessary corrections.

As a copywriter this tool saves me time and keeps my content flow intact. While I’m typing my content, Grammarly gives me some suggestions and corrections to make my content easier to read and grasp.

I don’t always have to accept all their suggestions, I only go with the ones that work fine with what I want to say.

If you’d prefer using a spell checker app Grammarly has an app and an online editor as well. They also have a browser extension that works well with Google Chrome and other web browsers. 

Whichever works for you, give it a go.

Read More: What should a startup know about digital marketing?

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is the tool that would help you measure your site’s search traffic and performance. With the website reports you get you can fix technical issues on your website and increase your ranking position on search engines.

GSC is also useful when you want to be sure that all the pages on your websites can be crawled and indexed by Google.

You can also use GSC to troubleshoot crawling and indexing issues, submit XML sitemap (important for SEO) and see keywords that are associated with your ranking position.

Zapier

If you want to have all your tools in one place and connected together for an easy workflow, then Zapier is the tool for you. 

It can integrate easily with over 1300 business software. All you need to do is to choose the apps you want to connect together, customise the workflow, test it then turn on the workflow. And you’re ready to zap.

As you work with Zapier the information is transferred across the connected apps within your Zapier account. Easy life right.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the tool that helps you create segmented email lists, send newsletters to the contacts on your list and automate your email campaigns.

It is packed with nice templates you can edit and use for your newsletters. 

It also has good analytical features that can help you improve your email marketing strategy.

As a free user on MailChimp you’re allowed to save up to 2000 contacts on your list and also send 10,000 emails per month. That’s very fair for a free plan.

Read More: How to build a solid digital marketing strategy

Google Analytics

This tool works well with the Google Search Console tool. If you combine the in-depth data from both platforms you can improve your search rankings, keyword targeting and attract more customers in no time.

With Google analytics reports you can tell which of your web pages perform best in organic search and have a high conversion rate. It is useful for tracking campaigns and finding out where your traffic and converts come from. 

You can also leverage the insights you get from Google Analytics to understand your customer’s behaviour and improve your marketing campaigns.

Read More: How to get more customers online for your small business

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management tool where you schedule posts and upload posts to multiple social media accounts in advance. Plus monitor comments and respond to them as well.

To get started, create an account and select the social network accounts you want to manage. Create your posts, add an image or a video, and schedule your post.

Their free plan limits you to 1 user, 2 social accounts, and 5 scheduled messages at a given time. 

Start Using your Free Digital Marketing Tools

There you go! The 7 digital marketing tools to help you manage a successful campaign. 

For a quick recap, we looked at tools for creating designs, spell checking content, monitoring web traffic and conversion, managing workflow, automating email newsletters, and managing social media accounts.

Now is your turn to go try them out. 

Which other free tools should I have included? And which of these will you try first? Let’s know in the comment section below.