We’re sharing free or low-cost marketing tools to increase efficiency and make your life easier while reaching and engaging customers.
Small business owners wear a lot of hats, and developing an effective marketing plan can seem daunting. Here's a little secret: You don’t have to become a Chief Marketing Officer to promote your business!
There are tons of tools that are free or low-cost for you to implement and achieve success. These tools help you expand the reach of your small business, connect to interested and prospective customers, improve retention of existing customers, and help your business flourish.
Website Builders to Bring Your Vision to Life
Knowing how to code isn't necessary to successfully build your first website. So many small business website tools now have integrations that make online storefronts, email marketing, and blogging a streamlined process. Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and Weebly are great tools to get your website started, and Canva now has offerings to help create a site, too. When choosing a website tool, it’s important to think through all your desired functionality — you don’t want to have to migrate or re-create your site down the road.
Email Marketing Tools to Help You Scale
Email marketing tools can help you bring your inbox to scale, reaching customers with mobile-friendly content. These tools can help you segment your lists, test features and offerings within your network, and figure out which types of messaging are the most effective. Examples of affordable email marketing tools include Constant Contact, Mailchimp, and Squarespace.
Customer Management for Optimal Segmentation
As your digital footprint grows, keeping track of your customer profiles will be important to ensure you can match the right message with the right customer. Some email marketing tools contain customer management support, but you can also look into CRMs specifically for digital marketing, including Zoho, Hubspot, and Salesforce.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for small business marketing is essential to getting to know and understanding when and how to communicate with your clients.
Content Marketing Resources You'll Want to Remember
If you’re in need of help writing content — say, for a newsletter or small business email — there are human and AI assistants to save the day! These tools can work with your copy to make sure that they are mistake-free and well-curated. Grammarly has a free level that can provide basic support for your business, and upgrades can help strengthen your messaging even further. Simplified helps edit and prepare content as well, and chatGPT can provide AI-assisted messaging for you to review and manipulate.
Social Media Management for Small Business
Having an active social media presence is a must for any business these days. But it can be difficult and time consuming to consistently post to social media and manage all your accounts within each application. Social media management tools offer one home for you to schedule, respond, review, and curate social media content. Platforms for small businesses include Hootsuite, Zoho, and Buffer. Many of these management tools also allow you to engage in paid advertising, too.
Design Tools to Keep at the Ready
If you’re in need of tools to help your images look good and showcase your product, consider help from Adobe Lightroom and Canva. From custom social media graphics to the perfect product photo, these tools can help make your small business picture perfect. For larger documents like flyers, newsletters, and other content, you can continue with Canva or incorporate Adobe Express into your workflow. Canva has a small-business tier in their pricing that may be a fit for your growing marketing needs.
Other Free Marketing Tools to Consider
As you’re navigating how to grow your digital footprint, signing up for Google Analytics can highlight how your small business is performing online, while providing interesting insights about your website traffic that can shape your strategies and tactics. If you are considering offering your products and services online, e-commerce tools like Shopify and USPS will be key as you determine shipping, storefronts, and pricing.
Finding the right marketing solutions is an important part of starting and scaling your business. These low-cost or free marketing tools can save you precious time, help you market your goods or services like a pro, and make your small business look like a million bucks.
