I have seen numerous companies offering specials, incentives, freebies, upgrades, and more during this global Covid 19 crisis.
I review several that you may be interested to learn about about and possibly take advantage. Video conference tools, email tools, crm, keyword research, and many more.
Extended trial periods, free upgrades to premium services, and various other incentive are being offered to help people get through this tough period.
If you know of a marketing tool that is offering help in some way, please leave a comment below so other may learn about.
**Transcript**
Speaker 1: (00:02) This is digital marketing tool talk, never miss out or fall behind on the latest digital tools for social media, SEO content reviews, and the entire digital marketing space. I'm your host, Brandon Hughes. Hello everyone. Welcome to a special recording of digital marketing tool talk. Now, normally I put out my shows once a week on Mondays talking about the latest digital marketing tool or a tool that you need to know about. But today I wanted to do a special recording on all the digital marketing tools out there that are offering special discounts, upgrades or extended service contracts under the free trial period during this Corona coven 19 pandemic that we're dealing with around the world. So we're going to go a little bit off track today. But what's basically been happening is every day in work, I'm noticing all these businesses are offering a extended free trials. You know, instead of seven days, they're doing three months.
Speaker 1: (01:13) They're offering instead of the standard plan a, if you pay for the standard plan, you get all the premium benefits. They're throwing all kinds of, uh, unique freebies and additional add ons and ways to get involved. Sometimes they're free for maybe a couple of weeks, sometimes months, sometimes forever. If you sign on. It's just been an amazing response from all kinds of different businesses out there to help people with their marketing and they're all tools. So I thought it's just a great fit for us here at digital marketing tool. Talk to talk about all these tools that are giving some sort of special benefit during this time to really help out. So I'm kind of recording this on the fly, so I apologize for lack of editing, but let's get into it. I'm just going to go through a full list. It'll be on my blog as well at um, Hoku marketing.com if you want to read through it.
Speaker 1: (02:14) But this, I'm just going to go through a whole list of all these different companies that offering marketing services and marketing tools and what their offer is. So let's go back to one here. This one is, um, from Neil Patel. It's his company,
Uber Suggest. So, uh, what he's doing, um, and, and I have, I did a show on him, uh, several weeks ago. So if you want to know more about what Uber suggest is basically it's keyword research tool. So before you start writing your blog posts or any type of content you want to do, keyword research, these, all these platforms have good free services, but if you can get the paid plan to premier, you get access to so much more. So what Neil is doing, um, because of the coronavirus is he's giving full access to historical data. So if you really want to dig in further into your keyword research, he's opening up these areas that were normally blocked off to the paid plans.
Speaker 1: (03:17) So keyword research for your newsletters, for your blog posts, for your content. This is a good place to start if you're thinking about doing a business. So Uber suggest.com offering additional access and during this time, so that's, that's one. You can go check out
HubSpot, we've all heard of HubSpot. They are huge. They do so many different things. They have free plans, they have paid plans, so they're adding, um, a bunch of free tools. They're making, um, uh, their meetings, quotes, e-signatures, one-on-one video creation tools, completely free for 90 days from when you activate. So 90 days, that's three months. You don't usually get a free period for that short. I mean, max, maybe 30 days, usually you get 14. That's a great way to go in. If you've been thinking about using HubSpot or if you're just starting your business boy, you could get in and get rockin for three months before you had to pay for this.
Speaker 1: (04:23) So you can either test it out and find out, yes, I want to pay for this or test it out and say, no, I don't need it. They're removing a lot of limits. Um, the next 90 days they're suspending marketing email, send limits, um, for their professional and enterprise customers, and they're increasing limits, um, on calling, uh, for their starter and professional customers. So a bunch of limits that they're changing their, they're reducing prices for small businesses. So they're going, um, their starter growth suite is going from one 12 to 50 bucks for 12 months from purchase. So if you've ever thought about doing it or you just been planning, this is definitely an excellent time to do it. So hubspot.com go check them out. They're offering a bunch of great marketing tools, um, at a discount to help everyone out. Facebook has created $100 million grant program to assist small businesses that are dealing with a coven 19 impact.
Speaker 1: (05:34) Okay. So, um, I read that right off of social media today.com. That's their title there. So I don't know too much about this program. Um, but if you are a small business and you're being affected by it, go to
Facebook and you can read a little bit more about it. You'll have to, it's a grant, which is a, for those of you that are unaware a lot better than alone, uh, grants are usually money that's just given to you without having to pay it back. Um, do you know who's eligible, uh, for funding right now? Uh, Facebook is, uh, rolling it out. Um, maybe they've put it out, you know, today, I'm not too sure, but it's something that's evolving. So if you are being impacted by this, keep that, uh, an a marker there. Write that down to Facebook. Uh, grant, uh, they're putting big, big money into that. So those are grants so that that's something you want to look out for as well.
