Recommended Resources
Here you will find software, tools, templates, raw data, and other sources of information that help you formulate and execute effective marketing strategies. Nothing goes on here unless I have used it myself or am otherwise confident enough of its value to recommend it to startup and SMB marketers. Many of the resources listed here are integral to my daily work as a marketer.
Email Marketing Software
I recommend all of these for beginners, smaller businesses and businesses without advanced automation needs. All are free to start with.
Brand Intelligence
Social Media
Marketing Budget Calculator
Great to quickly get a rough idea of how much to spend on long term brand building and short term direct response marketing. Get it here.
GWI Market Research Platform
Free but limited access to customizable audience reports of UK and US consumers. Useful to get an idea of your target segments characteristics and lifestyle. Learn more here.
Official Data & Statistics
Official statistics are gathered by governments and international organizations. This tends to be the highest quality data and is almost always very accessible and free. You should look here first when in need of demographic, economic and societal data.
Industry Insights
Data gathered by various trade associations on specific industries. These cover market trend, consumer spending, consumer preferences, competitive landscape and technological development in certain fields. Sometimes, these resources are behind a paywall or require a membership.
Marketing Research & Reports
These firms conduct their own quality research and have access to an immense amount of data that they turn into reports, whitepapers, and webinars. Remember to be critical. They are all selling expertise and are incentivized to exaggerate certain things.
Academic Articles
Academic articles are great when you need in-depth insights of a well defined topic. There, however, are many low-quality journals with poor peer-review policies. I’d suggest sticking to the top journals in their field to ensure you’re basing your work on reliable data.
Support Brandalfblog
On this page and within posts on Brandalfblog you may find affiliate links. Brandalfblog is free and does not run ads so this is how I meet the costs of running the site. I try to make affiliate links as minimally intrusive as I can and never link to a product that I haven’t or wouldn’t use myself. If you are in the market for any of the items above, please consider using my links and support this project.