Everywhere I go, I see only one word – ChatGPT. In the past few months, this tool alone has dominated most of the conversations happening on LinkedIn.

People are fascinated by the infinite use cases this AI tool has generated, from helping you do your essay homework in seconds to writing custom code for extensions that serve any purpose you could think of.

Brands have started using it to generate optimized copy & captions for their paid advertising campaigns, and have reported a drop in their CPAs (Cost Per Acquisition).

While that is good news for the higher-ups, many creative executives are freaked out by this paradigm shift, fearing that AI will put them out of their jobs, but experts are clarifying that it will not be the case anytime soon.

That’s because although we are in the middle of a tech revolution, our understanding of AI is still in its infancy.

It lacks many human elements such as originality, empathy, cultural sensitivity, local knowledge, and feelings – all of which are essential ingredients for creating an impactful piece of art.

That said, it’s certainly true that someone using AI and Web 3.0 software smartly will have an edge over peers who are still relying on Web 2.0 tools.

To launch you into the future, and make you more immune to lay-offs, here’s a running list of free AI tools you can use to upskill and produce greater work as a marketer.

If you found it useful, do share it with your friends!

Copy.AI ~ For Content Writing

Copy.AI generates entire blogs, captions, and other written material for you based on any given prompts & keywords. So in a way, it’s a more specialized version of ChatGPT.

I must admit, I was very sceptical of this tool; I expected it was going to spit out crap.

But to my surprise, the blog outline it generated was pretty usable. The prompt I gave was “How Marketers can use AI,” and you can see the results for yourself here.

Of course, it’ll need refinement and lots of manual inputs. But this is so much better than starting from scratch. I don’t have to break my head in front of a blank piece of paper anymore!

Their Insta caption tool is also handy. All you need to do is share what your post is about, and it’ll spit out near-accurate caption options.


Peppertype ~ For Written Content

Peppertype is Copy.AI’s big daddy. It was developed by the Indian-owned Pepper Content startup.

It has an insane ever-expanding toolkit of stunning AI-powered widgets such as:

  • Quora Answers generator
  • Content rewriter/rephrasing
  • Caption generator
  • Google Ads Copy generator
  • Tweet/Blog/Website/Email Headline Ideas
  • Meta Description generator for SEOs
  • Optimized Amazon Product Titles, Descriptions, and Ad Headlines

See what I meant when I said an insane toolkit? It’s free to use for up to 5000 words, so you need to try it out today!

To get unlimited free trials, just create a temporary mail box (search: temp email) and you’ll be able to sign up fresh every day.


Soundful ~ For Custom Music

As video content creation ramps up, having cool custom audio to support your visuals is essential.

While there are many platforms that offer royalty-free music & background tracks for free, nothing beats original work.

That’s exactly what Soundful does. Select a base template from any genre or mood and then modify the track as per your needs.

With the free plan, you get 10 mp3 files to download every month, which I feel is good enough for a personal content creator’s needs.

I also found this alternative called Beatoven, which does the same thing but allows 15 mins. worth of audio in the free plan.


Krisp ~ Clear Voice Cancelling

If you’re in client servicing, you know the importance of having clear audio during client meetings or any other business conversations, internal or external.

Krisp is an AI-powered tool that automatically enhances your voice on calls by cancelling out background noise, static, echo, and any other distractions, optimizing your volume & making your speech crystal-clear.

You can integrate it with popular communication tools like Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, and more. Just push the Krisp button & it’ll seamlessly take over your PC’s speaker as well as your microphone.

As marketing teams go remote & global, this is one extension that’ll prove to be very handy in the future!


Watermark Remover ~ For Designs

If you’re using stock images in your designs, or “borrowing” content from other sources, to put it politely, you might be faced with nasty watermarks spread out across the photograph.

In this case, there’s a tool that can smoothly get rid of these translucent watermarks in a matter of seconds, giving you a cleaner image to use.

Do note that it’s not a foolproof tool, sometimes it doesn’t completely get the job done, but it’s a good-to-have in your toolkit!

Watermark Remover uses AI to detect the watermarks & clean them up by analysing the overall image.


Pixelcut AI ~ For Upscaling Images

Has your client sent you a blurry image, insisting that you use it in your creative?

This AI image enhancer can help you upscale the quality to a fair extent. Its free plan allows you to upscale 5 pictures, but there’s a hack for getting more.

