Inbound marketing is the digital strategy of attracting and converting customers through content and interactions that are relevant and helpful. Inbound marketing tools help you with the tasks involved in creating, managing, measuring, and optimizing your campaigns.
In this article we’re going to discuss the best free inbound marketing tools for small business owners. We’ll also go over some of their features so that you know what to expect from each one!
Takeaways |
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1. Discover essential tools for inbound marketing success. |
2. Explore tools for content creation, SEO, and social media. |
3. Learn about email marketing, analytics, and lead generation. |
4. Gain insights into how these tools enhance ROI and engagement. |
5. Implement a holistic approach to maximize inbound marketing. |
HubSpot Marketing Platform
HubSpot is the leading inbound marketing platform, and for good reason. HubSpot combines many of the tools you need to run a successful inbound marketing campaign into one convenient tool.
It’s a CRM, analytics tool, lead management tool, social media management tool and website builder/landing page builder all wrapped into one! With so many integrated features it can be hard to know where to start with using this powerful software.
HubSpot has dozens of specific integrations with other popular platforms like Salesforce or Google Analytics that make managing your data even easier than before but some of our favorites include:
The ability to schedule emails automatically so you don’t have to spend time manually sending them out every day (or week)
A visual email editor that makes creating beautiful emails easy by allowing you to build responsive templates which will adapt based on what device they’re being viewed on (mobile vs desktop).
In addition, if someone opens an email on their mobile phone then click through into another part of your site such as viewing a particular piece of content.
Then we’ll automatically change what’s displayed based on what device they’re using now rather than when they first clicked open previously.)
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Ahrefs
Ahrefs is the ultimate tool for measuring your website’s performance. It allows you to see which keywords are driving traffic to your site, how much time users spend on each page, and other useful metrics.
If you want to learn more about the traffic that comes from inbound marketing tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs can tell you how much traffic each channel drives (including organic search).
Ahrefs also gives you a list of keywords that are sending traffic to your site and it will show you what percentage of those clicks resulted in conversions (aka sales). You can use this information to optimize existing content or create new pieces based on what’s already working.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for monitoring your website’s performance, Ahrefs could be worth the price tag but there are free alternatives available if cash flow is tight right now.
SEMrush
As a marketer, you’ll want to know which keywords are being used by your competitors to see what they’re doing right and what you can do better. SEMrush is a great tool for finding these types of keywords.
SEMrush allows you to find long-tail keywords that your competitors are using but aren’t being utilized by other businesses in the industry (i.e., they have low competition).
It’s also a great way to see which long tail keywords your competitors are ranking for within Google’s first page results so that you can try and replicate those same pages or improve upon them with more detailed content or formatting
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Raven Tools
Raven Tools is a suite of SEO tools that helps you improve your website’s SEO. Raven Tools can analyze your website’s search engine performance, help you with copywriting, and generate reports.
Raven Tools is affordable compared to other tools. At $99 per month for up to five users (or $249 per month for unlimited users), this tool provides more than just keyword research and competitor information.
You can use it to check backlinks from any domain or find out which keywords are bringing traffic to a certain page on your site via Google Analytics integration.
That said, if you’re not looking for help in these areas or if there’s another tool that does what you need better you might want to look elsewhere.
SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite is a comprehensive SEO toolkit that includes a keyword research tool, site auditor, backlink checker, content analysis, and more.
The software lets you analyze your backlinks to find out if they are working for you or against you. SEMrush is another great tool for doing this kind of analysis. SEMrush is a suite of tools that can help you with SEO, PPC, and more (it also has an easy-to-use website audit tool).
If you’re looking to do any kind of link building or link outreach, these two tools will be indispensable in helping you get started on the right track!
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a paid tool that you can use to research keywords and track your site’s performance in search engines. You can also use it to create content that will help you rank higher in the SERPs. This software is great for beginners, as well as experts who are looking to improve their SEO strategy.
