There is so many amazing marketing tools out there, it’s difficult to know which are the best for you. Here are our top recommendations for every day marketing tools for marketers on a budget.

Every one of these tools have a free or low cost option.

Tactics based tools

Measurement – Free – Google Analytics

Let’s start with the basics. Google Analytics is one of those ‘givens’ in marketing. If you don’t have analytics set up on your site… get on it. The platform allows you to view and analyse the traffic coming in to your site, set goals and more – giving you the ability to judge how successful your efforts have been.

SEO – Free [For now] – Google My Business

Google My Business is particularly effective for companies operating on a local basis. GMB allows you to have a say on how your business appears in the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) by providing the platform with more information about your business. Another quick and easy one to set up, with big benefits. There are rumblings that Google will be launching a paid option of GMB, so now is the time to get in.

SEO – Free version available – Screaming frog

Screaming Frog is a great free tool to quickly analyse your website and highlight any opportunities for SEO improvement. If your website is relatively small (less than 500 URLs), you can use the tool for free to Find Broken Links, Errors & Redirects, Analyse Page Titles & Meta Data, Review Meta Robots & Directives, Audit hreflang Attributes, Discover Exact Duplicate Pages, Generate XML Sitemaps and create Site Visualisations.

SEO – Free – AlsoAsked

AlsoAsked.com will take your search term and show you what other questions “people also ask”. We’ll then dig deeper and show you visually how each level of questions is topically grouped with the next. It’ll help you gain an understanding of how questions are topically grouped to inspire writers, inform content teams and ensure you’re satisfying users and reaching your SEO potential.

Website builder – £89 per year – Divi

Now. We think that paying a designer and UX specialist is worth the expense. That being said, if you’re adamant on creating something yourself, and would like to build it on Wordpress (as opposed to options such as Squarespace), then Divi is a good option. Divi offers easy drag and drop website creation for Wordpress – and gladly… it just works.

Video – Free – Handbrake

Handbrake compresses videos on your desktop, reducing the size of huge video files with fairly minimal quality loss. This has come into it’s own making uploading webinars to YouTube easier on dodgy village wi-fi, or when needing to store files after initial release, just in case. 

Video – Free – iMovie or Adobe Spark

For small bits of video where you don’t need the professional sheen a full production team, iMovie does just fine on a Mac, or Adobe Spark for those running on Windows. Again, this is a judgement call on what you specifically need, with you not being able to expect professional results from these pieces of software. 

Podcasts – Free – Anchor.fm

Where we post our podcasts from. Simple, clean UI and decent analytics.

CRM and Email Marketing – Free up to 2,000 contacts – Mailchimp

It’s easy to sneer at Mailchimp because of it’s widespread usage reputation for just being used by the smallest of the small. But you know what, it does exactly the job it needs to.  Mailchimp is our CRM and email system all in one. And like any tool, it’s as good as the person using it – Hiut Denim use Mailchimp for their emails, which are as good as any across the world.

Content Scheduling and Creation – £17 per month and a free trial – ContentCal

Really well thought through content creation and scheduling software. Best used in small teams where spreadsheets prevail, ContentCal is used to schedule content and communicate with clients. At TMM, if I have a series of thoughts for content, I plonk it into CC and refine over time.

Useful, but more general tools

Transcription – Subscription for £5.99 per month – Otter.ai

It’s increasingly important to ensure your videos are transcribed, whether that’s for accessibility reasons or optimising your videos for folks watching them without their sound on. The benefit of Otter.ai is you get a quick transcription for occasions when you need a general gist of what is going on.

Transcription – $1.25 per minute of transcript/captioning – Rev.com

Rev is much more accurate than Otter.ai, but has a cost per minute (of video) of transcription created. This is still great, and you’re getting your transcript within 24 hours, so it’s also fast. Use this when accuracy is more important than speed.

Image creation and editing – Free or paid plans – Canva

Just like iMovie/Abobe Spark, Canva is not there when you need a professional, high-sheen result. But, for quick and easy graphic creation, you can’t beat it. Moreover, the paid plan is affordable, but also offers the benefit of assigning your brand colours and font to the platform to save time.

Project Management – Free – Trello 

Trello lets you work more collaboratively and get more done. Simples.

Digital Asset Management – Third Light Chorus

Where we keep all TMM’s files. Better than Google Drive and much more searchable.

Conversational Marketing – Leadoo (not a cheap one!)

This breaks the rule a bit, but if you were looking to invest, I would do so in Leadoo. Best in class conversational marketing from an exciting Finnish startup.

For the bits you can’t do – Fiverr

Throughout The Marketing Meetup website, you’ll see loads of examples of Fiverr at work. Freelance talent when you need it.