In the current digital era, leveraging free online tools is essential to understanding your customers, competitors, and campaigns. The constantly changing marketing landscape offers a wide array of tools for different marketing analysis activities. As a marketer, staying updated and utilizing these tools can dramatically enhance your marketing strategy and budgeting.

The RACE Framework, an acronym for reach, act, convert, and engage, has been a guiding strategy for many businesses, including Startups, SMEs, and international corporations. This framework assists marketers in creating a holistic strategy that ensures effective acquisition and retention of customers. Each stage of the RACE Framework offers different tools that marketers can use to optimize their efforts.

1. Reviewing brand mentions and the latest developments in your industry

Google Alerts: It’s a traditional tool still used by many marketers for monitoring brand mentions, campaign hashtags, or competitor names. According to one study carried out by a Sydney SEO provider, Google alerts can increase link acquisition by as much as 74% for businesses actively carrying our PR.

Talkwalker: A free tool for social listening that helps track mentions of your brand, hashtags, and competitors on social media.

Feedly: Despite RSS being out of vogue, Feedly is an efficient way to scan the latest news in different categories, providing insight into industry developments.

Zest.is: This Google Chrome extension is particularly useful for digital marketing, offering content recommendations from users.

2. Managing social media updates

Hootsuite and Buffer: These tools are great for scheduling social media updates, keeping tabs on competitors, and influencers, and monitoring content trends.

As digital marketing continues to evolve and change, Hootsuite and Buffer continue to provide value to digital marketers at all levels. Both of these social media tools bring unique capabilities to the table, allowing marketers to effectively manage and enhance their social media strategies. By monitoring content trends, gauging competitor activity, and effectively managing social media updates, businesses can harness the full potential of their social media presence

3. Finding influencers

LinkedIn advanced search: Although LinkedIn removed its sector skills feature, its advanced search is a worthy replacement for finding business influencers.

Followerwonk: This tool helps find influencers via their Twitter bio.

Right Relevance: This identifies publishers and influencers based on their bio text.

4. Understanding customer search behaviour

Understanding what makes your target audience tick is an essential element in every successful digital marketing strategy. So, to measure and understand their search behaviour it’s essential that you have the right tools at hand.

Google Search Console and Google Trends: These tools, when linked with Google Analytics, provide valuable insights into customer behaviour.

Ubersuggest and KeywordTool.io: They are great for summarizing suggest/autocomplete behaviour in different countries, helping you cover all significant behaviours.

5. Competitor site benchmarking

Similar Web: A freemium tool that offers free stats on all sites, including referrers.

6. Off-page backlink analysis for SEO

Majestic, Semrush, and Moz Open Site Explorer: These are the top tools for off-page backlink analysis.

While both use a similar logic (link quality and quantity) in measuring the efficacy of a websites off-site work, they do so in different ways and can be used in combination to provide a holistic analysis of a website’s offsite strategy.

7. On-page markup analysis for SEO

Hubspot’s Site: It is a useful tool for reviewing on-page for SEO.

Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Toolbar and Moz Toolbar: Essential for reviewing on-page markup like headings and mobile screen resizing.

8. Understanding overall online marketing effectiveness

Google Analytics: Mastering this tool or an equivalent is vital for everyone working in marketing.

As marketers are forced to move from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 in June 2023, it’s important to understand how metrics may differ and how Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can be used to better understand website performance.

Wrapping Up

Whether you’re a marketing newbie, or an experienced digital marketing professional, these free digital marketing tools provide valuable insights into your business, competitors, and the industry in which you operate. However, it’s essential to remember that the usefulness of these tools is contingent on the specific needs and goals of your business, as well as your ability to use the tools effectively. Each business is unique, and what works for one might not work for another. Therefore, it is always recommended to thoroughly analyse your needs before choosing any tool.

Remember, these tools are just a starting point – not the be-all and end-all. The best way to improve your digital marketing strategy is to experiment, measure results, and continually refine your approach. Remember, the goal is not just to use these tools but to use them effectively. As such, always keep track of your results, and don’t be afraid to adapt your strategy as necessary.

The digital landscape is constantly in flux. Evolving with new technologies and changes to platforms means that staying up to date can be challenging to navigate. However, with the right tools, you can make informed decisions that drive growth and success for your business.