If you’re interested in using Moz Pro, here are some things to know:
- If you’re new to the world of SEO, Moz offers a free trial so that you can get a feel for how their tools work without having to pay anything upfront.
- If you want more than just one month’s access (the default option), then Moz has several different plans available depending on how many tools and features your business needs.
- The pricing starts at $99 per month with no contract attached; however, there are other options available if those prices don’t fit into your budget right now or if they seem too high based on what kind of value they’ll provide over time (which isn’t always easy).
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SERanking
SERanking is a keyword research tool that helps marketers find the best keywords and their search volume.
It provides SEO professionals with a comprehensive keyword research toolkit that includes a keyword research tool, a keyword clustering tool, and a keyword-based search volume tool.
AdRoll is an eCommerce advertising platform that helps marketers reach the right customers with relevant, effective digital ads.
Monetate is a personalized marketing platform that helps marketers personalize their customers’ experiences with data-driven marketing decisions.
WooRank
WooRank is a website analytics tool that helps you improve your website’s performance. It tracks your site’s performance and shows you how you can improve it.
WooRank is easy to use, free for up to 5,000 pages, and available in many languages: English (US), French (France), Italiano, Deutschland, Español, Polski & Nederlands.
Once installed on the user’s site, WooRank provides real-time reports about its activity metrics such as traffic sources coming into the site; where visitors are landing after clicking through from social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter;
How long people stay on each page; what they do when they leave the site; which pages are most popular among visitors versus those who return often enough to be considered loyal customers rather than just one-time shoppers looking for something specific without ever buying anything else afterward you get the idea!
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a site crawler that allows you to crawl your website and report on any issues. It’s an essential tool for any inbound marketer, as it helps you identify broken links, duplicate content, and other issues with your site’s performance.
The SEO Spider can be used to detect duplicate content on the page level: if all of the keywords are duplicated throughout an article or blog post (or anywhere on your site really), this can negatively impact search engine rankings for those keywords.
You can also use it to check whether canonical tags have been set up correctly this tells search engines which version of each page is the authoritative one so they don’t index multiple copies of the same URL separately by accident.
Considering handling your inbound marketing in-house? Gain insights from the article on Why You Shouldn’t Hire an Inbound Marketing Agency to understand the advantages and aspects that can be managed effectively using the right tools.
DeepCrawl
DeepCrawl is a web crawler that crawls the entire website and provides you with a report of issues. It’s one of the most complete tools on this list because it gives you a detailed overview of what’s wrong with your site from technical to design flaws.
Adobe Marketing Cloud has tools for every aspect of marketing, including analytics, social media management, marketing, and ad targeting. You can also use RevJet for testing and optimization;
AdRoll helps prevent visitors from leaving your site by helping with retargeting; Monetate is a personalized marketing tool that can adapt to user behavior; Adobe Analytics allows you to view all data in one place like Google Analytics does.
SpyFu
SpyFu is a keyword research tool that helps you find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on, what keywords they’re ranking for, and what keywords they’re not ranking for.
KeywordSpy is a keyword research tool that allows you to find out what keywords your competitors are trying to rank on.
The tool is simple to use just enter the domain of the site you want to spy on and it will show you which terms they’re targeting and where they rank with those terms.
Conductor Searchlight Platform
Conductor Searchlight is a marketing platform that helps you optimize your inbound marketing efforts. The tool provides you with data on how people interact with your content, allowing you to make better decisions about how to market your business.
The tool works by creating a digital fingerprint of every piece of content that comes into your system and then monitoring its performance in real-time. It also offers insights into what audiences respond best to so that you can tailor future campaigns for similar groups of people.
Searchlight can be used for almost any type of business as long as it has an online presence (website, blog, social media channels).
If you have one or more landing pages or other types of web pages on which users enter some kind of information (contact form), then this tool may help increase conversions by providing better tracking metrics based on user behavior patterns collected over time (click rate analysis).
