2023 Business Growth: 20 Essential Digital Marketing Tools

If you are a small business owner or start-up entrepreneur looking to dip your feet in the infinite world of online possibilities, understanding free digital marketing tools in 2023 can be a great starting point. 

Most small businesses who are averse to spending on tools, because of their limited budgets and resources can always look to free tools for boosting efficiency and performance. 

The widespread repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt by the industry. It has accelerated digital transformations for many traditional businesses. Business owners who were earlier reluctant to try elements like social media are not more than happy to engage with it. 

In this article, I am writing about the best digital marketing tools in 2023 for businesses. However, before I get to the list of tools, let us first look at what are digital marketing tools and how they can impact a business in 2023.

Digital Marketing Tools: What are they?

Marketing Tools are essentially software, which helps you optimize the efficiency of your digital strategies. For example, if your brand is pursuing social media, you might realize that manually posting a single post on five different platforms can take someone an hour. 

In terms of business, using a simple tool that helps you schedule the post can help save thirty-man hours every month. This can then be used to address other digital marketing activities. 

I am trying to say that businesses should always be on the lookout for digital marketing automation and tools, which help them cut down on time, energy, and effort. If the tool allows for more functions, that is even great!

While there is an assumption that paid tools are the best, the fact of the matter is that it isn’t always the case. If you are smart and are able to do your research, you will be able to optimize the performance of your internal operations, sales, and marketing with the help of digital marketing tools in 2023. 

Let’s get started one by one!

1. Email Marketing- Mailchimp

Email marketing is a fundamental and core necessity of any business nowadays. It has been proven to deliver the highest ROIs in terms of any marketing strategy. With Mail Chimp, you can successfully execute email marketing campaigns if you have a smallish list of around 2000. It also offers free templates and a host of other goodies. For extra features you can check out some Mailchimp alternatives.

Features:

• Better content may be produced using simple design tools.
• Use an AI-powered helper to produce unique designs.
• Utilise marketing automation to send personalized emails that can increase orders by up to 6 times.
• Offers resources for gathering insights and data in one location.
• Give small merchants a free plan as well.

Who it’s for: Marketers, advertising agencies, small owner-operated enterprises, and large organisations.

2. Work Management- Trello

Optimising and streamlining internal operations, following up, and assigning tasks can be a pain for any business. Thanks to Trello, you can easily monitor the status of the work assigned to your employees.

Trello is simple, easy to understand, and shows the entire process, including the individual making the edits. Most importantly, it is absolutely free for many functions. 

Features:

• Allows you to set deadlines, allocate subjects to particular teams, and create cards with comments on the card topic.
• Makes it possible for your teams to access their assignments and projects remotely.

Who it’s for: For large organisations that need to link teamwork across departments with extra security and controls, Trello Enterprise is the ideal option.

3. Content Optimization- Editpad

Editpad Content plays an important role in every digital marketing strategy. Optimizing your marketing content helps to boost the SEO of your business and drives more organic traffic to your website and other social media platforms. This is where Editpad comes into the game and helps you in optimizing your content for search engines.

Editpad is a complete SEO toolkit where you can take assistance from its online text editor to write and save important business documents online. However, its free paraphrasing tool helps you in getting different improved versions of your marketing content easily and quickly. You can also paraphrase your email marketing content to make it clear, concise, and more readable.

Features:

• Enables you to verify the total quantity of words that have been typed or copied.
• Using the character count tool, you may also determine the precise character count in your text.
• Additionally, our online editor allows you to verify the grammar, punctuation, and plagiarism of altered material.

Who it’s for: Editpad can be used by beginner programmers, professional software engineers, or users who just wish to take notes.

4. Blog Topic Research- Answer The Public

Inbound Marketing is slowly becoming one of the most sought-after strategies for building credible leads for a business, with Answer The Public, you will be able to generate topics and titles for your next blog or any other guest posting need.

It works in a very similar manner to a search engine and shows you what consumers are searching for in your industry niche. 

Features:

• Unlimited Searches & Exports are possible.
• Track Suggestions and Get Notified of New Suggestions
• Keep unwanted suggestions hidden
• Answer The Public allows you to invite an infinite number of team members, which simplifies cooperation.

Who it’s for: Content creators, Marketers and SEO Professionals.

5. A COMPLETE E-SIGNATURE SOLUTION – JOTFORM SIGN

Jotform Sign is the perfect solution for businesses looking to automate their workflows with documents that can be signed on any device. You can use Jotform Sign to create, share, and e-sign documents in minutes – both with your team and your customers.

It is a great way to securely gather signatures without the trouble of messy paperwork. You can also automate your e-signing process from start to finish and eliminate manual tasks that consume your valuable time. Moreover, Jotform Sign offers 600+ ready-made templates so that you can choose the form that fits the needs of your business perfectly. 

