Local Marketing Insider #012 // Web Tools We Love

Instant gratification.

Or better yet, an answer to a specific problem.

That’s what free software tools are all about. Enabling your prospects to experiment. To perform a simple action, do research, or see how their business is performing.

- Hubspot sells marketing and websites, so they built a “website grader.”
- Youtube, an “audience finder.”

These tools are a lot of fun, so I figured I’d put together a collection for you. If you think developing a tool for your own marketing could be useful, below are 14 examples as inspiration.

If not, here are 14 free tools to explore, some may be useful in your marketing (eg. Pixelhunter’s Ai image resizer for social media).

I’ve also added which ones require your email.

via GIPHY

Let the games begin!

(feeling festive as it’s Olympics week)

Clearbit Company Logo API

Adding client/partner logos to your website is key. A form of social proof, it offers your business credibility by association. But, tracking down quality logo files is hit or miss. To help, Clearbit built a simple API to pull any company logo image and put it on your website.

https://clearbit.com/blog/logo/

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? Yes

Pixelhunter Image Resizer for Social Media

Regardless of how we all feel about it, each social media network prefers slightly different image sizes and formatting. Put any image into Pixelhunter’s tool and it will use Ai to produce variations of the image optimized for each social network.

https://pixelhunter.io/

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? No

Widewail Reputation Grader

Answer a few questions about your reputation strategy and see how it stacks up. Get a score out of 100 and then read recommendations on how to improve.

https://www.widewail.com/reputation-grader

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? No

Hubspot Website Grader

Who doesn’t love getting a score? Put in your URL and Hubspot will assess your website’s performance, SEO effectiveness, mobile accessibility, and security.

https://website.grader.com/

The details:

Requires email? Yes
Technical? No

Think with Google Test My Site

Assess your site speed and get additional recommendations.

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? No

New Breed Inbound Marketing Grader for Hubspot Users

New Breed will scan your Hubspot account and grade your current inbound marketing performance. Learn more about your website performance, search marketing, email marketing, and social media.

https://grader.newbreedmarketing.com/

The details:

Requires email? Yes
Technical? No

Hubspot Email Signature Generator

Create a fancy email signature with a photo and social media links.

https://www.hubspot.com/email-signature-generator

The details:

Requires email? Phone #
Technical? No

Think with Google Find My Audience

Thinking about starting a youtube channel? Learn more about which channels and related interests are popular in your niche.

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/findmyaudience/

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? No

SEO Tools (there are a lot of these, here are two)

There are a few keyword research tools on the market. They are all pretty similar, here are a couple to try:

Ubersuggest

https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/

Moz Keyword Explorer

https://moz.com/explorer

Photo Background Remover

Normally you would need to pay for Photoshop (and learn how to use it) to remove photo backgrounds. With Radaar’s tool, the only cost is your email.

https://www.radaar.io/1078-free-tools/1088-remove-background/

The details:

Requires email? Yes
Technical? No

Tiny PNG

New Widewail marketing team member, Hudson, is a big fan of this one. "This is easily the free web tool I have used the most working on web graphics."

https://tinypng.com/

The details:

Requires email? No
Technical? No

Microsoft Clarity Site Session Recorder

This one is cool, we have used it a bit a Widewail. In short, you can see what your website users do in the form of session recordings and heatmaps.

https://clarity.microsoft.com/

The details:

Requires email? Yes
Technical? No

Google Lighthouse Website Performance Tool

Site performance is more important than ever with Google’s latest algorithm update. Using Lighthouse you can assess performance and identify issues for each page of your site on mobile and desktop.

Related tip: Google takes a “mobile-first” approach, meaning the performance of your mobile site is what they assess first. I found widewail.com performed consistently better on desktop, meaning if I had not run tests on the mobile version of the site I would have had a false sense of success.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lighthouse/blipmdconlkpinefehnmjammfjpmpbjk?hl=en

The details: