Resources

Digital marketing resources [Free and Paid]

I guess we all get emails and/or questions on what are the best online marketing tools, SEO and social media networks. From solopreneurs, micro-entrepreneurs to marketers all asked the same questions on a variety of topics. To save time, I decided to put a resource list/topic page together in order to help you make a quick informed decision.

Templates and checklists were among the top 5 downloaded resources, last year. No surprise, as these are the marketing essentials to help you manage your content marketing strategy, SEO, social media along with internal processes.

Hope you’ll enjoy it.

Herein, I will share the must have digital marketing resources along with other online search marketing tools. 

Be aware and make sure you know where your priorities are in order to achieve your goals, don’t spend time on things you don’t need. Note that I only select the industry’s best tools to create, organise, promote and/or help you (and me) build and grow our businesses.

Best online marketing tools to manage /grow your business

Email Marketing resources

• Need to find bulk of prospect’s relevant email addresses? Upload your list of names with domains onto Hunter and in just a few clicks you’ll be able to introduce yourself. I highly recommend.
• Content marketer: Allows you to find email addresses and reach out to influencers. You can find and send emails via your Google account. Use their pre-built templates and enjoy your work by scheduling and planning your marketing automation and/or follow-up sequences.
• Check and download premium email resources.

Tools and checklists to improve Blogging

• Download our outreach email marketing checklist Build effective, non intrusive cold email campaigns. ​Rediscover how to communicate with your prospects​ by telling them what you need from them.
• The essential plugins to boost your content marketing plugins to boost email marketing

Best CRM Tools on World Wide Web (Tried/Tested)

• Streak -CRM: If you are on a budget, you could actually start with this free CRM tool. It allows you to connect all Google apps, communicate, and manage your contacts/ business from one central place.

• Pipedrive: Perfect for small/ medium sized businesses. Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM & pipeline management tool. Very easy to use, thus intuitive leading you to focus on actions that matter. Was created by sales pros. You can really grow your business quicker with Pipedrive. It also connects/integrates with several other apps/tools (Google app, email marketing, forms etc..).

• Nimble: is social cloud-based CRM that pulls in information from a number of online sources, so you always have the latest data on potential leads. It’s easy to identify and nurture contacts without having to do any manual data entry. The online app accepts/works with all major browsers, email programs, and mobile platforms.

• Apptivo: My latest choice for many great reasons. One of them is – whatever I go I can access it from everywhere (No more browser issues). Its fully optimised for all modern computers’ web browsers. You can add prospects and start growing your business with integrated Cloud Suite. Fully open to over 50+ apps in one place. Perfect for all types of businesses.

Content Marketing Resources (Plan, Write, Edit, Create, curate..)

• Digital marketing guidelines: Kindly provided by the University of Edinburgh. Writing for the Web needs proper guidance – Content student or small business owner, you can download the guidelines that cover good practice in writing and structuring the information for the Web.
• Mind42: Free online mind mapping tool – fantastic tool to help you visualise and organise information. The mind maps can either be private (by default) or shared. >> Possible downloads.
• Editor check list [sample] – subscribe to our e-newsletter and we’ll send you full version
• BuzzSumo: Analyse industry topics (that work) or look out for competitor’s content.
• Listly: is another (useful) free platform for curating and sharing all your lists. You can enter any topics you like,  from social media marketing to science fiction – you name it. The plus side: online users can follow your lists, if they like what they see, they can upvote your list pushing it to rank higher. Create your best Listly and start promoting it and/or upvote your favourites.
• Apester: is another great free interactive tool. Create and start collecting data whilst engaging with your readers.
  You can use polls, quizzes etc.
• Content Marketing plus Social Media Editorial Calendar Template : Once open, go under “File” and “save as” whatever .xls version you have.
• Website content writing agreement-sample
• Quadrant-Channels-Keywords : if you’re a spreadsheet kind of person write and log ideas onto same screen and plan.
• Go to Google spreadsheets: Log, track, share everything you want.
• Camtasia: screen recording and video editing plus sharing.
• Jing: simple way to share images and short videos- and its free.
• Share images: quotes, triple likes, favorites, and retweets.
• Online image editor: great free tool to resize, edit, crop, add text or convert your images.

Finance

• Understand how to break-even with this tool >> break-even formula worksheet
• Xero accounting app  >> is an online business accounting software made and designed for micro and small businesses. From the log-in you have access to: invoicing, bank reconciliation, book keeping & more.  Works on: Mac, PC, tablet & smartphones.

Lead Generation

• Thrive Leads: The ultimate list building plugin for WordPress.
• Rapportive: Allows you to discover personal details about your contacts. Click on any email address in your Google inbox and you’ll see the person’s contact details and social connections appear in the sidebar. Also very handy when verifying or validating email addresses. When the person’s contact information shows up then you know you’ve got the right email.

Project management

• SWOT Analysis The SWOT analysis is a (structural) strategic planning technique that is used to identify, analyse and help a business capture its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. These are all directly or indirectly related to the business survival.
• Business Strategy Planning Infographic 2018: Visual business setup reminder if you are just starting your business from scratch. Email me if you need more guidance or help.
• GanttProject: Schedule and manage your projects.  GanttProject is free, written in Java and features Gantt chart, resource management, calendar mode,  you can also import/export (MS Project, HTML, PDF, spreadsheets…)
• Joint venture – Questions to address

Online Marketing Courses

• Google created the Online Marketing Challenge – Over the past 7 or 8 years, people (> 110,000) from over 100 countries have enrolled Google’s Online Marketing Challenge. This is a good online course that offers modules that cover the basics of digital marketing, search engine marketing, mobile, social, display advertising, search advertising, Google analytics, and video. Its a comprehensive course for beginners.
• Note: Google gives all new learners a $250 AdWords budget (use over a three-week period), to run an online advertising campaign for a business or for a not-for-profit organisation. If you’re looking for a serious free online digital marketing course that covers pretty much everything from inbound marketing to the practical real experience this is your best option.

