YOUR online marketing
doesn’t end with you hiring a web designer to build a website. It’s but a
tool in your overall marketing arsenal. In my daily reading online, I
come across various free tools that can be quite useful to online
marketers. I’ve used most of them so I can vouch for their
effectiveness. I’m going to share some of them with you here.
Google Adwords
Keyword Tool.
Adwords is Google’s paid search advertising service. Inside Adwords is a very helpful tool for getting an idea of the words and phrases people use when searching for information on products and services. You don’t even need to be an advertiser to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. With it, you can select searches for a keyword or phrase by geographic region and by device. Then you can sort by global searches and local searches. You’ll even get an idea of how competitive your keywords are. So basically you’ll use it to find out the keywords you should be optimising your website for.
Hootsuite.
My last article spoke about the social media landscape and Hootsuite is just the tool to help you navigate it. It allows you to manage a range of social media accounts including Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare from one place. Hootsuite has a built-in URL shortener and post scheduler that makes setting up your social media marketing a breeze. You can even set up simple reports to see how you’re performing.
Mailchimp.
If you’re a small or medium sized business and want to begin an e-mail marketing programme, then Mailchimp is an excellent tool to use. It’s one of the top e-mail service providers on the web. For their free tier, you get up to 2,000 subscribers across all your lists and the ability to send up to 12,000 e-mails per month! The system is very easy to use and they’ve got tonnes of free templates to build on. They’ve practically gift-wrapped e-mail marketing for you.
Google Hangouts.
I recently read a blog post about how useful Google Hangouts can be as a marketing and customer service tool. I’ve been convinced and intend to use it myself.
If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s simply a video chat and screen sharing tool like Skype, but better. It lets you have a video chat session with up to nine other participants at the same time. This makes it great for an online group training session, one-on-one coaching, meetings and online support.
Zoho CRM.
How do you manage your customer interactions and information? I bet it’s some combination of a spreadsheet and your e-mail client. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you manage interactions all in one place.
Zoho CRM is an excellent tool with lots of useful features including reminders, some automation and a contact manager. They’ve got a free tier that’s pretty good for a small or medium business that’s just started using a CRM. It even connects with Google Apps or MS Outlook if you use those for your business e-mail.
Wordpress.
When building a website, you really do want something you can update yourself easily. You use a Content Management System (CMS) to do this, and Wordpress is now the most popular CMS in the world. Guess what: it’s also free. With Wordpress you can add your own content to your website and not have to pay a web designer extra to update it for you.
It’s built quite modular, meaning you can add on plugins – paid or free – to extend Wordpress with almost any additional functionality you need, like contact forms, powerful SEO features and shopping cart functionality. Wordpress works with themes and you can find low cost themes for building directories, classified advertising websites, real estate websites and other types of businesses.
Google Alerts.
Want to know if people make mention of you or your business on their websites? Want to know what your competitors are up to? With Google Alerts, you can get notifications sent to you via e-mail when any relevant search term appears in Google’s search results.
For example, each time a web page mentions my name “Sherwin Ramnarine”, I get an e-mail alert. You can set this up to know what’s going on in your industry and who mentions your business name. For example, you can tell if your business appears in a new free directory online by setting up an alert for your business name, phone number, e-mail address or location.
SEOmoz Toolbar.
I’ve spoken about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in earlier articles and how your search engine results impact your revenue. This free toolbar from top SEO software provider SEOmoz helps you to analyse your website’s SEO performance, as well as your competitors.
Find out the number of domains that link to your website and get links to other useful data straight from the toolbar. The “MozBar” is available on Firefox and Chrome, two of the best web browsers available.
YouTube. Got video?
Then it needs to be on YouTube. In a previous article about ways to spice up your website with content, I mentioned some tools and ideas for creating short videos.
Once you create these videos for public consumption, host them on YouTube so they can be found when people are searching for information in video format. YouTube after all is the second most popular search engine in the world (after Google). Include links to your website in the video or in the description to get people to visit your website after they watch your videos.
Your website isn’t a standalone marketing tool that will increase your revenue.
