Top 10 Free Digital Marketing Tools to Grow Your Business

One of the great things about the internet is that, with a little time and money, anyone can start a business. However, if you’ve spent any amount of time online, you know that the old adage of “If you build it, they will come” was only true for Kevin Costner. Getting found online requires marketing. 

There are many digital marketing tools that will save you time, get your brand noticed, and make your marketing dollars more efficient. The tools you need and use are called your “stack” and stacks can get expensive quickly. Luckily for you, there are many companies offering valuable tools for free, allowing you to grow your business with a small budget. We’ve rounded up the best free marketing tools. 

Let’s get to it, and please let us know if you would add anything else to the list. 

SparkToro – Audience Research

What is it?

SparkToro tells you where your customers hang out online, the people they follow, what they read, what they listen to, what they watch, and more. It basically tells you where to focus your marketing to get the most impact.

Why it will help your business.

Guesses and hunches will only get you so far. Sparktoro provides you with the data you need to effectively target your audience online in just a few seconds. So you can make sure you aren’t wasting marketing dollars. 

RAEK – Identify your website visitors. Collect first-party data.

What is it?

RAEK identifies who is visiting your website and builds a customer data profile on them, so you can remarket to them through the marketing channel of your choice. 

Why it will help your business.

Many small businesses (and big ones) fall into the trap of exclusively using social media to reach their audience. The problem being you don’t really own your audience and can unfortunately lose access to it. RAEK allows you to build first-party data on your third party traffic, allowing you to truly own your audience. Retarget the people you drive to your website through email, SMS messaging, ad networks, or any other marketing channel. 

Canva – Graphic Design

What is it?

Canva is a graphic design platform with thousands of templates for your social media posts, blog posts, video, and printed materials. 

Why it will help your business.

Most of us are not graphic designers, and we are not endlessly creative. Enter Canva. They have thousands of free templates and a drag and drop builder that makes it easy to create marketing materials for your brand. 

Ahrefs – SEO

What is it?

An all-in-one SEO tool. Ahrefs allows you to audit your site, analyze your competitors, explore keywords, explore industry content, and track your progress. 

Why it will help your business.

SEO takes a while to gain momentum, but once it does, it will generate you high amounts of organic website traffic. Ahrefs will guide you.

Mailchimp – Email Marketing Tool

What is it?

Email Service Provider. Mailchimp is an easy to learn and use email marketing platforms with a drag and drop builder. It has a decent free plan and integrates with many of the other business tools you’re probably already using. 

Why it will help your business.

Online ads are like dating, email is where they say “yes”. Email converts. Email gives you direct access to your customers and allows you to build a relationship. The thing that will have the biggest impact on your business is building an email list and using it to communicate with your customers on a regular basis.

Hootsuite – Social Media Marketing Tool

What is it?

A social media scheduling platform that allows you to schedule out your social posts in advance. Hootsuite’s free plan allows you to connect 2 social channels and schedule up to 5 posts in advance. 

Why it will help your business.

Your time is valuable and yet you need to be consistent on social media. Hootsuite will save you time and allow you to consistently interact with your social media audiences. 

Hotjar – User Behavior

What is it?

Hotjar lets you see how people behave on your website, and where they are falling off. Hotjar provides heat maps, scroll maps, clicks, and screen recordings of individual users. 

Why it will help your business.

You probably spent a ton of time setting up your website, but do you know how the user actually interacts with it? Hotjar will show you what people look at when they come to your website, what they click on, and why they bounce. It allows you to see if there are common pain points in your website experience, so you can convert more website visitors and increase sales. 

Tolstoy – Branching Explainer Videos

What is it?

Tolstoy allows you to create interactive explainer videos for your website. You can use the videos to answer frequently asked questions, help with set-up, and showcase products on ecommerce websites. The videos are fully interactive, think choose your own adventure, 

Why it will help your business.

Customers have questions when they are on your website. Don’t make them wait for an answer. Tolstoy allows you to answer their questions with video, create shoppable video quizzes, and highlight your brand’s unique personality. All of this adds to happy website visitors and higher conversions. Best of all, right now Tolstoy is completely free to use.

Google Analytics – Website Analytics

What is it?

Google Analytics tracks and reports on your website traffics. It tells you where your traffic came from, audience details, audience behavior, and conversions. 

Why it will help your business.

Google Analytics takes just a few minutes to install on your website and will give you the data you need to see how effective your marketing campaigns are and how to improve. Like we always say – data.

KnoCommerce – Survey Platform

What is it?

With KnoCommerce you can build post purchase surveys that allow you to gain insights into your customers, segment, and engage them. 

Why it will help your business.

You know what we’re going to say here. DATA. KnoCommerce helps you build first-party data so you can truly know your customers and what makes them tick. Allowing you to engage them in meaningful ways. 

That’s our list of favorites. Hopefully you found a few new digital marketing tools to add to your arsenal. Did we miss any? Let us know what you would add to the list.