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An honest review of FREE online digital marketing tools

By 5th July 2022May 16th, 2023No Comments

There are many free resources available for business use and we agree many of them are super helpful. We know many of these tools are our competition and we are aware of what we are up against in the digital marketing world. However, we are confident enough in our work, experience and professional software to be able to review and offer a side-by-side comparison of the best free resources for digital marketing tools available online and let you decide. 

Planoly 

An honest review of free digital marketing tools | Tall Zebra Design

Pro's
This is a pretty common free resource and it’s great from a visual perspective. You can chop, change and edit the order of your Instagram posts to see how they will look on your business's grid before posting then schedule them so you don’t have to post them manually.
Con's
It's run by a bot which means... errors. Recently, there was an issue where many posts scheduled for the weekend simply did not post, the issue was not resolved until the following Tuesday. Planoly is only helpful for Instagram and Pinterest, to add further social platforms, there is a cost. If you have an Instagram shop you can’t tag your products through Canva.

How we differ

We offer social media management including content creation for all major platforms, you can decide which. We get to know your business, do our research and create the perfect content to gain you new clients or re-target your current ones. We allow one free revision for all social posts, send them to you two weeks in advance for approval and even post them for you too. 

 

 

Canva

An honest review of free digital marketing tools | Tall Zebra Design

Pro's
Canva is impressive for basic graphic design. There is a lot of choice, and you don’t need to be a photoshop or illustrator mastermind to use it – it's user-friendly.
Con's
The templates you use may have also been used by 1000’s of other businesses. You will never gain access to the raw file, you don’t own your image, it will always belong to Canva. Unlike Adobe creative cloud you cannot create an image that will be scalable to any size beyond what it is already set at without losing quality and resolution. It's also becoming less of a free resource as lots of its elements come at an additional cost, they're not always marked clearly either.

How we differ

With us, your design possibilities are essentially endless, far from the limitations of a free resource. Our graphic designer has access to and can create original fonts, images, and layouts that are perfect for your vision. Custom work can become very technical, and you can quickly become out of your depth if you’re not a graphic designer. Any logos or branding we design for you will be 100% unique to your business and you will have access to the raw file. 

 

Yoast

An honest review of free digital marketing tools | Tall Zebra Design

Pro's
Con's

This free resource is a plug-in that you add to your WordPress or Shopify platform to guide you through making your written content search engine optimized. Its user-friendly functionality breaks down each step you need to complete into sections and checks them off once you have completed them. 

You can have a sea of green ticks on Yoast, but it does not mean your article will be read-worthy. 

If you are not a natural writer, it can be tricky to thread ‘focus keywords and phrases’ into text without it appearing obvious to the reader or without it sounding robotic. 

How we differ

Yoast is a free resource because it is a basic system. Our copywriters use much more advanced software, however, we only use the software to fine-tune our work once the piece is already written. Our copywriter writes content which is naturally search engine optimised as they understand the methods the system works with.  

 

Spin Bot

An honest review of free digital marketing tools | Tall Zebra Design

Pro's
Con's
Spin bot is ideal for small sentences or if you are playing around with blog titles, or tag lines. Unless you're in the writers world you probably wouldn't be aware of this free resource.
Clickbait. You can cheapen your brand or people may feel you are an unreliable source if your blog titles are too wacky. People often become reliant on Spinbot and use it for larger chunks of text but this can often lead to your natural tone and writing flair becoming disjointed from the piece.

How we differ

We create blogs, content and posts that are perfectly suited to the tone of your brand and your audience. Our copywriter is able to create original, topical, written content that will catch the attention of your prospective clients. 

 

Ultimately, we feel we have much more to offer than any free resource you can find online. If you would like to discuss any of the services mentioned, get in touch!