It’s the story of every start-up I’ve ever worked with. Being a start-up owner, marketing is quite close to your heart. Yet, your mind does not allow you spend freely. You are, therefore, always searching for cost-effective ways of promoting your company and products/services. Some of you just let your mind rule your heart all the time. Well, if you think creatively, you can actually come up with frugal ways of doing marketing. Just to help you in your exciting start-up journey, I have compiled a list of free marketing tools, which can help you make your life easy in many ways. And, keep your heart as well as mind happy!
Social Media Management Tools: Since setting up accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram is free and easy that you must be already owning social media properties. However, you have little time to manage multiple social media accounts. Paid social is so unnerving that you might be letting the things be the way they are. Good news is that you can actually use one of these free tools to manage your social media presence. You can not only follow and follow-back potential buyers and influencers, but also can listen to what people are saying about you, your product / services, and the industry you operate in. Based on what you listen, you can design your next campaign. Social media management tools are easy-to-use and shave hours off. Some of the free tools that you should explore are: Buffer, SocialOomp, Likeable, Hootsuite and Friends+Me. These do offer paid plan for premium services.
Email Marketing Tools: Email marketing may not sound as cool and young as social media. Yet, it’s as reliable as our grandparents. It’s still one of the most targeted and valuable marketing channels. There are many email marketing services providers and tools that you could leverage. Tools such as Marketo, Eloqua, Silverpop, Vertical Response and ExactTarget are some of the credible names in the industry. They come with automation tools, in-built templates, and other valuable features. Depending on your needs you could choose one of those. They do cost you money. However, as I have promised to share the list of free tools, here it is: For copywriting, you can take help from The Hemingway App, ReachMail and Mailchimp. To do the coding, you could rely on Litmus, PutsMail, FreeFormatter.com and Scope. You could do tracking and testing using free tools such as Visual Website Optimizer, IsValid.org. Get out there and market. But do not forget to do testing before you release your email communication.
Survey Tools: Understanding your target audience is the key to effective marketing. It leads to recurring business if you continue to study your customers well. What could be the best way of studying your customers and their needs than running a survey! Don’t worry. There are many free tools that you could explore for your next survey. You can make the survey private or public depending on your objective. Some of the good survey options for you would be Google Forms, Kwiksurvey, SurveyMonkey, LimeSurvey, Poll Daddy, Survey Gizmo and Responster. Needless to say that this is not the complete list. There are many options out there. Some of these I have used personally to accomplish professional tasks.
Photo Stocks: ‘Getting high-resolution, copyright-free images’ is one of the most important requirements for creating marketing assets. Imagine a website with ‘no’ images. I know it’s difficult. If you are a start-up with no budget for image stocks, I have prepared this list especially for you. Please note that some of the photos may require proper attributes, so do you research before you use them. These are StockSnap.ip, Unsplash, Burst, Gratisography, Negative Space, Freestock.org, Picography, MMT Stock, SkitterPhoto, Life of Pix, Little Visuals, FoodiesFeed, and Picjumbo.
Logo Designing/Making Tools: A logo makes a company recognizable. It could be typographic or visual representation of your brand. Creating a logo is not a one-time job; your logo can evolve with time—as you grow. Such changes are good to showcase the important milestones in your business. However, logo creation can be expensive. Well, not anymore. There are many free logo design tools that you can use to create your own professional logo which you can use for your business cards, invoices, website, social media profiles, and collaterals. These tools are Squarespace Logo, LogoGarden and GraphicSprings. Other not free, but frugal logo creator options are LogoTypeMaker, Logojoy, LogoYes, LogoMaker, Canva, Design Mantic, Tweak.com, Zillion Designs and 99Designs to name a few.
Video Editing Tools: Businesses that use videos grow 40% faster than the ones that do not. If your PC is running Windows or iMac, there’s a good chance that you already have a video editing software installed. However, depending on your skills and knowledge, you may find those complex or with limited features. So, here is the list of free video editing tools that I would recommend: WeVideo (cloud-based), Avidemux (Windows/Mac/Linux), Wondershare Filmora (Windows/Mac), Blender (Windows/Mac/Linux), Lightworks (Windows/Mac/Linux) and Machete Video Editor Lite (Windows) among others. Of course, free versions in do offer limited features in many cases.
Hope the list helps you achieve your objective of doing marketing without shelling out much from your pockets. The list includes the options that I have come across in some way or the other. There might be many more free tools out there. With this write-up, I aim to help you think creatively. It’s not always about money or time. At times, it’s about knowing what’s available.
Heed&Hook 