Startup/Technology Sites

• Hacker News: crowd-sourced tech/ Startup content.
• Alistapart: is a bit like going to your local library so you can ask clever people to explain/talk about CMSs. They’re talking about content strategy and how you can improve your site, design and plan optimisation.
• Startups directory Europe: Leading startup in E.U. Find jobs, new startups, data-driven analysis, know-how etc.
• ProductHunt: I am addicted to new technology. If you want to grasp what’s new and who is doing well visit the site.

SEO /SEM

• Ahrefs Content Gap: Still away all the good keywords your competitors are ranking for and use the ones you’re missing so your website can out rank them.The Ahrefs site is among our favorite Content/SEO tools. There is plenty of good reasons for that. But here’s the top ones. Firstly, they have an amazing customer service, informative blog and video tutorials. Secondly, you’ll find almost everything you need to know about topic keyword research, PR outreach and link building and other useful SEO-related topics. You’ll will also benefit from weekly newsletters, updates and all their up-to-date videos.They publish super relevant content including step by step tutorials, and also how to optimise the use of their tool for better results.

• Distilled.net: The top notch site to find what SEO consultants are talking and sharing knowledge.
• Search Engine Land: Like the name says – this is the land (site) of fresh news on the search industry.
• SEO Book: Smart analysis of the search field and SEO.

Storage + Developers Hosting Plans

• Linode: Just log in and start deploying and manage any SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Select and get your server up and running.. in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and node location.
• Cloudflare: Set up your own cloud under 5 minutes. No need to change web hosting provider. You can protect your DNS and you don’t need coding skills at all. They have over 115 Data Center across the Globe.
• Heroku: Innovative platform as a service (PaaS) enabling developers across the world to build and run applications entirely in the cloud.

Web Hosting for Businesses [ WordPress]

This will saves you at least £90/$160 per year on SSL renewals.

Traffic Planet hosting was rebranded (in November 2016) to www. wpxhosting.com [WPX]. If you are seriously on the look for lightning fast WP hosting, secure and professional web services then look no more as I will recommend you WPX. Seriously.

I’ve been using their managed WordPress solutions and services since nov. 2015 and to be perfectly honest, I never looked back.

Plus, if you have problems with conflictive plugins or anything else they’ll rescue you free of charge. Often we get issues fixed within or under 5 minutes with a one minute response.

If you fancy reading (I recommend) to learn more about this web hosting company you can read it here.

Best WordPress themes

Looking to create impressive and professional looking WordPress websites? The first (and the cheapest) thing to do before setting-up a WordPress is:

Very important: Write a content plan and then find a theme you like to help publish your content!

Here are some that we use and recommend. Whether you are starting a blog, or setting up a complex website, these names below know what a WordPress platform needs. They will keep your WordPress fast, scalable, and secure.

• StudioPress themes: Our website uses a Studiopress theme. Simply because they are secure, robustly built on Genesis framework and of course mobile responsive.
• Try Astra themes Their themes are light and well coded making it superfast. Go check their work.

Landing (Aka squeeze) Pages

Build your own business brand/blog from scratch and get a professional look. Perfect when you need to (must) create selling pages or even any page.

In other words enticing people to sign up to your mail list, by just creating landing pages with beautiful opt-ins.

Try these two: Thrives or Elementor

Best Web Security Plugins – Apps

• Wordfence: The WordPress security plugin that provides free extra layer of protection, it keeps your website safe from hacks and malwares.
• Authy: Protects people and businesses against malicious hacking with two-factor authentication security.
• Tinfoil Security: is a website application security solution built by a team of MIT graduates. This app will keep monitoring and checking for vulnerabilities using a constantly updated (algo) scanner. Audience: medium-large businesses.

Social media

• Study data from social media accounts with fanpage karmaWith social media management tool you can perform multiple tasks in one go. Analyse your accounts first, then spy on the competitors’ (FB, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pin).  Their free plan gives you a complete 90-day analysis for one page along with a comparative dashboard for a competitor of your choice. On top of that they’ll send a weekly report and alerts. With the free analytics version: you’ll see engagement, growth, most-seen content, main keywords, top blog posts, engagement by day, time, post type and typr of supporters, frequency among other metrics.

Paid and Free books

• Project Gutenberg the first producer of free e-books.  Find all sorts of books – updated daily.
• Good to great (was recommended to me by Felix Velarde.. many thanks sir)

We have some other relevant and awesome premium digital resources to help boost your online marketing business. Many among these are 100% free to download.

FAQ’s

• • Why Marketing Resources?

As mentioned above we think it is important to share value along with innovative tools to help businesses improve their daily efforts and thrive further.

• • What type of Marketing Resources?

Any marketing resource that brings value. This can be a podcast, blog post, checklist or any downloadable offer. Any other piece of information that educates individuals and companies.

• • Who Should use Marketing Resources?

Marketing resources are available to any individual looking to educate themselves on a topic or improve their current efforts. It can’t hurt to check out a marketing resource!We’ll update this page with many other useful resources as often as possible. Feel free to share this useful page with your peers.

Thanks for visiting.