10 of the Best Free Digital Marketing Tools in 2023
We love digital marketing tools at Rixxo. Our browsers are full of bookmarks that help us provide our digital marketing services for B2B businesses faster and better. We’re suckers for new, shiny tools and are always on the lookout for anything that helps us stay on top of our game.
It’s no secret that to succeed online, businesses of all sizes need to have a strong presence and invest heavily in marketing. Sadly we don’t all have a marketing budget to match our growth aspirations. Thankfully, there are a great many digital marketing tools available that can help you grow your business without breaking the bank. These tools can help you with everything from social media management to email marketing to SEO and customer relationship management.
In this article, we will take a look at 10 of the best free digital marketing tools available. Free stuff is cool, but free does not always mean useful. That’s why we created this list – so you can save time and get straight to the good stuff.
How free digital marketing tools can help you grow your business:
- Increase website traffic: Free tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you track website traffic and identify areas where you can improve your website’s ranking in search results.
- Generate leads: Free tools like HubSpot CRM can help you generate leads and nurture them into customers.
- Improve your social media presence: Free tools like Semrush can help you schedule posts, track engagement, and measure results across multiple social media platforms.
- Create high-quality content: Free tools like Canva can help you create high-quality images, videos, and other content that will engage your target audience.
If you are looking for ways to grow your business without breaking the bank, grab a coffee and get ready to smash your digital marketing!
The list – best for SEO
1. Google Analytics
A free web analytics service that helps you track and measure website traffic. It can be used to track website visitors, identify trends, and measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. There is a learning curve, and the interface is not the most intuitive, but if you want to be able to make marketing decisions on data, rather than feelings, it’s an essential tool.
2. Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools)
People often ask: “What’s the difference between Google Search Console and Google Analytics? The short answer is:
Google Analytics helps you learn about your website users while Search Console monitors your site’s performance in search engines.
You can see which queries and pages bring users to your site, how many impressions, clicks, and positions you get on Google Search, and how your site performs on different devices and countries.
- Fix issues and errors: You can get alerts and reports on any issues or errors that Google finds on your site, such as crawl errors, index coverage issues, security issues, mobile usability issues, etc. You can also fix them and tell Google when you’ve done so.
- Optimise your site for search: You can submit sitemaps and individual URLs for crawling, test your robots.txt file, inspect your URLs for index and serving information, request the removal of outdated or unwanted content, etc.
- Enhance your site’s features: You can enable and monitor various features that make your site stand out on Google Search, such as rich results, breadcrumbs, sitelinks search box, logos, etc.
Google Search Console is a useful tool for anyone with a website who wants to improve their visibility and relevance on Google Search. It’s easy to set up, use, and integrate with other tools and platforms.
https://search.google.com/search-console/about
3. Google Ads (previously Adwords)
Tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs and the lesser-known Mangools are fantastic and invaluable for keyword research. However, if you’re on a tight budget, Google Ads is actually a great tool to get you started for free.
It can help you discover new opportunities, optimise your budget, and improve your relevance and quality score.
4. Mangools Google Serp Simulator
A free Google SERP simulator that lets you see the title tag, URL and meta description in the search results as you write them.
These are the elements that appear in the search engine results page (SERP) and influence how users perceive and click on your site or app.
- Preview your SERP snippet: You can see how your title tag, URL, and meta description look in Google’s SERP as you write them. You can also choose different options such as heatmap, date, rating, ads, or map pack to see how they affect your snippet appearance.
- Check your title tag and meta description length: You can see the number of characters and pixels for your title tag and meta description and make sure they fit within the optimal range. The tool will also show you a progress bar that indicates the length of your elements.
- Optimise for SERP features: You can submit a keyword that you want to rank for and see the real search results for it. You can then drag and drop your SERP snippet and compare it with your competitors in different positions. You can also see which SERP features are triggered by your keyword, such as featured snippets, people also ask, images, videos, etc.
Mangools SERP Simulator is a handy tool that can help you improve your on-page SEO and boost your organic click-through rate. It’s easy to use and integrates with other Mangools tools such as KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner, and SiteProfiler.
https://mangools.com/free-seo-tools/serp-simulator?ref=menu-mngls
5. Semrush – Social Media Management
Managing multiple social media accounts is a time-sink. Semrush solves that by offering a (free) social media publishing and management tool so you can manage everything from one place. Semrush helps you with:
- Publishing: You can schedule and post content to multiple accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google My Business. You can also use Semrush’s image editor, UTM-builder, link shortener and RSS feeds to enhance your content
- Tracking: You can monitor and analyse your social media metrics, such as engagement, followers, mentions and hashtags. You can also compare your results with your competitors and get data-driven improvement recommendations.
- Reporting: You can create and automate visual reports that showcase your social media performance and KPIs. You can also receive them in your inbox or share them with your team or clients
Best for graphic design
6. Canva
If you need a graphic design tool that helps you create professional-looking images and graphics for your website, social media, and marketing materials, Canva is a fantastic tool and a daily staple here at Rixxo. Canva can help you:
- Create: Choose from templates or start from scratch to design social media posts, infographics, resumes, etc.
