8 Free Business Applications That Every Marketer Must Have

Online marketers have a tough deal cut out for them. Trends keep on changing, campaigns keep on becoming more complex, and the scope of work for them keeps on expanding. To stay in sync with times, automate their repetitive work, and get things done quickly (and for free), online marketers need to be aware of the best-in-class free business applications they can use. However, the cybersphere is filled with so many tools for every aspect of marketing management that you’ll be absolutely befuddled about choosing suitable ones.

I’ve covered some of these free business tools in this guide, each meant to deliver a unique advantage across specific marketing areas. These business applications are free to use, with some restrictions, of course, which can be lifted by upgrading to the paid versions.

Top 8 Free Business Applications That Marketers Should be Using As Soon As Possible

1- Canva – Digital Design Made Easy and Breezy

If you liked a Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest image post today, chances are it was created using Canva. More than 2 million users trust this free designing tool to create all kinds of visual design assets for their online marketing purposes. The optimized image sizes (long for Pinterest, rectangular for Twitter, square for Instagram and Facebook), along with hundreds of amazing pre-made templates make Canva the perfect solution for the busy digital marketer. The drag-and-drop interface of Canva makes complex designs easy to master.

Presentations, social media posts, infographics, marketing material for offline promotions – you name it, and Canva lets you do it. There are millions of stock images you can download, dozens of amazing photo filters for quick enhancements, and several free icons and shapes to help you create something truly unique.

2- Buffer – Social Media On Auto Pilot

Chances are you spend a lot of time managing social media for your websites. Buffer is for you. The cloud-based software lets you manage all your social media accounts from a single dashboard. Apart from the quintessential post-scheduling functionality, Buffer offers analytics to help you gauge the engagement and success of your posts.

With this social media automation tool, you can schedule up to 10 posts in the queue, integrate 3 social media accounts, and get a browser extension for easy campaign management. Pablo image editor comes integrated with the account, which makes quick image editing easy. Also, you can use the iOS or Android app for Buffer to manage your social media activity on the move. The premium plans help you with more advanced functionalities and lift the limits on the number of social accounts and posts in the ‘scheduled’ queue.

3-Moz – Free Domain Authority Checker Instantly

Domain authority is a crucial factor that identifies the popularity of a website in the eyes of Google. In most cases, sites having a higher DA are ranked higher in search engines.

Over The Top SEO also provides a free domain authority checker tool that allows you to quickly check the DA/PA and Moz rank of any website.

4- Charlie – CRM with a Difference

Charlie goes a step beyond what ordinary CRM tools offer you – personal insights into your potential customers. Your sales research process is automated by this tool, as it searches for information and insight about your prospects from dozens of online databases.

You can even key in a single email ID into Charlie, and let it pull out information and present it to you as a single page. The key advantage is that your team won’t have to waste time on background research on prospects. Expect your lead generation, clickthrough rates, and conversions to benefit from the intel that Charlie gets to you.

5- Paperform – Conduct Surveys Like the Pros

Surveys are key to improving your marketing results, and Paperform´s Survey From Builder makes a breeze to conduct surveys that add value. Their free trial helps you create any kind of survey you need. Customize your surveys with your brand logo, colors, and a dedicated survey URL. You can export your data and run all kinds of analytics on it.

Logic-based survey design makes sure you are able to extract tremendous insights from your campaigns. Their free trial comes loaded with a ton of features and is really easy to use. However, their plans let you create unlimited surveys and allow you to really customize the way to gather or present your data. Also, you get 24×7 email-based customer support, which means you’ll never get stuck with any of their tools.

6- Wistia – One-Stop Destination for Managing Videos

Though YouTube is most marketers’ default choice for uploading videos, Wistia is a great help for those who want to keep users hooked on their own web pages and do a lot more with their videos. You can upload your video content on Wista, and offer its seamless player on your web pages.

Wistia allows you to add clear CTAs in your video content, lets you capture user emails at the end of videos, and offers heat map reports to help you understand which components of your videos impress viewers the most. Also, analytics on engagement aspects such as the point till which users watch the video when they pause, etc help you optimize and improve your video content. Password protection, domain restriction, flexible APIs, detailed documentation, and video SEO – all make Wistia the ultimate video management platform for marketers.

7- SimilarWeb – Marketing Insights

This digital marketing intelligence tool is all you need to extract insights about any website. A website’s ranking, reach, and user engagement – everything is explained amazingly well by SimilarWeb. Apart from individual website analysis, SimilarWeb also helps you with options such as top 50 website lists from industries or countries.

You can check out any website’s global, US, or category-specific ranking, understand the sources of most traffic and access a rich dashboard full of metrics and reports. With this free business applications, you can even compare two websites and see what the major differences in terms of traffic, engagement, and success are.

8- Mention: Real-Time Updates Across Social Media Platforms

Monitoring conversations on your topic of interest, brand, products, etc. becomes easier than ever with Mention. With Mention, you can easily set up a campaign to get real-time alerts on mentions of keywords important for your digital marketing. Also, with Buffer integration, you can schedule social media posts using Mention.

Answering or managing conversations is easy as you can open your social media accounts within the Mention interface. Among the key applications of Mention as a social media listening and monitoring tool is crisis control, leveraging opportunities to convert prospects into customers, and finding influencers.

Concluding Remarks

The right tool can be the difference between a good and a bad day for an online marketer. Thankfully, you don’t have to dig deep in your pockets to be able to use some of the most effective and value-adding marketing tools. The ones discussed in this guide are effective, intuitive, scalable, and free – it hardly gets any better. Start using them and automating your menial tasks, so that you can focus on things that matter more.