FREE isn't a word we often associate with marketing. In fact, while creating your marketing plan and/or strategy it's difficult to decide how to spend your budget and what the best use of the dollars will be. There are however some FREE resources out there that are surprisingly useful and can make a big difference when it comes to research, performance, and tracking results for your marketing tactics. If you're not taking advantage of these tools, you should be. Here are a few we're hot on lately:

1. <a href="http://http://www.google.com/analytics/">Google Analytics</a> - duh. If you aren't using this one, you're missing a huge opportunity to see how people are interacting with your website, where they are coming from, and where your missing opportunities may be

2. <a href="http://Marketing.Grader.com">Marketing Grader</a> - a tool that gives you a full report on how your website is doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wise, and how you rank against your competitors

3. <a href="http://www.similarweb.com/">SimilarWeb</a> - website traffic insights for any website

4. <a href="http://BrokenLinkCheck.com">Broken Link Checker</a> - a quick way to find out whether your website has any dead links that may be turning customers away

5. <a href="http://GTMetrix.com">GT Metrix</a> - uses Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow to grade your site's performance and provides actionable recommendations to fix these issues

Happy Marketing!