As the marketing technology market continues to grow, companies are now spending increasingly more on tools and technology designed to help them reach new customers. However, helpful marketing tools don’t have to cost a small fortune!
In fact, there’s a long list of high-quality marketing tools that business owners can use completely free of charge. In this article, we’ll highlight 11 of the top free marketing tools you can use to optimize your marketing efforts—without having to spend a dime! Note: These tools were found during our online research while writing this article.
1. Bitly
Links and URLs are like the transportation system for digital marketing. If you want to send your email subscribers or social media followers somewhere valuable, like a product page or landing page, they need a link to get there.
However, default URLs can be long, messy, and difficult to work with. For social media posts on platforms like Twitter or Instagram, where there are character limits or link bans, this can be an especially big problem. But even for emails or posts on social media accounts with more forgiving character limits, you want sleek marketing content that’s easy on the eyes—not a messy string of characters.
With Bitly, creating attractive, custom short URLs is easy. Plus, Bitly also lets you create custom QR Codes and Link-in-bio pages. Most importantly, Bitly’s advanced Link Management tools let you track engagement on all your Bitly links to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Bitly’s Free plan provides 10 short links and two QR Codes (independent from each other) per month, and Bitly also offers several paid plans with additional digital marketing features and higher link limits.
When you need to send your followers or subscribers somewhere important via a link, make sure that you send them there in style! With Bitly, you can share short URLs, QR Codes, and Link-in-bio pages via email and social networks with the click of a button.
Start using Bitly to create and manage links that drive engagement!
Key features and capabilities
- Manage links and track analytics and clicks.
- Easily shorten long URLs to create concise and shareable short links.
- Generate QR Codes for offline marketing campaigns.
- Design a custom Bitly Link-in-bio landing page for all your links.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a wide variety of powerful marketing tools and features—many of which are free to use. This includes tools for managing leads, creating engaging content, and automating marketing workflows.
HubSpot also offers a free CRM for organizing and tracking interactions with prospects and customers. The functionality offered by the free version of HubSpot’s CRM may not meet the needs of larger organizations. But for smaller sales and marketing teams, HubSpot’s free CRM can be a great tool for improving customer relations and driving sales.
Key features and capabilities
- Email marketing tools with basic email templates, tracking, and analytics
- Live chat and chatbot pop-ups for engaging with website visitors in real-time
- Basic CRM for organizing and tracking interactions with leads and customers
- Forms for capturing lead information and integrating it into the CRM
3. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a project management platform designed specifically for marketing teams. With CoSchedule, you’ll have the tools to streamline your marketing projects and efficiently plan, schedule, and execute marketing campaigns.
CoSchedule provides tools that make it easy for marketing teams to collaborate on projects and communicate efficiently. CoSchedule also provides social media scheduling features for scheduling posts and managing content on multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard.
With the free version of CoSchedule, you can manage two social media profiles. However, there are also paid versions of the tool that offer unlimited social media publishing in addition to other advanced features.
Key features and capabilities
- User-friendly marketing calendar for planning and scheduling campaigns
- Social media scheduling and management
- Basic analytics to track social media performance and campaign success
- Customizable content templates to streamline content creation
4. Canva
Your customers are visual creatures, and capturing their attention with eye-catching images and graphics is a vital element of successful marketing. With Canva, you can create professional-quality designs for your brand—without being a graphic design wizard!
The free version of Canva offers an impressive library of pre-made design templates, along with drag-and-drop tools you can use to customize them. These features make it easy for anyone to create attention-grabbing graphics for social media posts, blog images, and infographics.
Key features and capabilities
- Thousands of professionally designed templates for various marketing materials
- Drag-and-drop tools for customizing designs
- Extensive library of stock photos, illustrations, icons, and graphics
- Collaboration features for collaborative design editing
5. Hotjar
Your website is likely your company’s most valuable marketing tool, and Hotjar helps you understand how your website is working to convert visitors into customers.
Hotjar offers a variety of tools for tracking website performance and user behavior on your website. This includes a heatmap tool that visually represents how visitors interact with each element on your website.
Hotjar’s Basic plan is completely free and provides automatic data capture and unlimited heatmaps for up to 500 daily sessions.
Key features and capabilities
- Tools for analyzing form interactions
- Click, move, and scroll heatmaps to visualize user behavior on your website
- On-site surveys and polls for gathering visitor feedback
6. Hemingway Editor
According to Content Marketing Institute, 88% of B2B marketers report using content marketing to successfully create brand awareness and build credibility and trust. However, if you want to take advantage of all that content marketing offers, you have to start by producing excellent content.