By using some or all of these aforementioned tools, you’ll take a huge step toward getting ahead of your competitors and doing better with your marketing.
Keyword Tool.
Adwords is Google’s paid search advertising service. Inside Adwords is a very helpful tool for getting an idea of the words and phrases people use when searching for information on products and services. You don’t even need to be an advertiser to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. With it, you can select searches for a keyword or phrase by geographic region and by device. Then you can sort by global searches and local searches. You’ll even get an idea of how competitive your keywords are. So basically you’ll use it to find out the keywords you should be optimising your website for.
Hootsuite.
My last article spoke about the social media landscape and Hootsuite is just the tool to help you navigate it. It allows you to manage a range of social media accounts including Facebook Pages, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare from one place. Hootsuite has a built-in URL shortener and post scheduler that makes setting up your social media marketing a breeze. You can even set up simple reports to see how you’re performing.
Mailchimp.
If you’re a small or medium sized business and want to begin an e-mail marketing programme, then Mailchimp is an excellent tool to use. It’s one of the top e-mail service providers on the web. For their free tier, you get up to 2,000 subscribers across all your lists and the ability to send up to 12,000 e-mails per month! The system is very easy to use and they’ve got tonnes of free templates to build on. They’ve practically gift-wrapped e-mail marketing for you.
Google Hangouts.
I recently read a blog post about how useful Google Hangouts can be as a marketing and customer service tool. I’ve been convinced and intend to use it myself.
If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s simply a video chat and screen sharing tool like Skype, but better. It lets you have a video chat session with up to nine other participants at the same time. This makes it great for an online group training session, one-on-one coaching, meetings and online support.
Zoho CRM.
How do you manage your customer interactions and information? I bet it’s some combination of a spreadsheet and your e-mail client. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you manage interactions all in one place.
Zoho CRM is an excellent tool with lots of useful features including reminders, some automation and a contact manager. They’ve got a free tier that’s pretty good for a small or medium business that’s just started using a CRM. It even connects with Google Apps or MS Outlook if you use those for your business e-mail.
Wordpress.
When building a website, you really do want something you can update yourself easily. You use a Content Management System (CMS) to do this, and Wordpress is now the most popular CMS in the world. Guess what: it’s also free. With Wordpress you can add your own content to your website and not have to pay a web designer extra to update it for you.
It’s built quite modular, meaning you can add on plugins – paid or free – to extend Wordpress with almost any additional functionality you need, like contact forms, powerful SEO features and shopping cart functionality. Wordpress works with themes and you can find low cost themes for building directories, classified advertising websites, real estate websites and other types of businesses.
Google Alerts.
Want to know if people make mention of you or your business on their websites? Want to know what your competitors are up to? With Google Alerts, you can get notifications sent to you via e-mail when any relevant search term appears in Google’s search results.
For example, each time a web page mentions my name “Sherwin Ramnarine”, I get an e-mail alert. You can set this up to know what’s going on in your industry and who mentions your business name. For example, you can tell if your business appears in a new free directory online by setting up an alert for your business name, phone number, e-mail address or location.
SEOmoz Toolbar.
I’ve spoken about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in earlier articles and how your search engine results impact your revenue. This free toolbar from top SEO software provider SEOmoz helps you to analyse your website’s SEO performance, as well as your competitors.
Find out the number of domains that link to your website and get links to other useful data straight from the toolbar. The “MozBar” is available on Firefox and Chrome, two of the best web browsers available.
YouTube. Got video?
Then it needs to be on YouTube. In a previous article about ways to spice up your website with content, I mentioned some tools and ideas for creating short videos.
Once you create these videos for public consumption, host them on YouTube so they can be found when people are searching for information in video format. YouTube after all is the second most popular search engine in the world (after Google). Include links to your website in the video or in the description to get people to visit your website after they watch your videos.
Your website isn’t a standalone marketing tool that will increase your revenue.
By using some or all of these aforementioned tools, you’ll take a huge step toward getting ahead of your competitors and doing better with your marketing.
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