Don’t have time to trawl through all the latest and greatest marketing tools? Don’t worry–we did it for you.
When you work in marketing, you have an infinite set of tools you can choose. The right tools can not only be the key to heightened productivity but increase your sales.
The problem is that you have no time to research them.
You’re busy planning your next marketing campaign, building new partnerships, and juggling a dozen other urgent tasks. Keeping the lights on always comes first.
So, here’s a guide for all the overworked marketers. We put together the top 20 online marketing tools to lighten your load, get more done, and grow revenue.
Before we dive into it, we’re not going to point you to prominent tools like Google Analytics or SEMRush. The online marketing tools listed below are newer, lesser-known, and can help you with a particular marketing task.
P.S. We included mostly free tools because everything’s better when it’s free.
Here are five tools that will help you with everything from writing SEO-optimized copy to building backlinks.
HARO is a free service that provides journalists with sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for you to secure valuable media coverage. What’s excellent about HARO is that journalists come to you. This dynamic differs from most link building tactics where you are required to do all of the outreach.
What’s even better is that big media outlets are using the service. We’re talking Mashable, Time, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, just to name a few. The opportunity to get press and land high authority backlinks is ripe for the taking.
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://www.helpareporter.com
This website provides you with 100s of proven, micro-sized copywriting and persuasion lessons in the form of articles, interviews, and courses — all yours for free. It’s like Seth Godin’s blog (short, readable, punchy content) but exclusively about copywriting and persuasion.
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://www.verygoodcopy.com
Keyword Surfer is great for content marketers with a tight budget because it is 100% free and surprisingly powerful. It allows you to reveal search data and perform keyword research in Google Search.
Once you type your target phrase and press enter, you’ll uncover search volumes, keyword suggestions, related terms, visibility metrics, and on-page data. Based on the insights you can find the best keywords, determine their difficulty, and plan your content.
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://surferseo.com/keyword-surfer-extension
GrowthBar is an SEO software tool for results-driven entrepreneurs and marketers. It helps internet-enabled businesses––from blogs, to ecommerce businesses, to startups––uncover critical data points and recommendations.
Plus, it rocks for bloggers because you can create content in one click allowing you to rank quickly for important search terms
That’s right, GrowthBar is the first SEO tool to use OpenAI GPT-3, the largest language model ever created. You can generate content outlines for your blog or website with keywords, word counts, headers, images, links and more.
Cost: $29 per month
Learn More: https://growthbarseo.com/
If you write content intending to outrank your competition, then consider using INK. INK provides unique, real-time recommendations based on your competitors and the keyword you’re targeting.
You don’t waste any precious time on tasks that won’t help you rank, or follow generic rules like writing more words than you need.
If you’ve been using Yoast or another product to optimize your content for Google, this one’s worth a look––it’s more powerful than most similar tools: distraction-free-writing meets smart suggestions for SEO and beyond.
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://inkforall.com/
One way to get more customers is to get your business or product featured in a major publication or website. Getting press coverage is not only essential to drive traffic to your website, but also a way to gain trust in your industry.
A professional press kit is crucial to achieving this. It presents your product and brand, gives access to photos and other marketing material, gives social proof by listing press coverage, and makes it easy for journalists to get information about your store.
If that sounds like a lot of work, PressKitHero makes it dead simple to create a professional-looking press kit. No coding required, and no need to hire a designer.
Cost: $99 per month
Learn More: https://presskithero.com/
If you want to increase your sales, you’ll need to focus on CRO. Here are three tools that will help your conversion rates skyrocket.
No matter what type of business you have, A/B testing can be a great way to generate more engagement and revenue from your website. But if you’re new to the world of A/B tests, it can be difficult to know where to start.
One free calculator that seeks to answer all of your A/B test questions is the experiment calculator from CXL. It’s broken into two sections: pre-test and post-test. You can answer the following essential questions:
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://cxl.com/ab-test-calculator
Most marketers think that tweaking copy, images, and overall page performance are the best way to improve a website’s conversion rate. They’re a great first port of call.
But if you want to increase your website’s conversion rate by 200%, add our mobile sign-up widget to your site. (Just ask Toroe Eyewear who did precisely that.)
The widget makes it easy for website visitors to text in a keyword. (A keyword is a word, phrase, or other combination of numbers and letters that allows people to subscribe to your text messages.)
When visitors click on the widget, it opens a pop-up with more information on your text marketing program. You can also offer an incentive like Toroe Eyewear did to help convert website visitors into paying customers.
When they click the button within the pop-up, their native text app opens with the keyword and number prefilled. All they have to do is tap send.
The best part is that you’re increasing your site’s conversion rate and building a list of SMS subscribers that you can text after. With SMS conversion rates as high as 45%, that list is like gold to your business.
Cost: The widget is free, and SimpleTexting plans start at $29
Learn More: https://simpletexting.com/tool/mobile-sign-up-widget/
When you search social media on the software comparison directory Capterra, you get over 3,000 results. There are a lot of social media tools out there. Here are three new tools worth checking out.
