As a marketer, you deal with many variables daily — from clients and campaigns to mess-ups! Your aim is to get your brand some attention in the best and most cost-effective manner. Why not save on some extra moola that you can rather use for more marketing campaigns?

Yes, there are tools that you can use to save time, money and make your routine more efficient. Your job is to figure out where your main priority lies and in which area of your strategy you spend the most of your time. 

If you can identify that, then you know what tools you can use to create a more sustainable work environment for yourself and your colleagues.

media update's Jana van der Westhuizen is here to show you the top tools in our shed that you can use to make your life a little bit less chaotic. 

Let's open the toolbox full of solutions: 

1. Canva

Yes, good old Canva. But don't be fooled — just because you think you know the platform, it does not mean you know all the secret abilities that it has for you to use. 

With brochure templates, infographics and royalty-free photos, you can create artwork in no time to quickly promote an event or campaign last minute.

You can also customise your designs by:
  • adding your company logo
  • having access to certain elements so that you can enhance the aesthetics of your brand
  • being able to schedule certain artworks on your favourite platforms, which helps to save you the effort of logging into accounts one by one, and
  • downloading your artworks or videos in different formats in which you want to distribute them.
Basically, this is an easy-to-use tool that you can use to customise for your brand to fulfil your needs. If you are in a hurry or not, Canva has all the main design elements you require.

2. Google Analytics

As a marketer, your main aim is to get the correct data to know if your marketing strategy is working or not. Google Analytics is a free tool that can provide insight into how much website traffic you are actually getting. 

It also crunches all the millions of data and information and packages it in a manner that you can consume and use for your marketing strategy.

Why will Google Analytics be beneficial for your brand? Here's why you need it:
  • You can optimise the ranking of your website with analytics helping you find the right SEO keywords.
  • It improves the bounce rate, which means more people stay for a longer period of time on your website. Now that's good for sales!
  • It segments your audience to give you more insight into who your audience is so that you can target them better.
  • You can compare your social media platforms to see what platforms get the most traction.

3. Medium

What better way to attract consumers than giving them something like content? As we always say, content is king and content marketing has taken over the industry. A good way to give your consumer some content to consume is through blogs. 

Writing a blog is one thing, but having the right tools and audience to distribute your blog, and get the right SEO ranking is a tricky job. With Medium, you can create a free blog and have certain tools at your disposal. These tools are:
  • a built-in audience that you have access to
  • networking tools, and
  • email newsletter.
With a built-in audience, you are guaranteed that your blog will at least reach someone and you can use the tools to customise and make it more accurate to who you want to target. Blogs are the future, so create some content!

4. Wistia

In the marketing industry, it is important to keep things funky and entertain your consumer. Creating videos is a good way to grab attention and provide an extensive overview of your offering. 

The only catch is that when you host your video on YouTube or TikTok, ads are an irritating thing. And when there are ads, you are almost guaranteed that your consumer will click away to another page. And that, my dear marketer, is a big no-no. 

Luckily, you get an application like Wistia.

So, you create your pretty little video and then you do the following:
  • you can upload your video onto the application
  • the application allows you to add call-to-action buttons to where you want your consumer to navigate, and
  • you get some analytics of the average time that people watched your video.
Noice!

5. Hemingway

You might be lucky enough to have a top-notch editor, but if you are on a budget, Hemingway is the way to go. It is important that all your brand messaging is structured in the right format. 

This programme helps you to avoid:
  • spelling errors
  • sentences that are too long and make people click away and
  • information stuffing.
You take your content and paste it into the application. The application will then analyse everything from passive voice to complex sentences. The application work in colours to show you what is wrong with your content:
  • Blue — shows weakening phrases and adverbs
  • Red — complex sentences
  • Yellow — lengthy sentences, and
  • Green — shows passive voice.

Get your communication intact by using this amazing tool to help you make your message crystal clear and without error!

Would you use free marketing tools to benefit your marketing campaigns? Share your thoughts about it in the comments section.

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Want to better your marketing game? Then get interactive with your audience! Read more in our article, Interactive marketing: Three examples you need to know. 
*Image courtesy of Canva