No one can ever have enough free stuff, and when it comes to online marketing I’m happy to say there are plenty of useful and completely free tools out there that will make paid tools seem completely unnecessary. Whether you have been doing online marketing for a while or are brand new to the business, here are four types of tools you will need.
Market Research Tools – Simply speaking, you need all the information you can get. Research tools enable you to collect comprehensive data about the marketplace, enabling you to understand customer needs and wants. It is also helpful to know what the competition offers and what you’re up against. The Google Toolbar makes research a lot easier. To get more advanced results, select “Enable Advanced Features” to conduct “News”, “Web Directory”, and “Google Groups” searches.
HTML Editors – Large businesses, especially SAP companies, pay exorbitant sums of money to get access to HTML editors. But why pay when a few good ones are available for free. Nyu can provide satisfactory results that are suitable for most purposes. It is similar to FrontPage and Dreamweaver except that it’s available at zero cost to you. In addition, it is highly user-friendly as it is a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Create fully functional sites without any knowledge of HTML!
Link Evaluation Tool – The Alexa toolbar is, without doubt, one of the most popular toolbars online today. Internet marketers rely on it to build and adjust their marketing strategy. This tool will provide comprehensive site information on your web browser. Click on the “site info” option to generate the details such as the ranking, list of related website, amount of backlinks, and webmaster information of the website you’re visiting.
Toolkits – Toolkit resources like NetMechanic are very helpful for site maintenance. Both old and new websites will eventually encounter technical difficulties because of new application installation, interface redesign, or functionality updates among others. These toolkits can pinpoint problems such as HTML code errors, downtime, browser display problems, and lengthy loading time among others.
The internet has more of these useful applications. Conduct some research to find other resources which can significantly contribute to the development of your site at little or no cost to your business. Also, take note that there are a lot of tools which are free on a trial basis. Take advantage of these offers to determine whether your site will derive a “net” benefit if you invest in additional systems.
Stacey Johnson runs the online marketing department for Atlanta’s Top Tree Company, Premiere Tree Services. She has also worked with the law firm of Kitchens New & Cleghorn’s Atlanta divorce lawyers.