Features:

• Drag-and-drop builder for uploading and creating signable papers
• Jotform Sign offers a wide range of form field kinds, making it suitable for an unlimited number of use cases.
• Create your signature document once and email it to many recipients. Our adaptable document format saves you both time and money.
• By creating a public URL for your paper, you may easily collect signatures from huge groups of people. Send your link only once and receive several responses.

Who it’s for: Businesses of all Sizes, Legal Professionals and Law Firms, HR and Recruitment, Healthcare and Medical Practices looking for specialist marketing support , Nonprofit Organizations.

6. Social Media Marketing Tool- Hootsuite

As we already mentioned in the last section, coordinating manual postings on social platforms can be very time-consuming. With a free digital marketing tool like Hootsuite, you will be able to schedule all your posts on different platforms. The tool will also show you good data, which you can then use to further improve your content creation process. 

7. QR code generator – BEACONSTAC

Beaconstac’s QR Code generator is a powerful digital marketing tool that allows businesses to easily create custom QR codes for their products or services, which can be scanned by customers to access exclusive content such as discounts, videos, offers, product catalogs, and much more.

With Beaconstac’s QR code generator, businesses can also track and analyze scans, including how many times the code was scanned and at what time. The generator is user-friendly and customizable, making it a great choice for businesses of all sizes looking to incorporate QR codes into their marketing strategies.

It offers integrations with 5000+ applications, including CRMs, sales stack, and HR tools. The best part? It is GDPR and SOC-2 Type II compliant, so you don’t have to worry about QR Code security.

Features:

• Global reach with multilingual QR Codes
• You may customise the QR Code form, colour, and frame to match your brand’s aesthetics.
• By using our centralised admin control, you may add users and collaborate with numerous team members or teams from a single account.
• Increase conversions and purchase rates by reaching out to consumers who scanned your QR Codes on YouTube, Facebook, and Google.
• With a custom domain, you can help visitors recognise your campaign.

Who it’s for: Marketers, retailers, event organizers, educators and small businesses.

8. Cloud Storage Solutions- Dropbox

It is important for businesses to store data in such a way that it is not only safe but also accessible to all. While you have your traditional Google Drive, using Dropbox is also a great option.

You have support for all your document formats including MS Word, MS Excel, and so on. You can also share the folders with respective members of your organization.

Features:

• Keep all of your files in one safe location that you can access from your computer, phone, or tablet. Back up critical folders, such as your ‘Desktop’; any changes will be synced throughout your account.
• Create and edit your work immediately in Dropbox, including cloud content and Microsoft Office files, so you spend less time navigating between programmes or searching for files.
• You can simply produce content and arrange your projects using Paper, a collaborative doc for your team, by utilising timelines, to-do lists, and tables.
• You can keep shared data safe by using features like password protection, expiry links, and download permissions.
• Dropbox is the safe, flexible workplace trusted by over 500,000 teams to protect their most critical files.

Who it’s for: Individual users, professionals and freelancers, remote workers and distributed teams, integration with apps and services.

9. Customer Insights – SentiSum

Every business needs to know its customers inside and out. Every decision, from product management through to marketing should focus on improving customer adoption, reducing customer churn, and improving brand loyalty and advocacy.

SentiSum makes knowing your customers by applying artificial intelligence and asset intelligence to customer feedback, revealing granular insights like churn drivers, friction points and customer sentiment across every support ticket, survey result and customer review.

If you’re a Zendesk user, SentiSum’s Zendesk sentiment analysis tool can automate ticket tagging so you can surface insights quickly.

Features:

• Analyses text data using NLP algorithms to identify the sentiment of customer reviews, including whether they are favourable, negative, or neutral.
• The platform gathers and compiles client feedback from many sources, facilitating access to and analysis of the data by businesses in a single location.
• Businesses may respond to consumer comments and resolve issues directly from the SentiSum platform thanks to integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) and help desk systems.

Who it’s for: Customer Experience Professionals, Customer Support Teams, E-commerce and Retail Businesses, Hospitality and Service Industries.

10. Lead Generation – Fresh Lead Finder

Businesses cannot flourish without lots of fresh, new leads coming through the doors, but to do that you’ll need a powerful lead finder such as Fresh Lead Finder.

This handy tool will find you leads in any industry in just a few minutes, and what’s great is it supports searches in any city in the world. It finds business names and email addresses as well as other useful data pieces.

Features:

• Find local information for any sector and nation.
• Effective cold emailing using a strong email finder.
• Export dozens of leads in a matter of minutes.
• Learn about web technologies and ad recognition.
• Obtain listings of corporate social media links.

Who it’s for: Sales Teams and Professionals, Marketing Teams, Small and Medium-sized Businesses, Startups and Entrepreneurs, B2B and B2C Companies, Lead Generation Agencies.

