To be successful in marketing, you often need to spend money, whether that’s paying to send out mailers, investing in an effective website, or dropping cash on Facebook advertising to reach more people. It’s just part of the cost of doing business, and a little money spent can mean big rewards for your practice.
But not always! Sometimes people create great marketing tools and offer access to them at no cost. These tools make your marketing more effective and your job a little easier, and they’re all are free, so you don’t have to write them into your marketing budget, pitch them to your boss, or look at them longingly from afar. Just follow the links and get started right away.
General Marketing
- Bit.ly URL shorteners are pretty unexciting but they actually do play an important role in your marketing. Use bit.ly as your URL shortener and get analytics about how many people are clicking on your links around the web.
- SimilarWeb Want to check in on the competition? Use this awesome tool to see how much traffic your competitors are getting.
- Mobile-Friendly Test Google’s Mobile-Friendly and Speed Test Tool can tell you if your site passes muster on mobile devices. If Google approves your site, it could give you an SEO boost in mobile searches.
- Free Stock Images There are too many sites to list them all here, so check out our complete list of free image sources to find stock photos you can use on your website, social media marketing, or wherever you need them.
- Typeform Create beautiful forms and questionnaires to share on your website. For free, you get 100 responses per month and 10 questions per form.
Analytics
- Google Analytics Get comprehensive analytics at who’s looking at what on your website with Google Analytics. The interface can be a little intimidating when you first get started, but the numbers are invaluable!
- Hot Jar This tool also offers analytics on your website, including heat maps so you can see where people look on your site and conversion funnels to help you figure out how to optimize your website. If you have under 2,000 pageviews per day, you can get a limited version of Hot Jar free forever.
Email Marketing
- MailChimp This awesome marketing email platform is free for 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. Use it to build beautiful emails to help you stand out from the crowd.
- SubjectLine How compelling are your email subject lines? Find out in seconds with this tool. Just enter your subject line and it’ll give you a score out of 100.
Social Media Marketing
- Likealyzer This simple tool will analyze your Facebook page and let you know what you can do to improve. Just enter your Facebook URL and it will assess and rank your page for you, including recommendations for improvement. It’s quick and effective.
- The 2018 Pet Holiday Calendar There are too many social media pet holidays to keep track. So we did the work for you! Download our pet holiday calendar so you’ll never miss a holiday again!
Blogging
- After the Deadline This Chrome app will analyze your grammar, spelling, and writing style to ensure you’re always producing top quality blog content.
- Hubspot Blog Topic Generator This blog topic generator is by no means perfect, but it can be a fun way to try and generate ideas for your next topic. Just put in three nouns you want to write about, and it will come up with potential headlines.
- LifeLearn’s list of 100+ blog topics for veterinary practices Blog topic generators don’t cater to the veterinary industry. So we came up with a huge list of veterinary-specific blog ideas for every month of the year, so you’re never stumped again!
- Readability Test Tool We always emphasize readability in your blogs. Keeping things simple can help you connect better with your clients, who don’t know nearly as much about pet health as you do. Test out your blog posts for readability with this simple tool.
Design
- Piktochart Create attractive infographics for free using Piktochart’s easy-to-use tools.
- Canva We know, we love Canva and we talk about it often. But that’s because we use it every day ourselves! Create amazing designs with this free design tool that anyone can use – even complete design beginners.
- Powtoon This is too cool! Create an animated video, for free. The free version includes a watermark and outro, but it might be worth it, to create an attention grabbing video for your website or social media accounts.