Hemingway Editor is one of the best marketing tools for content marketers looking to improve the quality of their written content. Hemingway Editor offers real-time feedback on content as it’s written, providing suggestions to enhance its readability and clarity.
By using the free version of this tool to analyze your written content, you can ensure that your marketing messages are clear and engaging for your readers.
Key features and capabilities
- Highlights complex sentences
- Identifies excessive use of adverbs
- Detects instances of passive voice
- Compatible with mobile devices for on-the-go content creation
7. Buffer
Buffer is another excellent tool for managing social media accounts. Buffer lets you plan, schedule, and publish posts across multiple social media platforms, while also providing valuable insights into post performance. Buffer also features an AI assistant designed to help generate content ideas and offer suggestions.
With the free version of Buffer, you can manage content for up to three social media channels. Buffer’s AI assistant and basic analytics features are also included in the free plan.
Key features and capabilities
- Plan and schedule posts for up to three social media accounts.
- Upload and share images and videos with scheduled posts.
- Access basic analytics features for tracking post performance.
- Use the mobile app for remote social media management.
8. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool that every marketer should know well, and it’s one of the best ways to track the performance of your website. Google Analytics offers detailed reports and real-time data on website performance and user behavior, empowering marketing teams with the insights they need to optimize their digital marketing efforts.
With Google Analytics, you can track vital metrics like website traffic, user engagement, conversion rates, and many more. It also provides powerful audience segmentation features that enable marketers to understand their target demographics and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly. Best of all, the free version of Google Analytics offers more than enough features to meet the needs of most marketing teams.
Key features and capabilities
- Real-time activity monitoring of website visitors
- Features for analyzing and segmenting visitors based on demographics and behavior
- Detailed website traffic analyses
- Conversion tracking
9. Google Trends
Google Trends is another exceptional free tool offered by Google. With this free keyword tool, you can analyze the popularity and search volume of specific keywords and topics to identify emerging trends and relevant topics.
Google Trends is a tool for helping you understand what your audience is interested in. It even offers geographic data so you can uncover regional interests and understand what people are searching for based on where they live. Best of all, Google Trends is a completely free tool, and all features come included at no charge.
Key features and capabilities
- Real-time data and insights into the popularity of search terms and topics
- Historical search volume trends for specific keywords or topics
- Regional and country-specific trends that allow you to understand local interests
- Keyword comparison tool to measure the popularity of multiple keywords or topics simultaneously
10. Mailchimp
Email marketing remains an effective marketing channel for small businesses and large organizations alike—so much so that Litmus reports 70% of brands reported increasing their email marketing efforts in 2021.
But if you want to create effective and time-efficient email marketing campaigns, choosing the right tool is an important place to start.
There are several reasons why Mailchimp is considered one of the top email marketing platforms available today. To start, Mailchimp’s user-friendly interface and intuitive drag-and-drop email editor make it easy to create stunning email campaigns—with no graphic design experience required.
Mailchimp also offers a long list of customizable templates and automation workflows that will save your email marketing team even more time and effort. Last but not least, Mailchimp’s deep integrations with other ecommerce platforms and tools enable seamless data syncing and the ability to discover powerful new email marketing capabilities.
Key features and capabilities
- Advanced segmentation and targeting options
- User-friendly drag-and-drop email design tools
- Automated email workflows and autoresponders
- Customizable email templates
- A/B testing tools for optimizing email campaigns
11. Grammarly
While your readers will likely forgive the occasional mistake, professionalism is important. If your written content is plagued with grammatical errors and typos, it’ll be difficult to convince your audience that your brand is credible and trustworthy.
Grammarly is an excellent tool for helping content marketers (or any marketer creating written content) ensure their content is error-free. With Grammarly’s free plan, you can use an advanced text analyzer to highlight misspellings and mistakes in your content, ensuring that everything you publish is a perfectly polished reflection of your brand.
Key features and capabilities
- Weekly writing insights and performance statistics for tracking productivity and improvements
- Automated, real-time grammar and spelling checks
- Basic writing style recommendations to enhance the overall flow and tone of the content
Revolutionize your marketing strategy with Bitly
If you’re looking to expand your marketing strategy without expanding your marketing budget, these tools are all excellent options to consider.
Bitly is a tool every marketer should have in their digital toolbox. With Bitly, you can effortlessly create short links, QR Codes, and Link-in-bio pages and track their performance with advanced analytics and reporting features.
Sign up for Bitly today to revolutionize your link management and marketing strategy!
