With the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, it is essential for businesses to stay up to date with the latest tools and technologies. However, investing in expensive marketing tools may not always be feasible, especially for small businesses or startups. That’s where free marketing tools come into play.
There are numerous free marketing tools available today that can help businesses create, manage and track their marketing efforts. These tools not only save costs, but also offer a wide range of features and functionalities to support various aspects of marketing.
In this article, we have compiled a list of our top free marketing tools that businesses can use in 2024.
1. Canva
Canva is a popular graphic design tool that offers a wide variety of templates, photos, illustrations and fonts to create visually appealing marketing materials. With its drag-and-drop interface, users can easily design good-looking graphics for social media posts, infographics, leaflets and more. Canva also offers a paid version with additional features but the free version has enough capabilities for most basic marketing needs.
Find out more https://www.canva.com/
What we love
Canva is a brilliant entry-level tool for users who don’t know how to use, or want to pay for, the ‘industry standard’ design tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or XD. We recommend it to clients to let them quickly and easily size graphics when updating their website, but the skills learnt from this can quickly let them expand into other areas such as creating social media posts. Canva offers a basic free account so it’s easy to get started. If you want to see it in action our help video showing us adding a new blog to our website makes use of Canva to prepare the featured image.
What to watch out for
Canva is brilliant for quick and simple graphics, but not for creating an initial branding/logo, this type of job needs to be done correctly from the outset to ensure brand consistency with everything that comes after. Canva by default does not give you the brand assets in a portable format, this means that you will need to get the items recreated if you need them for other purposes. Recreating them in the correct format can be time consuming and you run the risk of different marketing material having different colours and branding applied to them.
We would suggest getting your branding and logo created professionally first with a company that provides all of your brand assets that you can later bring into Canva for creating additional marketing material. To find out more about this process see: The Logo Design Process, Get the Right Format for Your Logo, Brand Guidelines, Why Are They Important?
2. Social Champ
Social media is an essential aspect of digital marketing, and managing multiple social media accounts can be time-consuming. Social Champ is a free tool that allows businesses to schedule posts across different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Find out more https://www.socialchamp.io/
What we love
Social Champ is a tool aimed at managing multiple social media accounts but this does not mean it’s no good for small businesses who only have one or two accounts! It has a range of features that can really streamline your social media efforts and free up more time to focus on the connections you make! We love its ability to keep everything in one place and allow multiple users to access the account, we have been able to jump onto clients’ accounts to help resolve issues or audit their account with ease.
The service also offers the ability to plan out content and schedule in posts, this means you can invest time when you have it to plan out your socials for the coming month and stress less about it when your busy. Combined with Canva and stock image websites you can get your social media game up to speed in no time at all.
What to watch out for
Social Champ offers a free account with limitations on the number of social profiles you can connect, for most small businesses you will be able to work within these limits but review their paid plans for what best fits your needs.
The age old “rubbish in, rubbish out’ also fits for this tool, it will help you plan in your social media activity but won’t help with the quality of the content so take the time to make sure your social media strategy is on point first! For more help on this look at Social Media Image Dimensions as well as our free Social Media Brief document that can help you really plan out what it is you want to say.
3. Free Stock Images
Images are an essential part of any marketing strategy, and finding the right images can be a time-consuming task. While you are always better to showcase your own images, especially for product or property marketing, this is not always practical. This is were stock image services come into play, they offer a library of images that you can use for your websites and marketing, some of these however can be expensive and for smaller projects not always affordable.
Fortunately, there are several websites that offer free stock images that businesses can use for their marketing efforts.
Some of our favourite sites include: Pexels, Unsplash, Pixabay
What we love
Stock images can give your marketing a professional look right out of the box, they are particularly useful for new website projects where the content may not exist yet. Sometimes it can be hard to decide on what type of image is needed for a particular project, free stock image sites let you try out multiple images without having to worry about the costs. The fact they are free also means you can get the most out of your budget and use it on other elements.
What to watch out for
Searching for stock images can be time consuming, if you’re opting for a free service you will need to do the leg work yourself instead of relying on your designer to assist, you may also spend longer looking for high-quality images because they are free and not always at the same quality level as the paid for options.
Make sure you take the time to read the licensing information, you may need to attribute the use of the image to the copyright holder or there may be limitations on what you can use the image for. An example of this is images that are marked as editorial use only, this prevents you from using them in your marketing altogether and is something to watch out for even with the paid stock image services.
4. Coolors.co
Colour plays a crucial role in branding and marketing, and choosing the right colour scheme can be a challenging task. Coolors is a free tool that helps businesses generate harmonious colour schemes based on their chosen colour or theme.
Find out more https://coolors.co/
What we love
Adding additional colours to your brand’s colour palette opens up more design freedom while also giving you the ability to highlight differing services or messages with their own colours. It is important however that these additional brand colours add to your overall brand image instead of making your business look amateurish with a colour mix that does not sit together well. This is where Coolors.co comes in, you can feed your established brand colours into it and it will suggest complimentary colours that expand your brand while also ensuring the colours sit together as a family.
What to watch out for
It’s important that you review the colour choices across your brand as a whole, adding extra colours that work on social media posts for example but cause issue with your product branding or brochure design is a recipe for a sloppy brand! Take the time to think about the colour choices across everything you do and how they can be applied globally to present a cohesive brand strategy.
