5 Useful Online Marketing Tools for Business That Won't Cost You A Penny

20th August 2014 :: Author: Andrew Cope, Managing Director, Evergreen

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-save-money-image20885529

Which online marketing tools do you use for your business?

There are a whole raft of online marketing tools out there that can help you in your business. Some offer enhanced services or products for a one off, monthly or yearly charge but there are many out there that are offered completely free.

Here are 5 online marketing tools for business that won't cost you a penny.

1) WEBSITES - Are they up or down?

Down for Everyone Or Just Me?

It's always frustrating when you type in a web address and and the website appears to be down. Statistics show that when Facebook is down for just a few minutes, Facebook fans are put into a frenzy and start tweeting to find out if everyone is in the same boat.

However, when it's your own company's website it's not just frustrating when a website is down, it can lose you customers and revenue. It may be that there is a just a problem with the browser you are using, or with your internet connection or with the device you are using. Is it just you experiencing this down-time? Are your customers getting an error message too? This simple website lets you enter a URL so you can see whether the fault is localised to you or whether it is a general fault.

 

2) EMAIL MARKETING - Spam Checker

spamtesterEmail Spam Tester

Need to know whether your marketing emails are good enough to pass the spam test? You may have an in-built spam checker in your email marketing platform. If not, then this email spam tester online marketing tool can help. Just send your test email to an address given to you on the site and it will rate it out of 10. The higher the mark, the safer it is to send and the less likely it is to drop into your customers' spam folders. It will check to see if:

  • 'Spam Assassin' likes you
  • Your server is fully authenticated
  • Your message is safe and well formatted
  • Your IP address is appearing on 25 of the most common blacklists
  • Your email has any broken links


3) COMPETITORS - What are they doing online?

Which online marketing tool does your main competitor use? What are your competitors doing in terms of online advertising?

competitor marketing toolTregia

This website you to analyse any website to see which online marketing tools your competitors are using. Just type in the URL to search and it will tell you:

  • Which Analytics and Tracking tools are being used on the website
  • Which Social Media activity tools are being used on the website
  • What is being done to optimise content
  • If the website uses marketing automation
  • Which web technologies are being used on the website
  • Which tools are being used to track online advertising

brand competitor advertisingMoat

Type in a brand name to see which online adverts are currently appearing online. Not only will this give you the heads up on what your competition are or are not advertising, but you can also get creative inspiration from big name brands.

 

4) SEO – Free Keyword Suggestion Tool

wordstreamWordstream

This online marketing tool gives you ideas for thousands of keywords selected from a massive database of over a trillion unique searches. You can search for up to 30 keywords and it will come up with alternatives for you. After each search you'll be given a list of suggested keywords and you can delete any in the list that aren't relevant. The results from your edited list can then be emailed to you, with statistics about Google volume search and competition.

 

5) CONTENT – Free Plagiarism Checker

Copyscape

With each new SEO algorithm change, one thing remains constant – good quality, relevant content is one of the most important aspects of your website from both an SEO and customer perspective. By avoiding duplicate content, your site is more visible to search engines and is more valuable to your customers. How do you know if what you have written has been copied by others? Copyscape is a free plagiarism checker, which lets you verify your content. Just enter a URL and it will tell you if your content is original or if it has been copied from or copied by another site. There are paid for options using this online marketing tool but the basics which are free should get you off to a good start.

 

And Finally...

There are many more free online marketing tools for business out there that won't cost you a penny. All you have to do is look for them!

As former U.S. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld once said in a now infamous quote, ''We know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.''

You may already be familiar with the above online marketing tools for business but then again, there may be some up there which are your 'unknown unknowns'! Get searching today and make your marketing budget go further.