{"id":19275,"date":"2025-08-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/?p=19275"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:05:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T15:05:38","slug":"8-free-online-marketing-tools-that-every-hands-on-marketer-should-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/marketplace-analysis\/customer-analysis\/8-free-online-marketing-tools-that-every-hands-on-marketer-should-use\/","title":{"rendered":"The best free marketing tools that every hands-on marketer should use [25 recommended tools]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our recommended free online tools for understanding your customers, competitors and campaign, and how you should use them - across 8 marketing analysis activities<\/h2>\n

I've found that when running training courses, the tools I recommend to help marketers are always popular content, especially free tools...<\/p>\n

There's a diverse mix of free tools available, particularly to support marketers gain insight to plan their campaigns, one of the enjoyable aspects of working in digital marketing today.<\/p>\n

I originally created this list in 2012, but have kept it updated since it's popular and new tools are released, and some features become paid... Revisiting it shows that many of the tools are well established, despite the many lists of essential Generative AI tools.<\/p>\n

In this article, I'll cover 8 marketing analysis activities that hands-on digital marketers need to follow to optimize their reach activities, kicking off their RACE marketing strategy. There are 25+ links to alternative tools in all covering all the major digital marketing channels from search to social media marketing to email and websites.<\/p>\n

Our RACE Growth System is a popular marketing structure framework for startups, SMEs, and international corporations, since it can scale up or down according to your short-term and long-term digital marketing<\/a> objectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Simply put, RACE guides marketers through a planned, insight-driven strategy to acquire and retain more customers. All our marketing tools and templates are integrated across our RACE Growth System, so you can confidently adapt and apply marketing strategies and techniques across your marketing funnel to drive growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can find out more about our RACE Growth System when you download your free RACE marketing plan template<\/a>, complete with recommendations for digital marketing tools and techniques to generate growth across each stage of your marketing funnel today.<\/p>\n

\"Race<\/a><\/p>\n

OK, now onto the free tools...<\/p>\n

1. Understanding customer search behaviour<\/span><\/p>\n

The Google Keyword Planner<\/a> has been an essential tool for hands-on marketers since it launched since it enables you to get into the minds of your audience, seeing what they are searching by how popular different search terms are. There are equivalent tools from search tools providers like SEMRush, but these are limited in that they don't use the insights direct from Google.<\/p>\n

So, it's really useful for forecasting where you should be focusing your SEO and Google Ads. We recommend using this insight to do an SEO\/Google Ads gap analysis<\/a> with our premium members template to see where you are getting results and where you need to focus your improvements.<\/p>\n

No longer a standalone tool, it's part of Google Ads, for which you need to register. It's free, but you get more specific figures on number of searches per month if you have active campaigns, and also insights on your Google Ads visibility (ad impression share).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As the example shows, you can use it to discover new keywords based on an existing page (your own, or for competitors).<\/p>\n

The Keyword Planner doesn't give you info on which search terms drive visits to your site, so a related essential tool is Google Search Console<\/a>, which also feeds into our gap analysis. When linked with your Google Analytics, it gives you invaluable insight into your conversion rates for different keywords too.<\/p>\n

While I'm talking SEO, I have to give honourable mentions to these two SEO tools I still use regularly. First, Screaming Frog <\/a>, a site crawler that indexes small sites for free and highlights errors and insights on articles and Yoast<\/a> - useful if your site is running on WordPress.<\/p>\n

2. Reviewing brand mentions and the latest developments in your industry<\/h3>\n

Google Alerts<\/h4>\n

Many marketers still use Google Alerts<\/a> for reviewing mentions of their brand, campaign hashtags or competitor names by entering keywords, so it\u2019s still widely used. However, it's mainly based on the analysis of sites and misses out on social media mentions.<\/p>\n

Talkwalker<\/h4>\n

To help here, I recommend the free Talkwalker Alerts service<\/a> from the social listening service Talkwalker (now part of Hootsuite). Talkwalker\u2019s free social search also monitors mentions of your brand, hashtags and competitors on social media.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Feedly<\/h4>\n

Although RSS isn\u2019t \u201cin vogue\u201d as it was 10+ years ago, I still find there\u2019s no substitute for using this as a listening post for developments in your industry. I am recommending Feedly<\/a> because it's the most popular - so you can see by the 'voice of the crowd' which posts are most popular.<\/p>\n

Although feed readers aren't in fashion they are the most efficient way to scan the latest news in different categories.<\/p>\n