Priceless benefits at no cost
One of the main differentiators between online marketing campaigns and their off-line cousins is the sheer amount of data generated online that needs be collected, sliced, diced, and analyzed. Each website visitor leaves digital footprints all over the site's analytics tools, and viewers of advertising banners are cookied in the billions daily across the web. Heck, we can even pixel our Facebook pages now. It's almost incomprehensible the number of rows in Excel you'd need in order to track just one hour of the data this industry generates.
This business runs on technology to help us break down crucial information into palatable chunks. There are certainly many expensive tools and platforms on the market available for purchase -- some cheap and some extremely expensive. Frankly, there are just some things we need to be able to do that won't ever be available for free. For example, enterprise-level web analytics tools from data heavyweights SAS, IBM, and Adobe are needed for the most trafficked sites on the web. In addition, most vendors in the digital marketing space have a reporting component to their platforms; ad servers such as MediaMind, DoubleClick, and Atlas can help users make sense of their online display buys. Search platforms like AdWords and AdCenter not only enable marketers to buy keyword-triggered ads, but also to figure out what's being clicked, what's driving users to convert, etc. The same goes for email service providers, mobile ad vendors, and the like -- for every tool we buy, there's a reporting component.
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But there are some really great free tools out there to consider adding to your technology stack as well. For various reasons, development companies allow users to engage with their tools whether it's to entice them to upgrade to the paid versions, provide valuable data collection in exchange for free usage, or even just to build their name and reputation in order to leverage that on future projects. Regardless of the motivation behind the curtain, I suggest you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Of course, the other old saying that comes to mind is that you get what you pay for -- so I urge you to do your due diligence; don't go slapping every free pixel onto your website or pass sensitive data without understanding the final outcome. However, most of the time, especially with tools from reputable companies, the tradeoff is worth the cost.
Check out some of the following free tools that can help you collect, analyze, and take action on data. In fact, a combination of all these systems would certainly push your data-driven organization to another level. With these free analytics platforms, any company could truly compete with the advanced data tools and tactics of even its largest competitors.
