Starting a business can be an exciting yet daunting endeavor. With limited resources, startups need to make smart decisions about where to allocate funds – especially when it comes to marketing. The good news is there are plenty of free and affordable tools available to help startups maximize their marketing efforts. This article will explore the best free and Paid Tools for startups in key marketing categories like research, social media, email, analytics, and more.

Conducting Market Research

Before diving into marketing tactics, startups need to understand their target audience, competitors, and overall market landscape. While extensive primary research like surveys and focus groups can be costly, there are plenty of free secondary research tools available.

Best Free Tools

• Google Keyword Planner: Find high-volume, low-competition keywords to optimize content and PPC campaigns.
• Buzzsumo: Analyze what content performs best for competitors so you can model success.
• Alexa: Provides competitive website analysis data on traffic, engagement, keywords, and more.
• SimilarWeb: Understand where competitors are getting traffic from and what their biggest referral sources are.
• Google Trends: See search volume patterns for keywords over time. Useful for knowing seasonal interest changes.

Best Paid Tools

• Moz Keyword Explorer: Get thorough keyword data including volume, competitiveness, and optimization opportunities. Pricing starts at $99/month.
• Ahrefs: Offers detailed backlink analysis to assess competitors’ SEO strategies. Plans start at $99/month.
• Competitor backlink analysis: Analyze competitors’ most effective backlinks to inform link-building strategy.
• Sensor Tower: For mobile app startups, analyze competitors’ marketing and performance tactics within the app stores. Plans start at $99/month.
• App Annie: Monitor mobile app analytics across downloads, usage, demographics, and more. The price is undisclosed but reportedly starts around $99/month.

Building a Blog with CMS Solutions

Maintaining a company blog provides startups with content marketing opportunities and SEO benefits. CMS platforms make managing a blog much easier.

Best Free Tools

• WordPress.org: Build a custom WordPress site for free. Bring your own web hosting and domain.
• Wix Free: Make a free website or blog with limited storage and bandwidth using Wix templates and editor.
• Webflow Free: Build one site for free with hosting, SSL, and remove Webflow branding.
• Blogger: Create a free blog on a custom domain powered by Google/Blogger. Limited options.
• Medium: A simple blogging platform where you can publish content for free and get paid readership options.

Best Paid Tools

• WordPress.com: Managed WordPress hosting with themes, plugins, updates, and custom domains. Plans start at $4/month.
• Wix Premium: Get unlimited storage, bandwidth, ad vouchers, video hours, and full design freedom. Starts at $14/month.
• Webflow Paid: Build unlimited sites without Webflow branding or restrictions. Robust CMS features, custom domains, and hosting included. Plans start at $12/month.
• Ghost Pro: Fully managed Ghost CMS platform optimized for bloggers and publishers. Plans start at $29/month.
• Squarespace: Build beautiful all-in-one websites, blogs, stores, and galleries. Award-winning templates and designs. Plans start at $12/month.

Building an Audience on Social Media

Social media is crucial for startups to drive brand awareness, website traffic, leads, and sales. Luckily there are effective free tools available.

Best Free Tools

• Buffer: Schedule posts across multiple social accounts in one place for free up to 3 accounts.
• Canva: Create beautiful social media graphics and banners for free. Lots of templates are available.
• Hootsuite Free: Schedule unlimited social posts, monitor brand mentions, and track performance with basic analytics.
• Sprout Social Free: Connect up to 3 social profiles and monitor and respond to mentions. Basic analytics included.
• Bitly: Customize and shorten links for easy social media sharing. Get click analytics for free up to 1,000 clicks/month.

Best Paid Tools

• Buffer Paid Plans: Add features like analyzing best posting times, tracking the ROI of social posts, managing a team workflow, and more. Plans start at $5/month.
• Agorapulse: All-in-one platform for social media management, analytics, reporting, and team workflow features. Plans start at $99/month.
• Sprout Social Paid: More robust analytics, advanced reporting, team collaboration features, and expanded social inbox. Plans start at $99/month.
• Hootsuite Professional: Enhanced analytics, content library, team workflow features, and integration with other apps. $49/month per user.
• Rival IQ: Robust platform for identifying influencers, benchmarking performance, discovering relevant hashtags, and analyzing competitors’ social media efforts. Plans start at $99/month.

