A Few of my Favorite FREE Marketing Tools
Marketing Tools to Make You a Smart Marketer
When I started writing this blog, the first thing that came to mind was the song, “My Favorite Things,” that Julie Andrews sang in the movie, The Sound of Music. I know I am dating myself for a few of my readers. However, the marketing tools I am going to explore with you are a few of my favorite things that I have used consistently over the last several years. All these tools have paid versions. However, they also offer free versions, which are perfect for small and medium businesses.
The Definition of Marketing Tools
Marketing tools cover a broad range, from techniques and strategies to materials and software. Companies use them to promote their products and/or services. The goal of marketing tools is to help increase sales. Below are four free software marketing tools that have been instrumental to diamonddog Marketing.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a must for any company website. In today’s digital world it is critical for a business to have a website, not just a company page on social media. Simply put, this free marketing tool tracks how visitors are using your website, which is key to your company’s success.
It provides many valuable data points such as your website’s bounce rate. The bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or sessions where the user did not interact with the website. According to Google Analytics, you should be concerned if your bounce rate is over 35 percent. To help lower a high bounce rate, conduct a content audit, and revise your website based on the data gathered.
Time spent on a website page is also another key measure that is tracked by Google Analytics. It will provide the average time spent on each page as well as the overall duration per session. This data point can be affected by many factors, such as your industry, the type of website, and even the device that visitors use to view a website.
Finally, Google Analytics includes important demographics about website visitors. For example, you will be able to see user information such as location, age, and gender.
2. Zoho
Zoho has expanded over the years to offer many different online capabilities. It is no longer just a sales and marketing tool. However, in this blog I am going to focus on its free CRM (customer relationship management) component, which our team has been using for several years. A CRM platform is critical to business success. Companies that use a CRM tool experience a 300 percent improvement in their lead conversion rate and a 41 percent increase in revenue per salesperson.
The free CRM component of the Zoho platform is ideal for small to mid-size businesses. It is easy to set-up and use. The system administrator can easily parse out leads to various account managers. Key reports such as leads by owner, status, source, or industry can be quickly downloaded.
After you try the free Zoho CRM version, you may decide that you are looking for a more robust, comprehensive tool. CRM Plus from Zoho is its next level marketing platform.
3. Mailchimp
As I stated in my previous blog, email marketing is still one of the most effective tools for business. In fact, according to McKinsey & Company, email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media, and the buying process happens three times faster than with social media. A free marketing tool to facilitate and manage email campaigns is Mailchimp. It is a great source for small businesses or those companies just starting to build their contact data bases. The free version allows a client to send email campaigns to 2,000 or fewer contacts.
This free marketing tool offers a variety of template options, which are fairly easy to use. Also, you can also link your email campaigns to your social media accounts to drive further visibility.
Mailchimp not only gives you the number of opens, unsubscribes, etc., after every email campaign, but it also provides other valuable reports. You can select your company’s industry and compare how your email campaigns are performing against your peers overall. By linking your Mailchimp account to your website’s Google Analytics you can uncover further valuable campaign insights.
4. CoSchedule
Every month your company competes with 56.6 million blogs (just on WordPress). The headline is the most important part of any content. It’s the piece that determines whether people click through and read further. On average, 80 percent of readers never make it past the headline. With this being said, the final free marketing tool I am going to tell you about is CoSchedule. If you are the content creator for your company, it will probably become one of your favorites.
With CoSchedule, you can create headlines that will help ensure your content is read. It is easy to set up a free account and start testing different headlines. Every headline is given an overall score based on key criteria such as word and character count, skimmability, reading grade level, clarity, etc. It even provides a thesaurus so you can select alternative wording that may be more effective.
Put the Right Marketing Tools to Work
There are thousands of innovative marketing tools available to every marketer in today’s modern world. These are just four examples that you may want to consider, whether you are a business just starting out or a mid-size company. Over the years, these marketing tools have helped diamonddog Marketing to be efficient and grow. If you would like to learn more about them, we would be more than happy to share our experiences with you. Feel free to contact us at 847-269-1422 or info@diamonddogmarketing.com.
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