At PMW, while we’re here to handle the complexities of full-service marketing, we also understand that not everyone has the budget to outsource everything. Here, we’re sharing a few FREE tools we can’t live without to help you broaden your skill set and make a difference in your day-to-day tasks. After all, in the world of marketing, a little help can go a long way.
Unveil SEO Magic with SEMrush – www.semrush.com
We get it; the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can seem like an absolute minefield full of technical jargon and magical digital spells. However, sites such as SEMrush are easy to use and can help you dive into keyword research, track your website’s performance, and spy on your competitors—all in one place. While our digital pros utilise the full potential of this comprehensive SEO toolkit with the paid platform, you can easily set up a free SEMrush account and dip your toes in the water. It’s a great, easy-to-understand site (that even has online tutorials), so you can start to make informed decisions, boost your business online visibility, and try to conquer the search engine game.
Create how-to guides at the click of a button with Tango – www.tango.us
We recently discovered Tango, which has quickly become a game-changer for our internal communications and process showcases. In essence, Tango is an online tool that effortlessly captures your computer screen processes and converts them into easily shareable, step-by-step guides. Forget about bombarding your colleagues with a barrage of screenshots or spending hours on manual work. With Tango, a simple click through your steps is all it needs—it takes care of formatting screenshots and writing descriptions and generates a shareable link for your new guide. Trust us – streamlining communication and process documentation has never been easier!
Get those to-do lists online with Trello – www.trello.com
Most of us at PMW swear by Trello (although we also have some strong allegiances to Microsoft Planner in Teams). We organise tasks, create to-do lists, build team boards and can visually track our progress effortlessly. You can say goodbye to notebooks and post-it notes; even the non-tech-savvy can navigate Trello’s interface, and if you get your whole team to follow in your Trello footsteps, it can make project management a breeze.
Free design at your fingertips with Canva – www.canva.com
Canva is always a controversial topic at PMW – as you can imagine, our colleagues in our design studio aren’t exactly fans! However, if we’re following our brand values of honesty and transparency, we fully appreciate that not every business has the budget to employ professional designers. So, if you need to create visuals, social media posts, and marketing materials without the need for expensive software or a design degree, then Canva’s user-friendly and FREE platform should be your go-to.
Check how well your website is working with Screaming Frog – www.screamingfrog.co.uk
We’re not entirely sure how this site got its random name, but we love it. At PMW, we always say that a business’ website is the equivalent of a shop window- you can have the best things inside the shop, but if it doesn’t appeal from the outside or isn’t inviting (on a website think about how long a page takes to load, or if there are broken links etc.) it could put people off, and you’d lose business. Screaming Frog is a handy tool that crawls your website, identifies any issues, and tells you what opportunities there are to optimise your site more so you can improve its performance for search engine success.
Don’t stop learning – broaden your skill sets with free marketing training
Knowledge is power, and we can assure you when it comes to marketing, the learning never stops. There are so many excellent free training tools out there, but we’re especially fans of the courses offered by industry giants such as the HubSpot Academy and Grow with Google. From inbound marketing to Google Analytics mastery, these resources provide a valuable education at no cost, so every day could be a school day.
Finally, our top piece of advice – if any one person says they are a jack-of-all-trades and can master all the top skills required for marketing, it’s probably not true. All of us at PMW know the basics of every service we provide, but we are all employed as specialists in our own areas, whether that be PR, design, digital, website development or account/project management and media buying. It’s what makes us so powerful as a full-service agency. You get all the genuine experts under one roof.