Shopify a lot cause that's where my website is. And I had a my Shopify partner, they're doing some cool things. One gift cards, they are offering the fifth co uh, gift cards on the physical and digital gift cards are available now on all new and existing Shopify plans. So I think this was an added feature that I can't remember off the top of my head. I know embarrassing on my Shopify, uh, but it wasn't available to a lot of people. So they're offering that. That's, that's a huge thing. They're doing, um, a Shopify capital program with $200 million, uh, for small business funding. So if you're in Shopify, you want to check that out as well. Um, they're also extending the free trial from 14 days to 90 days. I've never seen this. You could in 90 days, you can open your store, do AB testing on your email newsletter campaigns, do testing on your social media ads or Google ads and have all that under your belt before your free child even ends within 90 days.
Speaker 1: (07:48) So if you've ever thought of opening a Shopify eCommerce platform or just the Shopify website, this is an excellent time to do it, even if it's just for the 90 day free trial. Okay. I have a list here of some others. Um, Adobe, we all know Adobe, they got their creative suite, uh, educational, um, customers. They're getting a free home access for students and teachers to the creative cloud, a suite of tools. So if you are teaching a, it doesn't say what you need to be teaching. Maybe you have a music business, maybe, um, you're a coach of some sorts, so not sure what the details is on that, but Adobe is offering access to their, their creative suite. Um, there's several others on here. I'm just gonna name some, Avaya has a program, Blackberry blue jeans. Uh, one that I use and I like a lot is Calendly,
Calendly.
Speaker 1: (08:47) used to charge for integration, uh, like zoom and go to a GoToMeeting. So this integration is now free. Okay. And, um, we'll also be offering unpaid access to premium services for teams working on projects to tackle Cove at 19. So, um, Calendly is an excellent, um, uh, appointment setting, uh, program.
Carto has some programs,
Cisco has some video conferencing things, uh,
Dialpad, which is a phone system and video conferencing
Dropbox, that's a big name. What Dropbox is doing is, um, free for six months for nonprofits and NGOs, uh, if they're battling covert 19. So I know that does it encompass all of you? Um, but that's a, that's a good one. Uh,
Google. Okay. I use G suite and myself. And so Google has announced free access to it's advanced Hangouts meet. So I got this email direct from Google on this. So this is for video conferencing capabilities, um, G suite and G suite for education.
Speaker 1: (09:54) So this is gonna enable calls up to 250 people and also allows meetings to be recorded and saved on Google drive. So those features were not available to me before, even though I had the G suite business, um, print. So that, that's a little upgrade. Google's is offering that a log me in another video conferencing loom, a video messaging. They're offering things. Um,
MailChimp, they're offering a free accounts and more services to government, local government schools, healthcare providers, nonprofits, and any other organizations we're dealing with health information about the disease. Um, so if that's you, you might want to check them out. Um, if you already use them, reach out to them. Um,
Microsoft is offering some team collaboration and communication, uh, platform upgrades. What else we got here? Uh, ring central. Um, it's now free for K through 12 schools, healthcare providers and nonprofits.
Speaker 1: (10:58) Salesforce, that's a huge, um, a huge deal. They're providing a free access to it's health cloud services for response teams. Uh, there's quite a few more here. Uh, Slack, you've probably heard of them. Uh, they're offering
Vontage the phone guys,
Zoho, which is a productivity tools. Um, they're waiving the cost of the application being used, uh, for up to 20,000 companies for three months. So Zoho, if you've thought about using them as a CRM, uh, that's, that's a good one. Zoom, the video conferencing, a lot of video conferencing places are offering some sort of incentive to use them during this time just because so many people are going online. So definitely check out that out as well. So I mentioned zoom loom. There's also a
GoTo meeting. Uh, there are another um, a company also that's also offering uh, additional, um, types of benefits during this time.
Speaker 1: (11:56) Guys, that kind of wraps it up. I know I just listed off like a whole bunch of companies. So if there's two, a couple of things you want to take away from this podcast is one, if you are using some sort of marketing tool on a free plan, go chat, go to their website and look and see if they're offering some sort of upgrade or option to use their premium plan. Sometimes you need to request it. Okay. If you're on a premium planner already, go check to see if there's some sort of discount now being applied or the prices changed. You want to see that. Take advantage of that. If you're just starting a business or you know, somebody who's just starting a business, remind them, say, Hey, before you use any of your tools or you're going to implement any of these things, take a look to see what kind of benefits they're offering while we're all struggling with business.
Speaker 1: (12:50) And if there maybe was a company that you decided not to use because you just couldn't afford it right now, maybe you can guys, I hope, um, some of these tools are, are able to help you with your marketing or just communication and keep you busy out there. Be safe. Um, I have a, another podcast already in the pipe going out on Monday just to continue with the email series, uh, that I do. If you have any questions about this or you want additional information or, or if you know of a marketing tool that's offering some sort of a discount or incentive or just some support to small, medium businesses out there during this time, you can comment on the blog post or you can email me, brandon@pokumarketing.com. Take care of your own.
