10 Free, Little-known Web Marketing Tools

Fine-tuning your web marketing efforts will likely increase their effectiveness. Here’s a collection of 10 free tools that can help.

Email Subject Line Suggester

MailChimp, the email service provider, provides a tool for suggesting subject lines for your campaigns. While it does require a free account to utilize the tool, the invaluable information you can glean from it makes it worth the effort.


Google Trends

Google Trends not only shows current hot searches, but it allows you to compare products, keywords, or ideas — displaying their popularity in comparison to overall search volume.




Browsershots

Whether you are completely redesigning a website, or simply making tweaks to the checkout process or lead generation forms, knowing how a web page will behave in different browsers is critical. Browsershots will show you screenshots of your web page in different browsers and versions.




AdWords Performance Grader

AdWords Performance Grader by WordStream, a pay-per-click management software creator, analyzes your Google AdWords account from top to bottom, attempting to show you how you stack up against competition in your industry. For the tool to work, you must provide Google account credentials.



Five Second Test

Studies show that people make decisions about a web site in less than 8 seconds. Your first interaction with visitors is critical to converting them to customers. Five Second Test lets you upload a sample of your site, have people view it, and then complete a series of questions about what they saw. To use the free version, you’ll have to return the favor, and answer questions about other websites as well.




Twellow

Twellow aggregates Twitter users and categorizes them by areas of interest. Dig in to their database to find tweeters that are relevant to your business, and follow them.




YouTube Keyword Tool

If you are implementing video into your web marketing, YouTube Keyword Tool can show you what kinds of videos are searched for on that website based on criteria you enter, such as themes and locales. It’s an excellent way to determine what is interesting to people at the moment.




Pingdom Page Load Speed Tool

The page load speed on your website has two primary effects: It can help or hurt your search engine optimization efforts, and, most importantly, it affects the experience your website visitors have. Faster is better. The Pingdom tool gives you a scorecard for your web page performance, and offers some analysis as to why your load speed is what it is.






On Page Search Engine Optimization Analysis

This free tool from SEO Workers, a search engine optimization consultancy, allows you to analyze key pages of your website for elements that are important to ranking well in Google and other search engines. On the report page, embedded YouTube videos explain what you’re looking at, and why it’s important.




Soovle Popular Searches

If you’re looking to understand what people are searching for across multiple search engines, Soovle will take a keyword you enter, and show suggestions for popular, similar searches on the engines of your choosing. You can even download the keyword ideas displayed into a CSV file for later use and analysis.

The Trader in Pajamas SCAM

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13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013

Internet marketing is now a critical piece of just about any company’s marketing mix. There are few marketing options with the speed, efficiency and reach as internet marketing. And so you should take the time to ensure you are focusing sufficiently on your internet marketing to maximize your revenue and growth.    

The year 2013 will prove to be another year in which the array of internet marketing vehicles, tools and techniques will continue to increase. To help you capitalize on the opportunities, here are 13 hot internet marketing trends for 2013 that you should consider when planning your marketing initiatives throughout the year:    

13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013 

1. Design Matters

Design matters, because design sells. Just look at the success of Apple, Pinterest, Desk.com or Nike. All four websites are stunning, and that’s no coincidence. Apple is the most valuable company of all time. It actually carries very few products, though. It’s the design that powers Apple’s value. Nike is a shoe and apparel company, yet pays just as much attention to the design of its website, videos and ads as much as to anything else. Focus on great design for all of your internet marketing in 2013.

2. Marketing Goes Visual

Similarly, communication through visual means is hot, and only getting hotter. Whether the explosion in infographics, or the dramatic rise in the popularity of Pinterest, or the redesigns of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, we are going through a visual revolution. Start figuring out how to make more of your marketing visual in 2013.

3. Parallax Design

Parallax website design incorporates special scrolling techniques whereby background images on the screen move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth on the screen. You can see examples at the following websites: Volkswagon Beetle and Activate (be sure to scroll down the page!). If you are planning a website redesign in 2013, consider incorporating elements of parallax design.