Growing Your Email List

Email marketing consistently drives ROI but it requires growing a quality subscriber list. Both free and Paid tools can facilitate this.

Best Free Tools

• Mailchimp Free: Collect up to 2,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails per month at no cost. Lots of templates, automation, and integrations are available.
• ConvertKit Free: Get unlimited subscribers and send unlimited emails, with automation and integration capabilities.
• Sendinblue Free: Collect unlimited contacts and send 300 emails per day for free. Easy signup forms and automation included.
• Privy: Grow email lists with popups, bars, and other conversion forms. Free up to 100 subscribers and 1,000 emails per month.
• Canva: Create beautiful, on-brand email newsletter templates and graphics for free.

Best Paid Tools

• Mailchimp Paid: Remove subscriber limits and get advanced automation, analytics, and integrations. Plans start at $9.99/month.
• ConvertKit Paid: More advanced email sequencing, custom form and page builder, dedicated IP, and other premium features. Plans start at $29/month.
• Sendinblue Paid: Scale beyond free limits, add SMS marketing, advanced automation, Facebook ads integration, and more premium features. Plans start at $25/month.
• Constant Contact: All-in-one platform including emails, landing pages, postcards, automation, surveys, and more. Starts at $20/month.
• Drip: Sophisticated email marketing and automation tailored specifically for e-commerce businesses driving sales. Pricing starts at $49/month.

Website Optimization and Analytics

Understanding your website traffic and optimization opportunities is crucial for startups. Thankfully there are capable free and affordable paid tools available.

Best Free Tools

• Google Analytics: The go-to free solution for in-depth traffic insights, behavior analysis, goal tracking, and more.
• Google Search Console: Monitor and improve your site’s presence in Google, track keywords, fix technical issues, and more for free.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: Quickly assess website speed metrics and opportunities for improvement.
• Pingdom Website Speed Test: Test site load speed from global locations to pinpoint optimization opportunities.
• Hubspot Website Grader: Get a snapshot of website optimization status across performance, SEO, security, and more.

Best Paid Tools

• Ahrefs Site Audit: Detailed technical SEO analysis of issues to fix like redirects, errors, structured data, and more. Starts at $99/month.
• Moz Local: Improve local SEO rankings with tools to manage Google business profiles, reviews, citations, and local link building. Plans start at $99/month.
• CrazyEgg: View heatmaps of clicks and scrolls on your site. Also offers A/B testing and form analytics capabilities. Plans start at $29/month.
• Hotjar: See heatmaps and recordings of visitor behavior on your site. Also, get form and funnel analytics. Plans start at $29/month.
• Optimizely: Full-featured A/B testing and personalization platform to optimize experiences. Plans start at $49/month.

Driving Conversions with Landing Pages

Dedicated landing pages are essential for converting visitors into leads and customers. Both free and paid tools empower startups to build custom, effective landing pages.

Best Free Tools

• Instapage Limited Free: Build one landing page with basic templates, host it on Instapage’s platform, and collect 100 submissions per month.
• Ucraft Limited Free: Build one responsive landing page with basic templates, forms, and no Ucraft branding.
• Shogun Landing Page Builder: Build one mobile-optimized landing page for free with beautiful templates.
• Launchaco Page Builder: Simple drag-and-drop editor to build one mobile-ready landing page and collect up to 200 submissions/month.
• Carrd: Easy drag-and-drop landing page builder starting with a free basic site. No coding skills are required.

Best Paid Tools

• Instapage Paid: Unlimited landing pages with 150+ templates, A/B testing, heatmaps, integrations, and publishing options. Plans start at $99/month.
• Unbounce Paid: Build unlimited high-converting landing pages with powerful templates, visitor tracking, and team collaboration features. Plans start at $79/month.
• Leadpages Paid: Extensive drag-and-drop landing page editor with 150+ mobile-ready templates, dynamic content, and robust integrations. Plans start at $37/month.
• Ucraft Paid: Create unlimited professional landing pages with premium templates, custom domains, forms, popups, analytics, and e-commerce features. Plans start at $20/month.
• ClickFunnels: Build marketing funnels beyond just landing pages like email sequences, webinars, and membership sites. Plans start at $97/month.