BrightEdge Data Cube Platform
BrightEdge Data Cube Platform is a data management platform that enables marketers to manage and analyze all of their customer data in one place.
With BrightEdge Data Cube Platform, marketers can understand customer behavior and improve customer experience by integrating their analytics with the digital marketing stack.
BrightEdge Data Cube Platform integrates with Google AdWords, Display & Video 360, Bing Ads, Media Optimizer for Advertisers (MOAA), Oracle Eloqua & Marketo among others.
The platform also provides support for third-party integrations such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Marketo) or Oracle Eloqua by way of APIs.
WordStream Advisor PPC Automation Software (Formerly WordStream PPC Software)
WordStream Advisor is a PPC automation software that can help you scale your PPC campaigns and save time and money. It’s powered by AI, so it learns from each campaign to become more effective at managing it for you.
The tool’s keyword research tool provides an in-depth analysis of keywords, including search volume and competition data to help you determine which ones are worth pursuing.
WordStream Advisor also offers automated bid management tools that use machine learning to optimize bids based on performance data, allowing marketers to spend less time working on optimizing their campaigns while still seeing better results than they could achieve manually.
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Acquisio Bid And Budget Management Software
Acquisio is a platform that helps you manage your PPC bids, budgets, and performance. It gives you insight into how your keywords are performing in real-time so that you can tweak them accordingly to optimize ROI.
Acquisio also offers bid optimization tools to help increase conversions and reduce cost per lead (CPL). With these tools, it’s easy to find the right balance between bidding and budget management so that you can maximize profit while reducing waste.
Budget management software like this is essential if you want to run an effective campaign especially if it’s one of the fastest-growing channels in advertising today!
Kenshoo Performance Marketing Software For Paid Search, Social, And Display Ads. (Formerly Kenshoo Enterprise)
Kenshoo is a performance marketing platform that helps advertisers increase revenue through paid search, social, and display ads. It’s used by agencies and enterprises alike to run campaigns across multiple channels including Facebook, Google AdWords, and Bing Ads.
Kenshoo is one of the leading social media advertising platforms in the world with over 1 million users globally.
Kenshoo allows you to build complete marketing automation campaigns that automatically optimize your ads based on real-time analytics data from tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Omniture SiteCatalyst.
The software has been used by many Fortune 500 companies including American Airlines and Deloitte (one of our favorites).
Marin Software For Marketing Agencies, Enterprises, And Advertisers (Formerly Marin Enterprise)
Marin Software is a marketing software company that provides marketing automation, data management, and marketing analytics solutions to agencies, enterprises, and advertisers. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.
As an agency-focused tool that is easy to use, the Marin Enterprise platform includes everything you need for account-based marketing (ABM).
You can build targets using their 360-degree view of the customer or your own data set; then automate outreach by email or phone with predictive lead scoring capabilities.
Adobe Marketing Cloud For Omnichannel Marketing Capabilities And Analytics. (Formerly Adobe Media Optimizer)
Adobe Marketing Cloud is an integrated marketing suite that provides everything you need to measure, optimize and automate your campaigns. It connects your data across channels and devices, so you can create personalized experiences for each customer.
And with access to over a billion data points, Adobe gives you the insights needed to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts.
This tool integrates directly into web publishing tools like Dreamweaver and InDesign; social media management platforms like Hootsuite; Google Analytics; Salesforce CRM & Chatter;
Bing Ads & AdCenter; Yahoo Gemini & Gemini 2nd Screen Platforms such as Adobe Campaigns 3rd party ad servers such as Doubleclick (Google)
Review For Testing, Targeting, And Optimization Of Digital Content. (Formerly Convertro)
RevJet is a content marketing platform that helps you test, target, and optimizes your digital content. RevJet has developed several features to help you get the most out of your A/B tests. Here are some of the main tools they provide:
A/B testing. RevJet offers the ability to create and run A/B tests on your content. This allows you to compare two different versions of a web page or other digital asset to see which one performs better in terms of conversions (e.g., views).
