In the dynamic world of digital marketing, having the right tools at your disposal can make all the difference. As 2023 is about to end, the focus is on efficiency, personalization, and budget-friendly solutions. This is where free marketing tools come into play, offering a wide range of functionalities to marketers without adding to their expenses.
In this article, we will explore the 10 best free marketing software tools. These tools not only help in automating and streamlining marketing processes but also provide valuable insights for decision-making. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a beginner, these tools will equip you with the resources needed to execute successful marketing strategies. Stay tuned as we delve into each tool’s unique features and how they can elevate your marketing game.
10 Free Marketing Software Tools
1. SEO – Ahrefs
Ahrefs is known for its all-in-one SEO toolset that can help with competitor research, link building, keyword research, website audit, content research, rank tracking and mentions monitoring.
Anyone who wants to improve their website’s SEO can use Ahrefs. It’s particularly useful for marketing professionals and businesses looking to increase their online visibility.
One of the key features of Ahrefs is its database, which has over 11 billion keywords and more than 400 billion indexed pages. This allows Ahrefs to provide maximum data accuracy to its users. Other features include the ability to unveil your competitor’s organic keywords, backlinks, and PPC keywords. It also offers a site audit feature that identifies exactly what’s wrong with your site’s SEO.
The pros of using Ahrefs include its comprehensive feature set and ease of use. Users have praised its backlink data, keyword research tool, and site audit feature. It’s also been commended for its ability to present data exactly the way users need it.
However, some users have mentioned that Ahrefs is a costly tool, which might not be affordable for new startups. But that’s the case with their paid version. They also offer dozens of free tools that are sufficient if you are just starting out.
2. Content Planning – Asana
Asana is a robust project management platform that combines powerful work organization, collaboration, documentation, and reporting tools in a single secure platform. It’s known for its ability to consolidate all tasks and projects onto a single board, allowing for seamless navigation through timelines from start to finish.
Asana can be particularly beneficial for marketing teams to create content calendars. It provides an excellent platform for team collaboration as well. It allows marketing leaders to coordinate the initiatives that are most critical to the business. It also enables the inclusion of key stakeholders and provides a private communication channel for discreet discussions.
Asana integrates with many other applications, such as Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, which can be particularly useful for marketing teams that use a variety of tools.
Asana’s user interface is highly intuitive and easy to navigate. It’s well-integrated with many other project management apps, heavily focused on collaboration, and its task management is organized and efficient.
3. Content Writing & Editing – Google Docs
Google Docs is a versatile online word processor that is part of the Google Workspace, which also includes Google Sheets, Google Forms, and Google Slides, among others.
It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real-time. Revision history helps you track edits made by all users. It’s known for its extensive feature set, which includes features like collaboration, spell and grammar check, a built-in dictionary, and an integrated research tool.
Anyone with a Gmail account and an internet connection can use Google Docs. It can be used from a computer or from electronic devices such as cell phones or tablets, through the browser or the application. All documents created are automatically stored in Google Drive (Google’s online hosting service) and can be downloaded to the computer or device.
Google Docs is a great tool for content writers and marketers to ideate, outline, and write article drafts from scratch.
4. Marketing Automation – HubSpot
HubSpot is a popular cloud-based marketing automation platform designed to help align sales and marketing teams, foster sales enablement, boost ROI, and optimize your inbound marketing strategy to generate more qualified leads.
It is used for collecting, organizing, and updating customer data inside a CRM system. This system is then leveraged for marketing automation, sales, customer service, and business operations.
It provides contact management which allows businesses to easily add and update contacts. It also offers website activity tracking that enables businesses to track how a lead interacts with their website.
Another key feature is the opportunity pipeline (Deals), which helps in managing and tracking deals in different stages. Furthermore, it includes features for reporting, dashboarding & visualizations, task management, automatic data capture management, and email & meeting scheduling.
HubSpot does offer a free version that allows businesses to access and utilize essential CRM features without any cost. It’s a great starting point for companies looking to enhance their customer management interface and capabilities.
5. Email Marketing – Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a customer relationship management (CRM) suite designed to help businesses build relationships with their customers across various channels such as email, SMS, and chat. It is known for its ability to create automated digital marketing campaigns and is widely recognized as an email marketing platform. Businesses of all sizes, from small businesses and startups to agencies, e-commerce enterprises, and larger corporations can use Brevo.
It provides a complete toolkit to turn one-time browsers into long-term customers. It offers smart campaigns for lasting relationships through Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and more. It also provides a sales platform to follow your leads and close more deals.
Furthermore, it allows users to strike up meaningful conversations with personalized chat tools from Instagram and WhatsApp to live chat. Another key feature is its ultra-reliable email API that processes millions of emails every day with a delivery rate of 99%.