11. Mailmodo – Email Marketing Tool

Mailmodo offers a free plan to send 10,000 emails per month for as long as you want. It has a drag-and-drop editor to create your own AMP emails or HTML emails.  You can also access their extensive email template library and other features like email automation, transactional emails, and contact segmentation.

Features:

• Simple and code-free AMP emails
• Emails may be sent automatically using drip sequences based on user behaviour and market data.
• Automatically send emails in response to user behaviour such as registration, purchase, and cart abandonment
• On a single dashboard, all reports

Who it’s for: Marketers and Marketing Teams, E-commerce Businesses, Content Creators and Publishers, Event Organizers, Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing.

12. EMail Automation – Easysendy

These days, email marketing is an integral and essential component of every business. EasySendy is an all-in-one email marketing solution that allows you to carry all your various marketing channels together and accelerate traffic, a higher conversion rate, and better ROI for online geeks, marketers, small businesses, and startups. In addition, you can easily design email templates for your campaigns.

Features:

• Make Email Lists with Custom Search Fields
• Using a drag and drop builder, create email templates
• Utilising the most cutting-edge email technology, create and automate the email campaign.
• Maintain solid email lists and observe a decrease in spam and unsubscribes by keeping the list clean.
• Deliver the correct email to the right contact at the right time.

Who it’s for: Small and Medium-sized Businesses, Digital Marketers, E-commerce Companies, Content Creators and Bloggers, Startups and Entrepreneurs, Lead Nurturing, Affiliate Marketers.

13. Sales and marketing collateral – Storydoc

Creating engaging and successful marketing presentations and sales collateral is essential to put your business intelligence to good use. With Storydoc you can easily create interactive B2B decks for every use case you can think of. Thanks to a wide array of templates you won’t need any designer skills to use this great presentation maker.

Features:

• Integrate your CRM, lead-capture forms, live chat, social networks, and other conversion tools to make your collateral an all-around conversion tool.
• Designs that are optimised for the most common usage situations. In addition, there is a large portfolio of stock photos and movies.
• Integrations that are game changers
• You always know who opened your deck and how they interacted with it when you use Storydoc. Always arrive on time.
• Amazing on mobile

Who it’s for: Sales Teams, Marketing Teams, Content Creators, Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, Educational Institutions.

14. Free CRM Software – HUBSPOT

It is always good to engage with customers in a time-bound and meaningful fashion. With HubSpot, you will be able to build relationships with your customers. In addition, you will be able to track sales, maintain contact lists, and allow your sales team key inputs to help them manage their future campaigns. HubSpot is a great free asset for businesses and will remain on top in 2023.

Features:

• Features:
• Increase traffic, convert prospects, and demonstrate the effectiveness of your inbound marketing initiatives.
• With the help of the given sales tools, shorten transaction cycles and boost closing rates.

Who is it for:

• Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs), Sales Professionals, Marketing Teams, Customer Support and Service Teams, Executives and Business owners.

15. GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics is a strong digital marketing tool that may assist you in making a variety of marketing decisions. You can quickly track your e-commerce business as well as set goals to keep your firm on track. Marketers may easily determine the routes to follow with website upgrades and improvements by utilising the numerous data insights provided by Google Analytics. You only need to install Google Analytics on your site to get started.

Features:

• Gives you data on website traffic that is broken out by devices, goods, pages, and other factors.
• Make it possible for you to develop your own metrics, dimensions, and dashboards for quick access to data and information.
• Let you learn more about the performance of the company.
• Enables you to communicate the findings using a variety of reporting tools.
• Organise and visualise the data in accordance with your business’s needs.

Who it’s for: Everyone who owns a website, including sole proprietors, small enterprises, and major enterprise corporations.

16.  CANVA BUSiNESS

If you work in digital marketing, you’ll appreciate the necessity for a good design tool that can assist you in producing eye-catching social media posts and other marketing materials. With the help of Canva, a well-known design tool, you can create marketing campaigns that are successful using visual material that can be shared on blogs, websites, social media, and other platforms. The foundation of any digital marketing effort is visual material. You must create engaging content if you want to draw in your target audience.

Features:

• Canva allows you to modify posts as well as create graphs of any size and shape.
• The tool includes a number of templates. It has a vast bank of stock pictures, photographs, designs, icons, and vectors from which you may build any form of visual material for your marketing campaign.
• It gives you the option to select from a vast array of designs, including those for postcards, brochures, CD covers, wallpaper, books, resumes, certificates, magazine covers, letterheads, presentation graphics, blog banners, cards, posters, flyers, presentations, logos, and social media.

Who it’s for: Content producers, non-designers who need to develop materials and solopreneurs.

17. YOAST SEO

Yoast SEO is undoubtedly familiar to you. One of the most popular and widely used WordPress plugins, it aids online marketers in improving the performance of their websites in search results.

