Effective marketing hinges on knowing what works, but tracking performance can be tough without a dedicated team or large budget.
Thankfully, there are free tools available to help you monitor your efforts, understand what’s working, and make smarter decisions. Here’s a straightforward guide to using free tools to track your marketing efforts.
Why You Should Track Your Marketing Initiatives
Tracking your marketing efforts gives you the power to make smarter decisions. It shows you which platforms drive the most customers, what content actually clicks, and how your audience behaves. That means sharper strategies, better results, and no more wasting time and budget on what doesn’t work.
Whether you’re boosting posts on Facebook, selling on Shopee, or building an email list, keeping tabs on your performance puts you in control.
Meta Business Suite
For small brands focusing on Facebook and Instagram promotions, being proficient in the Meta Business Suite is beneficial. It lets you see post analytics, compare post engagement over time, track ad performance, and view audience insights. All these can guide your content plan for better marketing outcomes.
To use it, go to business.facebook.com, select your page, then click on “Insights” or “Posts” to review performance. From there, explore and see how it can upgrade your current marketing plans!
Shopee and Lazada Seller Center Analytics
If you’re a seller on Shopee or Lazada, you don’t need an external analytics app. Their Seller Centers provide a built-in analytics dashboard that lets you see page and product views, conversion rates, hot-selling products, customer demographics, and traffic sources.
This lets you know where to properly invest your resources. If your Shopee traffic comes mostly from Facebook, you’ll know to spend more on Facebook content and link promotions.
Google Analytics
For businesses with a website or blog, Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps you understand how people find and use your site. You get to track the number of site visitors, popular pages, visit frequency, visitor location, and traffic source, all for free!
To use it, set up an account at analytics.google.com and connect it to your website. If it’s too overwhelming for you to use, you can get help from a PR agency in the Philippines to set it up for you.
Bitly (Link Shortener + Tracker)
If you often use links in your marketing materials, Bitly is a great tool for you. It lets you shorten long URLs and track when and how many people clicked them. This is beneficial for testing which promos or platforms perform best.
Instead of posting the full, you can put it through Bitly and get a short, tailored link like bit.ly/UbeCheesePromo. This helps in keeping your post neat and introduces the linked material already.
Google Trends + Keyword Planner
Blog writers, content creators, SEO-minded brands are often looking for trends and keywords to integrate in their content. Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner show exactly what these creators are always on the hunt for: trends and search volume for keywords and phrases.
These tools are great to use when writing blog posts, naming products, and discovering trending topics to ride on. To access, just go to trends.google.com or ads.google.com/keywordplanner.
Email Platforms
Building your email list? Use email platforms to send newsletters and track open rates, click-through rates, and subscriptions. Mailchimp has a free tier you can try, and if it works, you can finally invest in it.
Email remains one of the best ways to promote but it gets congested easily, so do it strategically to stand out.
Google Sheets
A staple for planning, Google Sheet is every organizer’s best friend. If you’re managing data from different platforms, Google Sheets can be your DIY dashboard. Use it to keep track of your weekly sales, promo codes, post engagements, and even customer inquiries.
Aside from helping you spot trends, it lets you customize your dashboard to make the interface easier for you.
How a PR or Digital Marketing Agency Can Help
While you can do the legwork at the beginning, your growing brand entails more complex tracking. This is where a digital marketing agency can help you to:
- Set up the tools correctly
- Interpret your data and provide actionable insights
- Turn insights into campaigns that work
- Avoid vanity metrics and focus on what truly drives sales and brand visibility
They can be your data experts while you focus on growing your business in other aspects.
Turn Data into Direction
You don’t need a huge budget to start tracking your marketing. With free tools, you can gain valuable insights about your audience, fine-tune your content, and make every post work harder for your brand. As you grow more confident in using these tracking tools, those numbers will lead you to more strategic decisions.
If you feel lost in the data, don’t worry – a trusted PR agency in the Philippines can help you turn your analytics into action that truly builds your brand.
The Lifestyle Tita 