Brevo does offer a free version. In its free version, users can enjoy some of the main platform features. For instance, it allows users to use the drag-and-drop editor, customizable email templates, CRM automation, task assignment, and pipeline management. Moreover, users can send up to 300 emails a day for free.
6. Cold Email Outreach – GMass
GMass is an intuitive cold email outreach software that allows you to launch email campaigns via Gmail. It’s known for its ability to send mail merge, email marketing, and cold email messages super fast inside Gmail while avoiding the spam folder.
It is used by a wide range of individuals and organizations. It’s used by small businesses, freelancers, recruiters, and anyone in need of an email marketing solution with email tracking and personalization.
As for its key features, GMass offers a variety of tools to enhance your email marketing efforts. It allows you to send cold emails and email marketing messages to thousands of addresses. It offers unlimited contacts, campaigns, and emails. It also provides mail merge personalization with data from Google Sheets. You can personalize each mass email and even send personalized images and attachments.
GMass also provides advanced tools for tracking active clicks and opened emails. Other notable features include scheduling, automatic follow-up emails, behavior-based campaigns, reply management, and no sending limit.
GMass does offer a free version. However, the free version has some limitations. You can send only 50 email messages per day. All other features work with free accounts. But I think that is enough if you are just starting out. I personally used GMass’s free version for almost 5 months before subscribing to its paid plan. 🙂
7. Social Media Marketing – Hoosuite
Hootsuite is a well-known social media marketing and management platform. It’s designed to help users save time, expand their reach, and increase engagement on social media. It is suitable for anyone who wants to manage their social media presence more effectively, from individuals to large businesses.
One of the key features of Hootsuite is its ability to schedule and publish content to all of your social profiles. Users can track the effectiveness of their posts in real time and focus on content that performs well.
Hootsuite also offers advanced analytics, which is a unique social analytics tool that shows your paid, organic, and web metrics side by side. This helps users understand exactly how they’re driving value at every stage of the customer journey.
Hootsuite does offer a free version. The free version of Hootsuite allows users to connect up to three social media platforms, schedule up to 30 posts in advance, and have one user. This makes it a good option for small businesses or one-person operations.
8. Graphic Design – Canva
Canva is a well-known online graphic design tool that is free to use. It’s recognized for its ability to create a variety of content, including social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos, and more.
Canva is suitable for anyone who wants to design anything, either on their own or with others. It’s particularly useful for individuals, solopreneurs, freelance designers, teams of all sizes, classrooms, districts, students, and registered nonprofits.
One of the key features of Canva is its extensive library of free design elements, which makes it easy for anyone to create awesome designs. It also offers a drag-and-drop feature that simplifies the design process.
Canva provides thousands of professional templates, images, and quality content to choose from. It also allows users to invite others to edit with them or set up their whole team to manage brand assets, brainstorm on whiteboards, get approvals, and scale content with tools like docs.
The free version of Canva provides access to a variety of design tools and content. However, it’s worth noting that some premium content and design tools are only available in the Pro version.
9. Website Optimization – Hotjar
Hotjar is a renowned product experience insights platform that provides visual behavior insights, in-the-moment user feedback, and one-to-one interviews, all in one place. It’s designed to help small to large businesses track and analyze visitors’ click, tap, or scrolling actions across the website using heatmaps.
Hotjar is known for its ability to give a real understanding of user behavior that traditional analytics tools can’t track—things like hesitations, U-turns, and scrolls that don’t lead to clicks. It connects the dots between what your users do and why, so you can confidently create and optimize user experiences that convert. It also offers recordings, surveys, feedback, user interviews, funnels, integrations, and trends highlights dashboard.
The free version of Hotjar includes 35 daily user sessions, unlimited Heatmaps, 3 feedback widgets, 3 surveys with unlimited questions, and 5 user interviews/month.
10. Analytics – Google Analytics
Google Analytics is known for its ability to track and report website traffic. It’s widely used by marketers, website administrators, and businesses of all sizes to understand user behavior on their websites.
The tool provides insights into how users find and use their websites, helping them to optimize their marketing strategies, content, and more.
The latest version of Google Analytics, known as Google Analytics 4 (GA4), has been the default since October 14, 2020. It’s designed for the future of measurement and collects event-based data from both websites and apps. This allows for a better understanding of the customer journey.
Harnessing the Power of Free Marketing Software Tools
In conclusion, the year 2023 has seen a surge in the use of free marketing software tools that cater to various aspects of marketing – from SEO and content planning to email marketing and social media management. These tools not only enhance efficiency but also provide valuable insights that help in strategic decision-making.
Don’t worry if your marketing budget is low. Tools like HubSpot, GMass, Ahrefs, and others in this list have generous free plans for you that are sufficient to get started and rock your marketing efforts.