Targeting. RevJet allows you to create custom targeting groups based on any combination of user attributes such as location and visitor behavior.
Once these groups have been created they can be used as targets for any campaign so that only visitors who fit certain criteria will see certain ads or content pieces
Adroll Ecommerce Advertising Platform – Trusted By 50k+ Businesses Worldwide. (Formerly Adroll Retargeting Platform)
AdRoll is a retargeting platform that allows you to create and manage campaigns, track and optimize campaigns, manage ad accounts, and create landing pages.
AdRoll offers a self-serve platform for advertisers to build and run digital display ads across multiple devices including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
AdRoll’s product suite includes native advertising solutions such as native video player & content delivery network (CDN) integration tools; social media management services; website retargeting technology; eCommerce tracking tools;
Analytics dashboards & reporting capabilities; keyword research tools; search engine optimization (SEO) consulting services along with other essential software solutions such as landing page builders/managers & online form builders/managers.
Monetate Personalized Marketing Platform – Optimize The Customer Experience. (Formerly Monetate Ecommerce Marketing Suite)
Monetate is a personalized marketing platform that helps online retailers optimize the customer experience and achieve higher acquisition, engagement, and conversion rates.
Monetate provides personalized digital marketing services for online retailers, including personalization, dynamic pricing, and content marketing.
With Monetate’s suite of tools, you can easily create everything from targeted email campaigns to dynamic product recommendations based on real-time data points such as customer behavior or purchase history.
Inbound Marketing Requires Inbound Marketing Software!
The best way to explain the importance of this is with a concrete example. SEO is one of the most powerful forms of inbound marketing, and it takes a lot of tools to get right.
Before you even begin crafting content or selecting keywords, an SEO tool will help you find what people are searching for and how much traffic those searches generate—so you can intelligently target them with your content.
The same goes for other types of content, like blog posts or ebooks: using an analytics tool will tell you which pieces are resonating with your audience (and which ones need improvement).
Conclusion
If you’re looking for an inbound marketing tool that provides all the data you need to analyze your campaigns with ease, then Ahrefs is what you’re looking for. It’s easy to use and has lots of features that will help you grow your business faster than ever before.
Further Reading
Here are some additional resources to explore for insights into essential marketing tools and strategies:
9 Digital Marketing Tools You Can’t Live Without Short Description: Discover a curated list of digital marketing tools that are crucial for boosting your online presence and engagement.
30 Best Inbound Marketing Tools Short Description: Uncover a comprehensive collection of 30 top-notch inbound marketing tools that can transform your marketing efforts.
7 Marketing Tools Your Team Can’t Live Without Short Description: Learn about seven indispensable marketing tools that can empower your team to achieve greater success.
FAQs
Here are answers to common questions related to essential marketing tools and strategies:
What are the key benefits of using digital marketing tools?
Digital marketing tools offer various benefits, such as streamlining tasks, improving efficiency, enhancing data analysis, and facilitating better targeting, resulting in more effective and impactful marketing campaigns.
How can inbound marketing tools contribute to lead generation?
Inbound marketing tools play a crucial role in attracting, engaging, and nurturing leads through content creation, SEO optimization, social media management, and personalized customer experiences.
What factors should be considered when selecting marketing tools for a team?
When selecting marketing tools for a team, consider factors like scalability, integration with existing systems, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and the specific needs and goals of your marketing strategy.
How do marketing tools contribute to improving customer engagement?
Marketing tools enable businesses to create tailored and personalized experiences for customers, leading to higher engagement levels, improved brand loyalty, and a deeper connection with the target audience.
What trends are shaping the landscape of modern marketing tools?
The modern marketing tools landscape is influenced by trends such as AI-powered automation, hyper-personalization, data privacy regulations, and the increasing importance of multi-channel marketing strategies.
Costantine Edward is a digital marketing expert, freelance writer, and entrepreneur who helps people attain financial freedom. I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18 years old and have managed to build a successful career doing what I love.