4. Mobile Mobile Mobile

Wordwide, there are over 5 billion mobile users and 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers specifically. The iPad was the fastest growing technology product EVER! Wow, if you need further convincing that you should start planning how to connect with your audience via mobile channels for your business, you’re nuts!

5. Video Video Video

More than 4 billion online videos are watched every day. Sixty-eight percent of video watchers share video links. So it’s clear your audience likes video. On top of this, consider that after 72 hours, a typical person can retain about 10% of text that they’ve read, 65% of an image they’ve seen, or 95% of a video they watched. Think that video might be helpful with communicating your message to your audience? Just a bit, huh?!?

6. Cloud-Based Tools

To be uber-efficient with your internet marketing efforts, you should be using cloud-based tools. For email marketing, you might be using MailChimp. For SEO, you might be using SEOmoz. For landing page testing, you might be using Unbounce. For heat map analysis, you might be using CrazyEgg. For website analysis, you might be using BoostSuite. Check out all the unbelievably useful options available to you.

7. The Multi-Screen World

With 86% of mobile internet users actually using their devices while watching TV, and with more than 10,901 Tweets PER SECOND being issued as TV viewers watched Adele win Record of the Year at The Grammy’s, it’s clear that we all live in a multi-screen world. Make sure that your internet marketing accounts for not just desktops, but ALL screens.

8. Social Media Gets Smarter

Facebook has more than 1 billion users, and Twitter has more than 500 million. Social media is an opportunity for your business, but it’s been difficult for many businesses to make sense of it all and to gain solid business value out of it. With a growing number of marketing platforms such as Wildfire by Google and ShortStack, and with more granular social media analytics as provided by tools such asSproutSocial, Followerwonk and PageLever, extracting clear meaning from your social marketing will get easier over time.

9. Retargeting Goes Mainstream

Retargeting is a means of placing your advertisements in front of your audience after they have left your website without converting. What many marketers fail to realize is that retargeting is one of the most effective internet marketing techniques available. If you are already investing in your site and your marketing campaigns for more site traffic, then it typically pays big dividends to remind the people who left your website without a conversion of your value in solving their needs. Your options for retargeting include Google Remarketing, AdRoll, Retargeter and also Bizo (for exceptional B2B retargeting). 

10. Email Remarketing

In lead generation campaigns or retailer email marketing, there are always going to be occurrences of form or cart abandonment. However, it’s a waste to just let the prospect go without reaching out and finding out if you might indeed offer exactly what they want or need. After the abandonment of a registration form or online shopping cart, through email remarketing you can send out an automated email to give your brand another chance at winning the heart and mind of the prospect. According to SeeWhy, 26% of those who abandoned an online shopping cart will return to complete the purchase in the case they receive a remarketing email. 

11. Search, Social & PR Collide

Organic search has been incorporating social signals for some time, and the integration of search and social has accelerated with the introduction of Google+ and the Google Knowledge Graph. With Google’s Panda and Penguin search algorithm updates, it’s become extremely clear that quality and value matter. That means high quality content, combined with sincere, transparent social marketing, combined with targeted PR is going to be a triad that’s hard to beat. 

12. Attribution Measurement

If you run multiple forms of internet marketing, such as paid search, SEO, email marketing, display advertising, and retargeting, then it can be difficult to assess the value of each piece of your marketing puzzle. If someone encounters your brand five times in a given week through the different marketing vehicles, who’s to say how much credit to give to each of the different pieces. That’s where attribution measurement services come in, whether Google, ClearSaleing or VisualIQ.

13. The Hispanic Market

Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the US population. And as they represent approximately 25% of new births, expect them to have an impact on your future business. Research points to Hispanics spending more time online than non-Hispanics and being more active online than non-Hispanics. If you have been ignoring the Hispanic market, perhaps 2013 is the time to start providing the market with the attention and customization that it deserves.