Creating Compelling Content

Content marketing is key for startups to attract and engage their target audiences. With both free and affordable paid tools, creating high-quality content is achievable.

Best Free Tools

• Canva: Create stunning graphics and visual content like infographics, social posts, banners, and more for free.
• Buffer Library: Search over 1 million public domain images to use for free without copyright issues.
• Unsplash: User-submitted stock photos you can use for free without attribution.
• Creative Commons Search: Find photos, videos, and other media approved for commercial use. Filter by usage type.
• Otter.ai: Transcribe audio into text quickly and easily. Free for up to 600 minutes/month.

Best Paid Tools

• Adobe Creative Cloud: Access powerful design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat. Plans start at $9.99/month.
• Canva Pro: Advanced design capabilities, templates, shapes, photos, and brand management features to create stunning visual content. $12.99/month.
• Venngage: Intuitive infographic maker with numerous templates and shareable infographic reports. Plans start at $19/month.
• Shutterstock: Massive stock content library including photos, video, music and editorial. Plans start at $29/month.
• Grammarly Business: Check tone, clarity, concision, and domain-specific vocabulary in your writing. Starts at $12/month per user.
• Rev: Fast, affordable human transcription starting at $1.25/minute of audio.

Managing Paid Advertising

For early-stage customer acquisition and growth, paid advertising is often a must. Thankfully, platforms offer free tools and affordable entry-level options.

Best Free Tools

• Google Ads Preview Tool: See how text ads may appear on the Search Network for free.
• Bing Ads Intelligence: Research keywords and get average cost-per-click estimates for your target market.
• Facebook Ad Library: View ads competitors are running on Facebook/Instagram and assess what’s working.
• WordStream Free Ad Writing Tool: Craft and optimize paid search ads based on best practices.
• Google Analytics: Connect your ads to monitor performance and optimize campaigns for free.

Best Paid Tools

• Google Ads: Get $75 in free search advertising credit upon signup through the Google Ads grant program for startups.
• Microsoft Advertising: Provides $100 in free Bing Ads credit for new accounts to get started.
• Meta Business Suite: Access Facebook/Instagram advertising starting at $1/day. Many targeting options.
• Taboola: Paid content recommendation ads across thousands of websites. Cost per click-based model.
• Outbrain: Paid native advertising on premium publisher sites. Impressions-based pricing model.

Automating Marketing Workflows

Marketing automation enables startups to nurture leads with targeted messaging without intensive manual effort. The right free or affordable paid tools can scale startup marketing.

Best Free Tools

• Mailchimp Automation: Pre-built automations like welcome emails, re-engagement flows, and post-purchase follow-ups.
• ConvertKit Sequences: Create automation workflows with emails sent after opt-ins, time delays, and custom triggers.
• ManyChat: Build Messenger chatbots to qualify leads and automatically send info to interested prospects.
• Zapier: Connect apps to automate multi-step workflows. Build automations with the free plan’s 5 zaps, 100 tasks/month.
• IFTTT: Automate simple “if this, then that” workflows between web services. The free plan allows unlimited Applets.

Best Paid Tools

• ActiveCampaign: Robust email marketing and automation with advanced segmentation and built-in CRM. Plans start at $9/month.
• Drip: Sophisticated ecommerce-focused automation and personalization. Workflows tailored for selling products online. Starts at $49/month.
• Ontraport: All-in-one platform with landing pages, email, CRM, and visual workflow builder to automate campaigns. Plans start at $79/month.
• Keap: Capture leads across channels and nurture with multi-touch automations and personalized messaging. Pricing starts at $99/month.
• Marketo Engage: Comprehensive B2B marketing automation solution great for complex lead nurturing workflows. Contact for a quote.

Related Posts

• 15 Market Research Tools for Startups to Validate Their Ideas
• How Could a Company’s Target Market Be Validated by Market Research?
• UX vs. UI: Understanding the Difference and Why it Matters for Your Website & App

The Takeaway

With strong execution across the above areas, startups can maximize marketing success despite limited budgets. Focus on leveraging these key free tools along with allocating funds to 1-2 paid tools per category to suit your current needs and growth stage. With the right technology stack and deliberate optimization, your startup can scale and gain traction even in the most competitive markets.

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