Free Guide: Marketing Tools & Resources

The majority of online marketers today use a varied selection of research tools to find out who is buying what on the web. Practically everything on the web is searchable with research tools that can present you with valuable insights to people’s habits on how they shop to what they like and so on. So since I lost my last SEO page due to an outage here’s a new list of marketing resources most of which are entirely gratis.

Market Research

Before creating any product or breaking into a new market or niche, you will need to research your market.

Questions you should be asking yourself before you start

Does the market have high traffic?

Are there buyers for this market?

Is the market too saturated or competitive?

Does the market have longevity and will it grow in the coming years?

Resources to answer these questions

Google Trends: Find out what’s popular for your demographic

SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool

Keyword Suggestion Tool

Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

Google Insights: Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, Categories, time frames and properties

Wordtracker Keyword Suggestion Tool

SpyFu: spy on your competitors

SEOQuake is a program which allows user to view a large number of SE parameters on the fly.

MSN Ad Lab: A large selection of analyst tools to drill down and target your market.

Quantcast: Get Audience Data for any Site on the Internet

Tweetmeme: What’s hot and popular on Twitter

TwitScoop: Real time feed of what’s popular and hot.

Bing XRank: Who’s the hottest celebrity? (In case you sell celeb products)

eBay Pulse: Best selling lists for eBayer’s

Yahoo Buzz: Mostly news orientated

Testing and Tracking

Google Analytics: is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Google Optimizer: Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allow you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.

UltraMaxed: If you use pay-per-click (PPC) ads to promote products or affiliate links, UltraMaxed Gold will track the number of clicks and sales for each keyword.

In the PPC service (such as Google.com), just enter an UltraMaxed Gold link as the URL to send traffic to. That’s all you need to do.

The script will then automatically track keywords from the search engine - and forward visitors to the appropriate link.

You can visit the UltraMaxed Gold admin feature at any time and it will show you a detailed summary of what keywords were used to find your PPC listing, which search engines they came from (in case you are using more than one PPC search engine) and how many visitors there were for each keyword/search engine combination.

Compete: See how your online properties stack up against the industry, identify fast movers and top performers, easily measure your performance or use behavioral segments to get insight into where specific groups of consumers are trafficking and spending their time online.

Productivity and Time Management

Huddle: gives you simple, secure online workspaces containing powerful project and collaboration tools. Huddle is hosted, there’s no software to download and it’s free to get started.

RoboForm: This invaluable desktop application will save you hours on filling forms and saving passwords. You can also setup a link with their online password sync and storage tool, so you never have to worry about losing your info again. I couldn’t get by without this tool.

Gmail: Sounds surprising? Gmail is more than just a mail client. Apart from managing your mail with filters for spam along with labeling and folder sorting, it also allows you to setup everything from docs, calendars to live chat all from your inbox. This is also great for collaboration and sharing your projects. Look out for the coming release of Google Wave which will revolutionize communication across multiple platforms.

Free online Content

Music

www.shockwave-sound.com

www.freeplaymusic.com

Photos

www.sxu.hu

www.istockphoto.com

www.bigstockphoto.com

Public Domain Content

EzineArticles.com

Gutenberg: Producers of free electronic books

Outsourcing

Elance

Guru

Scriptlance

RentACoder

eScriptionist

48HrBooks

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