Instagram allows users to place only one clickable link in the profile description, but this is often not enough. Using Taplink, you can place any number of links to pages of your products and services, special offers, instant messengers for communication in one click, accounts in social networks, and more.
Cost: Free and paid plans available
Learn More: https://taplink.at
There are a lot of influencer platforms out there. What sets Influencity apart from the competition is that it has the most robust influencer database with over 70 million profiles. Plus, its influencer search works for Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok.
You can do hyper-segmented searches using more than 20 filters; for instance, you can find vegan couples with dogs or female gamers in Kuala Lumpur. It also comes equipped with an influencer campaign management system, with no campaign fees.
Cost: 7-day free trial and then pricing starts at $148 per month
Learn More: https://influencity.com
InVideo is one of the best social media video creation tools out there. It’s easy to use, comes with a ton of templates, and even enables you to collaborate with teammates.
Cost: Free and paid plans – $8 per month to create and export 60 videos
Learn More: https://invideo.io
Successful companies like Airbnb and Uber have proved design has a tangible impact on the bottom line. Here’s a selection of new tools that help you improve your brands look and feel.
Blush is a plugin and web app that lets you add beautiful illustrations from different artists to your designs. The coolest thing is that every little piece is customizable. It’s like playing with legos made of vectors!
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://blush.design
Every company that advertises online goes through the process of creating banners and ads. It’s especially time-consuming if you don’t have access to design resources.
Abyssale is an automated generation platform that helps you save time and money by automating banners ads creation. Simply drag and drop your product images and brand guidelines to generate relevant and attractive banners.
Cost: Free trial and paid plans available
Learn More: https://www.abyssale.com
Mockup Generator is a DIY tool to create attractive product screenshots. With this tool, you can choose a suitable mockup template/image, add text, a background, and other graphics to download the mockup in the highest resolution.
Cost: Free and paid plans available
Learn More: https://theapplaunchpad.com
Getting your promotion and advertising strategy right is one of the quickest ways to increase sales. Here are some tools to help you do just that.
If you look at viral success stories like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Uber, they didn’t grow by marketing to individual people. They grew by getting invested users in bringing them more customers through the use of referral programs and sharing incentives. The team at Viral Loops wants you to do the same thing and built this referral program tool.
With this tool, you can set the basic parameters of your campaign, in 4 steps:
1. How people join your referral program (email, social signup, etc.)
2. Which channels people use to invite their friends (messenger, email, etc.)
3. What type of rewards people will be getting (internal currency, discounts, etc.)
4. Who will get rewarded? Both the referrer and the invitee?
From there, you create a landing page and place a small javascript snippet into its footer.
Cost: Starts at $49 per month
Learn More: https://viral-loops.com/
Instaaa is a mass marketing tool/service which will promote your startup on up to 125 directories with a single click. Submissions are manual, and the entire submission process is public and transparent.
Cost: Pricing starts $67
Learn More: www.instaaa.com/
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that “ultimately, there’s one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself.” With those wise words in mind, we want to finish this guide by looking at two free learning tools.
Primer is a free, fast, and easy way to learn new business and digital marketing skills. Once you download the Primer app you can take lessons on business planning, management, sales, digital advertising, social media, content marketing, SEO, analytics, branding, and more whenever you have 5 minutes free. The idea is that it’s learning anytime, anywhere.
The neat thing is that you get personalized next steps after each lesson to put your new skills to work right away.
You know how you go to a recipe site, and you get a 2000-word backstory on the chocolate cake before you get to the ingredients and instructions on how to make the damn thing. On a marketing site, you replace that with a few opt-in pop ups, push notification requests, and an invitation to join a webinar.
The idea behind TL;DR Marketing is to skip all of that. It’s for people who don’t have time to keep on top of all the digital marketing changes. Instead, you get an email on weekdays with links to stories that impact organic, paid, and social media marketing.
Cost: Free
Learn More: https://tldrmarketing.com
Have you ever heard the saying, “A bad workman blames his tools”? The person who coined it probably wasn’t a marketer.
We all know it helps to have online marketing tools that expand your skillset, allow you to try new channels, and save you time. In other words, being a great marketer also means using the right tools at the right time.
Drew Wilkinson is the Head of Marketing at SimpleTexting. Drew has more than a decade of experience managing successful integrated marketing programs to build brands, raise awareness, and generate demand.
More Posts from Drew WilkinsonWhat is mobile dependency, and how does it relate to smartphone addiction? Read on for symptoms, treatment options, and more.
ReadAs dramatic changes come to the automotive industry, proactive car dealers can benefit significantly from these six dealership marketing strategies.
ReadStart a text marketing campaign or have a 1-on-1 conversation today. It's risk free. Sign up for a free 14-day trial today to see SimpleTexting in action.
No credit card required