Marketing is easier now than ever before, but that doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park. You need to know a little bit about psychology, analytics and best practices in order to be a great marketer, but you also need great tools to accomplish your goals and visions.
Luckily it’s possible to achieve your marketing dreams while on a budget. There are tons of free online marketing tools out there, and here’s four I’ve really come to love.
Pablo by Buffer
Visual content is winning these days. It’s not enough to tweet — you also need an image attached. Posts with just text don’t get the same kind of engagement statistics that posts with images or videos do. Explainer videos are more popular than text-based how-to guides — and the same goes for infographics.
Don’t worry if you aren’t exactly inclined when it comes to photography or graphics. Sites like Pablo by Buffer let you choose an image, edit and crop it to fit your social media and business theme. Quickly add text to any image, as well as your logo.
Answer The Public
Your audience has burning questions, and they want answers. What are these questions? Some you can reason out with analytics data, interviews and some research, but that still doesn’t paint a total picture of what information your audience is really looking for.
If you want to know how to truly give your audience content they can find valuable, use Answer the Public. This tool allows business owners to search through keywords and questions posed by Internet users based on keywords related to their business. This makes it easier to produce content that your audience can actually find useful, promoting your brand image and garnering more organic hits.
Moz Local: Check Listing
What is your business NAP? This acronym stands for the most important contact methods you have available: your business Name, Address and Phone number. Get it now?
Your NAP is essential to marketing online, but how this information shows up can vary depending on the particular search engine you’re using. Moz Local: Check Listing allows business owners to enter their business link into the generator and receive information about how their business shows up across popular search engines like Bing, Yahoo! and (of course) Google. This gives you a good picture of how your customers view you online.
Portent’s Title Generator
Finally, Portent’s Title Generator is perfect for those who want to work on their content marketing strategies. A catchy title is the easiest way to get someone to click on a blog or article you have hosted on your website, but not everyone is great at coming up with a valuable yet intriguing blog title.
The way this generator works is that you come up with a subject and type it into the field provided — that’s all the work you need to do. If your business is focused on cosmetics, type in “cosmetics” or “makeup.” If you’re an entrepreneur interested in public speaking, type in “motivation” or “positivity.” From there, all it takes is the click of a button and you’ve got tons of creative titles to choose from.
