As a freelancer, you are simultaneously managing work while tapping new ways to get income coming into your business. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could get some assistance, that too free of cost? Before you overlook it as something ‘too good to be true’ read on to uncover your treasures. Thanks to technology, you now have access to free marketing tools for startups and resources to assist you to take off your business.
Most of these free marketing tools for startups & freelancers are easy-to-use, safe and impactful. Get a look at it now!
A) Website Analytics & Traffic
While running your business online, it is important to keep track of your website traffic to monitor the progress. The task may seem easy for a statistician, but for upcoming entrepreneurs, it can be daunting. Monitoring website traffic involves analyzing the important performance indicators and simultaneously working on it to accomplish goals.
Sounds exhausting? Here are some tools that can help you:
1) Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great free tool by Google that helps you analyze your website traffic – the monthly sessions, new users, source of traffic, campaign-specific sessions etc. The insights can really help you make relevant changes in your product and understand which campaigns are performing better. Try it out today!
2) Smylelytics
Smylelytics is one of the amazing marketing tools for startups that sends a bi-monthly email report using your website traffic data in the form of interactive images and text, which adds the fun element to it. Now you can easily judge on your site’s performance and work on the segments that need improvement. All this is done free of charge!
B) Website Optimisation
Once you have some understanding about your website traffic, you need to make certain optimisations to your product (website, app and landing pages) to ensure significant ROI from every user who visits your platform.
Tools like Google Analytics give you a macro-view of your performance but in order to get deeper level insights on user behaviour, Google Analytics might not be the best tool for you. You need more advanced analytics tools like:
3) Mixpanel
Mixpanel is an advanced analytics tool that tracks users interactions on your online products and gives insights on their behaviour. You can track users at every stage and see what they are clicking and how many are moving on to the next stage. You can even run targeted experiments to test your observations.
4) Hotjar
Hotjar is yet another commonly used marketing tools for startups that lets you see how your users are using your website/app. It maps users at all the stages of user funnel to give you insights on changes you can make. It also shows heat maps on the basis of interactions on the website.
C) Project Management & Collaboration
Project management is an important aspect in a business that includes organizing milestones, maintaining progress charts and meeting deadlines. Earlier all these tasks were shared through emails between team members and stakeholders but there are a lot of tools that can help you with this.
5) Trello
Trello makes project management and collaborations simplified and manageable. A fantastic digital marketing tool, Trello provides a list of features to aid easy project management, absolutely free of cost.
6) Flock
Businesses are no longer restricted by geographical boundaries. Startups are expanding globally with team members functioning in different time zones. This makes team communication a vital aspect of startups.
Flock is an effective team communication tool that brings team members all over the world together, virtually. It helps you communicate and take opinion polls with other members without a fuss. And it’s absolutely free of cost!
D) Email Marketing
The benefits of email marketing to startups and freelancers are widely known. Collecting email addresses from customers, sorting and storing them can be a tedious job. Moreover, emails are used in all the aspects of a business, right from cold emailing to lead nurturing to transactions mails.
Here are some tools that can help you:
7) MailChimp
MailChimp helps you initiate your email marketing plan, reach out to 2,000 subscribers and drop 12,000 emails, all this done without incurring a penny. A lot of freelancers and upcoming brands use MailChimp for sending out customised emailers but its utility is not just limited to creating basic email campaigns.
There are other features like drip campaigns, A/B testing and third-party app integrations such as social media or Google Analytics.
8) Woodpecker
Woodpecker is a tool that allows you to create an automated series of emails, also known as drip email marketing. You can create a chain of cold emails or customer lifecycle emailers basis pre-defined triggers. Triggers are actions you define which in turn will initiate email dispatch.
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E) Content Marketing & Planning
A lot of brands have started focussing on content as a mainstream marketing channel. For any search-based business where people search for services/tools online, it makes sense to devote time, money and resources on content.
Though content is not just limited to blogs and articles, here are a few content marketing tools for startups that can help you ace your content game by writing good research-based SEO articles. This is a very good way of creating your organic funnel that stays there on the internet forever.
9) Google AdWords Keyword Planner
The keyword planner inside Google AdWords is a free tool that lets you search for relevant keywords according to your domain. It gives you pieces of information like average monthly searches, competition level and estimated bids for every keyword you search.
You can use this insight to add keywords in your Google search ads and also create your content strategy.
10) Uber Suggest by Neil Patel
Neil Patel needs no introduction and he is one of the best-known marketers in the world. Recently, Neil released a content planning tool by the name Uber Suggest which is similar to keyword planner by Google.
It lets you look for relevant keywords, competition level and the ranking of competitor articles on Google. Give it a try today!
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F) Social Media Marketing
While social media platforms are a great way to market your products and services, it is equally important to simultaneously manage your accounts. Hiring a social media manager is not often an option for startups.
Also, managing multiple social media platforms and ensuring a regular content flow on each of these platforms can be tiring. There a lot of social media marketing tools for startups that let you post on multiple accounts at once and not only that, they also allow you to schedule posts. Interesting, right?
11) Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most versatile marketing tools for startups that come to your rescue. It helps you manage content the content of your profile, schedule the time for publishing promotions and also track its impact. Hootsuite, in short, does everything to ensure that you are quite active social media user, and this directly implies reaching out to new and prospective customers worldwide.
12) Buffer
Buffer is yet another tool that allows you to manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts as well as analyse their results and engage with the community. It is one of the favourite tools for every social media person, whether a freelancer or someone with a full-time job.
These free marketing tools for startups are a must-try for entrepreneurs who desire to take their business to the next level. However, there are a couple of more marketing tools for startups that you can use to ace your marketing.
13) Hubspot CRM
For a business to grow it is important to maintain a good relationship with your esteemed customers. It is equally important to keep track of your customer data and other related information to generate sales. This job is simplified with Hubspot CRM – a business-customer relationship management tool. The interface is user-friendly
14) MOZ Local
For businesses operating online, SEO ranking is a primary aspect. It is important to monitor how your business is ranked on local data aggregator websites such as Google and Yelp. Moz Local is an incredible marketing tool for startups that enable startups to amplify their online competitiveness.
You can now get data insights and critical highlights about your business performance across the internet and immediate market. Moz Local comes with a suite of functionalities that is much needed by freelancers.
15) Canva
Visual brand marketing is a crucial tool for startups and freelancers. Hiring a designer to do the job for you can burn a big hole in your pocket. How about the idea to do it yourself? Well, we aren’t kidding you. With marketing apps like Canva, you can easily design and print posters for your business.
You do not need any particular skill set to get it done, the simple drag-and-drop interface lets you create impactful designs with ease. And before you ponder on any monthly costs, with Canva you get – no investment and maximum returns.
16) Grammarly
Content is critical for any online business. You can only attract customers to your website if the content is meaningful and conveys the message appropriately. Therefore proofreading your content online becomes absolutely necessary.
Digital marketing tools like Grammarly make the job easier for you by highlighting the spellings and grammar mistakes and also suggesting the correct usage for the same. You needn’t be a Grammar Guru to use it, the interface is quite simple. Grammarly comes as a lifesaver for bloggers, content creators and freelance writers and it’s free to use.
Have we missed any new ones? Which one of these have you been using? Do let us know in the comments.
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