7 Affordable Marketing Tools That You Probably Overlooked
As a small business owner, entrepreneur or startup founder, you specialize in frugality, creativity and innovation — but are you taking advantage of all the best free and low cost tools available for your marketing needs?
Probably not, and it’s often because there’s so many options that you don’t have time to comb through them all.
To help get your project organized and in front of more paying customers, here are seven affordable marketing tools that you probably overlooked.
1. Google Drive
Struggling for space?
Google Drive's cloud storage allows for virtual offices, lower overheads, and freedom for your marketing team to share, download and upload from anywhere.
There are seemingly limitless options for sharing, storing and editing documents/media online, but Google Drive remains one of the best. It offers an incredible amount of free storage (often more than enough for small businesses) and it’s popular enough that many people are already familiar with how it works.
2. Shoeboxed
One of the best options for storing, organizing and safeguarding receipts in the cloud so you can share with your CPA when the time is right.
All those little business expenses add up, from the parking meter to meet a client to buying a refill cartridge for your stapler. Write off enough and you can inch your way into a lower tax bracket (and perhaps into paying lower taxes).
3. Canva
You know a picture’s worth 1,000 words, but what’s an infographic worth?
In an era where numerous studies show that people would rather look at a graphic than read blocks of text, infographics have become a marketing mainstay. Canva is a free website where you can create stunning graphics without needing an art degree. Perfect for startups who don’t have a graphic designer on board.
4. Simply Measured
There's nothing like a free offering from an ordinarily premium service.
Simply Measured offers free performance analysis for all major social networks, so you can see where your accounts are succeeding and failing. They even serve up free traffic source analysis and a free trial of their premium platform.
5. Babble-on
If you don’t have app localization, you’re missing out on the majority of your potential app customers. This goes beyond translation and includes cultural sensitivities, formatting, and details like currency and measurements.
You can’t get localization for free, but at $0.21 per word and other special package deals, Babble-on offers fantastic prices for a team of localization experts. (Want “just” translation? Google Translate works in a pinch).
6. Ultimate Guest Blogger
Need more content?
Guest blogs are an incredible way to reach new audiences, build your online reputation and create a symbiotic relationship between yourself (or your company) and the blogging world. Ultimate guest blogger is free software that links the best guest bloggers with appropriate “other” blogs.
7. YouTube
Yes, technically this YouTube is social media, and it’s certainly not anything new — but it's is an often overlooked marketing tool.
Video content is becoming more and more relevant in the world of marketing, and your startup shouldn't ignore the potential benefits of a simply YouTube channel with some interviews or product demonstrations uploaded.
Over To You
The face of marketing is changing with “martech” becoming an in-demand job description, and ways of reaching audiences are constantly shifting.
Keeping up with enterprise-grade tools with startup budgets isn't easy, but the seven solutions above should hopefully take the edge off. What are your favored marketing tools? Let us know in the comments below.