- Edit: Customise your designs with drag and drop, and access millions of premium photos, elements, videos, and audio.
- Share: Download, print, or share your designs online or collaborate with others.
Canva is a free and user-friendly tool that can help you design anything you need. It’s also compatible with other platforms and tools and offers advanced features for pro users.
Best CRM and email marketing tool
7. HubSpot
Combines a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool that helps you track leads, manage customer interactions, and close deals, with an email marketing tool. It’s free to get started.
Send personalised emails with HubSpot’s free email tool and CRM. You’ll get contact insights to customise your emails and boost engagement. Design stunning emails without coding. Use the drag-and-drop editor to easily adjust your layout, images, and content. Schedule emails ahead of time and relax. Plan your email campaigns in advance and let HubSpot deliver them for you.
HubSpot CRM and email marketing tool is a free platform that helps you manage your contacts and send personalised emails to your customers. Here are the 3 most important benefits of using HubSpot CRM and email marketing tool¹³:
- Create and optimise your marketing emails: You can use HubSpot’s drag and drop editor and templates to design professional emails that display perfectly across any device. You can also use HubSpot’s AI Assistant to generate ideas, repurpose posts, write faster, and reach more people with your video content.
- Personalise your emails with CRM data: Use HubSpot’s CRM data to tailor your emails to each recipient based on their lifecycle stage, interests, behaviour, and other information. You can also segment your contacts and send targeted campaigns to boost your open and click through rates.
- Track and analyse your email performance: Measure and compare your email metrics, such as engagement, conversions, revenue, etc. You can also use A/B tests to experiment with different variations of your emails and get data-driven recommendations to improve your results.
HubSpot CRM and email marketing tool is a simple and effective tool that can help you grow your brand and business with email marketing. It’s also compatible with other HubSpot tools and platforms and offers advanced features for pro users
Best for building a free website
8. WordPress
There is a reason that WordPress currently powers 43% of all websites in existence. WordPress is a free content management system (CMS) that can be used to design, build and manage a website, for free! It is open-source and there are many free themes and plugins available.
- Themes: Choose from thousands of themes or create your own to customise the appearance and functionality of your website. Themes can be easily installed, activated, and changed from the WordPress dashboard.
- Plugins: Extend the features and capabilities of your website. Plugins are software components that add specific functions to your website, such as contact forms, SEO tools, security features, etc. You can install and manage plugins from the WordPress dashboard or upload your own.
- Content management: WordPress is a flexible and powerful CMS. Suitable for anything from a simple blog to a full eCommerce site
WordPress is a free and user-friendly CMS that can help you create and manage any type of website. It’s also compatible with other tools and platforms and offers advanced features for pro users.
Need help with Wordpress?
With over a decade of Wordpress expertise, we can build or improve your site. From lead generation to eCommerce, contact us for a free strategy call.
Best productivity tool
9. Notion
Notion is a beautifully executed organisational and productivity software tool. With almost too many use cases to list, it’s a true “Swiss army knife” tool that can act as the brain of your business. Best of all, it’s free to get started. Here are some of the many ways Notion can help you with your digital marketing:
- Marketing Plan: Create and track your marketing plan, including your goals, strategies, budget, and metrics. You can also use Notion’s templates and integrations to plan and execute your campaigns, such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, etc.
- Customer Relationship Management: You can use Notion to store and manage your customer data, such as contact information, preferences, feedback, and purchase history. You can also use Notion’s CRM tools to segment your customers, send personalised emails, and track your interactions and conversions.
- Project Management: Manage any type of project, such as product development, website design, event planning, etc. You can create tasks, assign owners, set deadlines, and track progress. You can also use Notion’s views and filters to visualise your project in different ways, such as board, table, timeline, calendar, etc.
- Knowledge Base: Create and share your knowledge base with your team or customers. You can write articles, guides, FAQs, tutorials, etc. You can also use Notion’s rich media features to add images, videos, audio, code blocks, etc. to your content.
- Content Writing: Use Notion’s AI features to generate ideas, write faster, and optimise your content.
Notion is a free and user-friendly software that can help you streamline and automate your business processes. It’s also compatible with other tools and platforms and offers advanced features for pro users.
Best shameless plug
10. Our B2B Marketing Guide
We put together a free B2B marketing guide, packed full of examples of eCommerce and B2B emails you should be sending. We’re pretty proud of it and designed it with the idea of adding real value as a reference resource which you can keep dipping into for ideas. It also includes a checklist of important elements not to miss in your emails. You can get it here! We also have a tool for calculating how many leads you to need, which you can try out here.
Get going and growing
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the DIY spirit of the small business startup. Many of us started small and we salute you. We hope some of these resources help you on your digital journey towards greatness.
And if you ever feel stuck or overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to reach out to digital marketing experts for advice or assistance. They can either do the project for you or point you in the right direction.
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