As I recommended this for Peppertype before, just create temporary mailboxes using Temp Mail and you’ll be able to use the free trial plan unlimited times by signing up for a new account. Just don’t tell the cops about it.


DALL.E 2 ~ For Image Creation

This tool has been made by the same organization behind the ChatGPT craze (Open AI).

By drawing from the infinite knowledge of the web, it spits out a unique image/work of art based on any detailed prompt given by you.

This can come in handy if you want to put up highly unique cover images for your blog posts or just feel like having fun with your audience on social media.

I tried it out with the prompt “A sunlit indoor lounge area with a pool with clear water and another pool with translucent pastel pink water, next to a big window, digital art,” and you can see above the gorgeous images it generated!

As part of the free plan, you get 50 credits for the first month, and a refill of 15 credits every subsequent month.


TLDR This ~ For Rapid Research

Marketing research is a tedious, time-consuming activity.

Sometimes you find yourself sifting through hundreds of articles, news reports blogs, and even scientific papers just to gather a few statistics that can be used in your caption or design to make a point.

If only you had someone who could summarize the content into a TL;DR format (Too Long, Didn’t Read). That’s what this tool does!

Paste the link to any written material and it’ll churn out a decent summary of the whole thing. You can also ask it to highlight keywords.

It’s currently free to use so do try it out!


Weblium ~ For blazing-fast Sites

If you or your client client needs to create a simple micro-website on a tight deadline, try out Weblium.

It’s a bit cleaner & leaner to operate than Wix. It also doesn’t require the learning curve that’s demanded by WordPress. But the results are compelling because it enables you to publish entire websites in a matter of minutes.

On the free plan, you get a Weblium-based domain (much like you would on WordPress), which I feel is quite alright for small business owners or influencers who just want a basic web presence.

With 300+ templates ready at your disposal, you can host any kind of site, including:

  • Portfolio
  • Event page
  • Business Card
  • Product Landing Pages
  • Online Store

But for just $8.25 (less than ₹630), you can get a free custom domain, SEO & Marketing Tools, and the ability to add custom code, so I’d say it’s a good bargain!


Otter ~ For Meet Transcriptions

Marketing folks are constantly in & out of meetings. With so many parallel discussions happening, it’s hard to keep track of everything that was discussed.

This is where the Otter Assistant comes in. It records and transcribe your meetings in real time by joining Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls. It’ll take and share notes, even if you can’t join the meeting.

It makes things even more productive by automatically assembling key takeaways and a summary of every conversation.

On the free plan, you get 300 monthly transcription minutes with 30 minutes per conversation. So 10 free meeting notes per month is a good deal, assuming you have 2-3 key sessions every week.

For the record, another Chrome/Firefox extension does this too – it’s called Fireflies. So far I’ve found it very useful to read the meeting transcriptions, so you can check it out and see if you prefer it to Otter!


Supermeme ~ For Meme Generation

Memes have become an inseparable part of the internet.

And as Gen-Zs use them more frequently in their online communications, brands have had to adapt to make it part of their marketing communications, too.

Supermeme acts as your chief Meme Officer, enabling you to generate several iterations of memes simply based on your text prompt. Using natural language processing, it’ll insert your text into popular templates that it feels are relevant to the topic.

You get 20 free runs per month, which is good enough for me. I tried it out & seems like a fun exercise overall.

Another benefit is that even if you run out free runs, you can still use this as a meme search engine to browse the most popular templates, then extract them from Google, and create your own in Canva or PhotoShop.


Wordtune ~ For Rewriting Content

You know how you used to borrow your friend’s homework in school, then rewrite it in your own words to avoid getting caught by the teacher?

In a way, that’s just what Wordtune does.

First, it acts as a spellchecker & language enhancer (like Grammarly), so you can input the text written by you or anyone else, and get suggestions on how to improve the same.

Second, it helps you rephrase the entire sentence in a meaningful way to avoid plagiarising content, which can actually hamper your SERPs (Search Engine Page Results) if & when Google detects what you’ve been up to.

Currently, it allows 10 free rewrites per day per account, which is good enough.


Conclusion

So that was a list of my favourite AI tools which I use on a daily basis as a digital marketing professional.

Have you tried any of them? How was your experience? Did I miss any good ones? On that note, what do you think about the role of AI in digital marketing & brand building?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

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