It’s also important to ensure you have standardised colour references so that you can replicate the colour across different materials, it’s no good choosing a new colour if it’s different in graphics created in Canva or Word or by your designer. Taking the time to make sure the colour references are correct and incorporated into your brand guidelines will ensure consistency across everything you do.
5. iLovePDF
iLovePDF is a free online PDF editor that allows businesses to merge, split, compress, and convert PDF files with ease. It also offers tools for adding watermarks, page numbers, and password protection to your PDFs.
Find out more https://www.ilovepdf.com/
What we love
PDFs are incredibly popular for a range of documents, marketing material, as well as sending out artwork for review and approval, we use it extensively because clients can leave feedback easily on PDF files. With all of its benefits there is a drawback, the file size can get out of hand for larger documents and stop them from being viable for emails, this is where iLovePDF comes to the rescue, it lets you upload a large PDF and then compress it to give you a new lower-sized file! We have seen PDFs that are nearly 100MB reduced down to less than 10MB in moments.
What to watch out for
Some PDF files are large for a reason and compressing them may cause issues, examples of this are large digital brochures that contain a lot of images/graphics. They may lose significant quality by compressing the PDF, so always make sure you check the quality when done. Another example is any interactivity incorporated in the PDF, typically this will get stripped out of the compressed PDF.
Sometimes a PDF won’t compress or only by a very small amount, it’s rare but we have seen it. In those cases we have had some success with https://pdfcandy.com/, however this service has limitations on how many PDFs can be processed per hour on a free account.
6. QRCode Monkey
QR codes are a powerful tool for businesses, they allow customers to easily access your website or contact information with just a quick scan. QRCode Monkey is a free online service that lets businesses generate custom QR codes in various formats and styles.
Find out more https://www.qrcode-monkey.com/
What we love
Not all QR code generators are created equal and some can give you a really poor-quality image which then does not scan very well. QRCode Monkey, however, always gives you a high-quality image that scans with ease. They have lots of different styles to choose from too, not just the run of the mill, black and white square! When generating a QR code, make sure you download the SVG file as your designer can use this to freely resize it without any loss in quality!
What to watch out for
As with all QR codes you need to make sure that the data you are adding to generate them is accurate. Once created, the data added is fixed so make sure it’s right from the start! Also, it’s important to test the QR codes and keep track of which is which if you are generating a lot of them so you don’t get them mixed up.
7. Mailto Encoder
‘Mailto’ links are special links you can embed into a website that instead of linking users to another website will instead link them to a new email. They are typically used when showing an email address so users can simply click on it rather than needing to type it out. There is so much more they can do however, if you know what to do!
Find out more https://mailto.vercel.app/
What we love
Mailto links can be complex, this tool takes the need for coding knowledge out of it by letting you fill in the details of the email you wish to open when users click on the link! This can include who the email is going to, what the subject line is and even the body of the email itself!
This can be particularly useful for marketing as you can then filter the incoming emails based on the subject line they contain, for example you could fill the subject line with the name of a service and filter the emails to the relevant team member depending on what’s present.
You can also prefill the body with a ‘template’ email helping to guide visitors into what information you are asking for, an example of this could be a print job request. We could pre fill the body with hints as to the information required such as: delivery address, size, quantity, deadlines and any other information needed.
What to watch out for
This tool can be incredibly useful but make sure not to overdo the amount of information you are asking for as it may put off visitors, also keep in mind the mailto links do not work for everyone so have your email address clearly visible as well.
8. Flaticon
Icons can really boost your brand and make it more visually appealing. Flaticon is a free platform that offers over 4 million icons in various styles and formats for businesses to use.
Find out more https://www.flaticon.com/
What we love
Flaticon has an incredibly diverse collection of high-quality icons, making it easy for businesses to find the perfect icon for their needs. They also have an extensive library of editable vector icons, allowing businesses to customise the colours, sizes and shapes to fit their brand.
What to watch out for
While Flaticon offers a large selection of free icons, some may require attribution or are only available with a premium subscription. Make sure to read the terms before using any icons in your designs.
9. Squoosh
Image compression is crucial for websites as it helps improve loading time and overall user experience. Squoosh is a free online tool that lets you compress, resize and convert images for optimal web use.
Find out more https://squoosh.app/
What we love
Squoosh offers powerful image compression without compromising image quality. It also allows businesses to compare the original and compressed versions side by side, making it easier to fine-tune the compression settings. In addition to compression, Squoosh also offers resizing and conversion options, giving businesses more control over their images.
What to watch out for
While Squoosh is a great tool for optimising website images, it’s important to note that some images may not compress well without losing significant quality. It’s always best to check the compressed image before using it on your website. Also, Squoosh does not offer batch processing, so each image must be optimised individually. However, its fast and user-friendly interface makes this process much easier. We always recommend that you keep the full resolution original images as well, in case you need them at a higher resolution in the future.
10. Google Analytics
Understanding how users interact with your website is essential for any business. Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides businesses with detailed insights into their website traffic and performance.
Find out more https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
What we love
Google Analytics offers a wide range of features, including real-time tracking, audience demographics, behaviour flow analysis and conversion tracking. It also integrates with other Google products such as Google Ads and Google Search Console, providing businesses with a comprehensive view of their online presence.
What to watch out for
While Google Analytics is a powerful tool, it can be overwhelming for beginners. Make sure to familiarise yourself with the basics before diving into more advanced features.