Yoast SEO offers assistance in areas where WordPress is limited, such as sitemap submission, keyword management, content creation, and the use of webmaster tools.

Features:

• Incorporates built-in content analysis, duplicate content management, meta keyword management, rich snippets, social features, and XML sitemaps.
• Enables you to produce content for your digital marketing efforts that is superior. You may add meta descriptions and meta titles for your content using the Yoast SEO meta box, which is accessible through the plugin. Additionally, installing a third-party plugin is not required to use XML sitemaps.
• It creates XML sitemaps for websites and submits them to search engines automatically.  

Who it’s for: WordPress Website Owners, Bloggers, Small and Medium-sized Businesses, Webmasters and SEO Specialists.

18.  SURVEY ANYPLACE

The finest tool for marketing professionals to develop entertaining and engaging tests, evaluations, and surveys for their target audience is SurveyAnywhere. It is a fantastic digital marketing tool that will let you interact with your target market and support the development of brand personality and identity.

You may use this tool to create some high-quality surveys for your digital marketing campaigns that will benefit you in the long run if you are tired of doing conventional surveys to determine the current demand for a product or service.

Features:

• Enables you to build questions that produce insightful results
• Offers the respondents personalised guidance in response
• Aids in comprehending market demands, consumer preferences, desired features, and other factors.

Who it’s for: Businesses and Market Researchers, Educators and Trainers, Event Organizers, Customer Feedback and Market Research.

19.  LOOMLY

A digital marketing calendar and social media management application called Loomly assists users in organising, producing, and disseminating content across many platforms.

It has a calendar view for planning posts, a content library for keeping and organising resources, and a post preview option to see how material will look on various platforms. It also provides metrics to measure performance and engagement as well as collaborative tools.

The plain, clear user interface is easy to use and friendly to people who may not be the most tech-savvy. Small businesses and lone entrepreneurs who wish to manage their social media presence are attracted by the platform’s cost.

Features:

• Loomly allows you to manage all of your content from a one platform. You’ll also get informed through email, push, Slack, and Microsoft Teams whenever someone in your team edits or comments on a piece of content.
• It generates post ideas for you based on popular themes, RSS feeds, date-related events, and social media best practises.
• It allows you to store, organise, and utilise your materials in a centralised, user-friendly Library.
• Before you press publish, Loomly automatically creates post previews for you and your team.
• A collaborative review and approval procedure with end-to-end post history is available through Loomly.

Who it’s for: Social Media Managers, Marketing Teams, Small to Medium-sized Businesses, Influencers and Content Creators.

20.  CLEARSCOPE

Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning are used by the content optimisation platform Clearscope to analyse and improve the material’s readability and SEO.

It assists users in locating and optimising for the most pertinent keywords, phrases, and material in their writing as well as in locating and resolving any readability, grammatical, and style problems.

Content marketers, SEO experts, and copywriters are the key users of Clearscope to enhance the effectiveness of their online content and boost organic traffic. It may be integrated with a number of content management systems (CMS), including Hubspot, WordPress, and others.

It is a great way to securely gather signatures without the trouble of messy paperwork. You can also automate your e-signing process from start to finish and eliminate manual tasks that consume your valuable time. Moreover, Jotform Sign offers 600+ ready-made templates so that you can choose the form that fits the needs of your business perfectly.

Features:

• Campaign Management
• Categorization/Grouping
• Competitive Research
• Management of content
• Conversion Rate Improvement
• Dashboard
• Filtering

Who it’s for: Content Creators and Writers, SEO Professionals, Blog Managers

The Final Word

If you are a business, which is recently testing the waters of digital, you should start with the free tools. Once you have been able to understand how they work individually as well as feel the impact of these tools on your business, you can then proceed with their paid versions.

Almost all the marketing tools on the list come with an advanced paid offering, which unlocks more features and functions. Let us know in the comments what digital marketing tools are you using for your brand.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which are the four pillars of digital marketing?

Analytics, Content, CRM, and Channels are the four essential components of successful digital marketing.

2. What marketing strategy works best for small businesses?

Mailchimp: The commercial subscriptions of Mailchimp, our choice for the finest email marketing software overall, provide templates, testing, landing pages, forms, and reports in addition to access to creative design tools and round-the-clock support.

3. How can I launch my career in digital marketing?

By practising on your own website, you may master digital marketing the best manner possible. Start a blog, then start posting.

After spending some time perfecting SEO, go to Google Ads and Facebook marketing. If you have the chance to work for a reputable digital marketing company, take it.

Shahid Shahmiri

Shahid Shahmiri is a digital marketer who helps online businesses grow with smart marketing tactics to improve sales and leads. He is passionate and driven to grow businesses online and is responsible for analyzing marketing, SEO, growth and managing promotional and media channels.