If you run your own business and don’t want to spend a lot of money on your marketing budget, then fortunately there are some great marketing tools available that you can get for free. Before you fork out a fortune on sophisticated marketing software, check these out and see if they can be of any use to your business:
Free website builders
WordPress, Wix and several other website platform providers offer a free website building feature. There are some limitations associated with free websites, for example you can’t use your own domain name and the provider will be able to use your website to display ads, but if you don’t want to spend a monthly fee on a webhosting package then this is your best option. With the free templates that they provide, you could have a website set up in a mere few hours.
Email Marketing
Sending professional emails and being able to monitor your email campaigns is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. There are a number of good email marketing template providers available,with the best free one being MailChimp. You can create a very attractive email that is mobile responsive through MailChimp using the free templates that it provides. The monitoring features are also very powerful for a free service, so try MailChimp’s free package out before you commit to paying for another service.
Design
If you have a Mac then you will have access to a number of free apps that you can use for design. However, if you are looking for something really powerful in creating a range of marketing content then one of the better options is Canva. Canva is free to sign up for, and gives you access to free templates for a wide range of marketing content. You can use their professional template designs or create your own using their easy to use creator tools. Canva has templates for PowerPoint slides, posters, social media cards, banners and pretty much any type of marketing output you can think of. Another attractive feature is its free image library, where you can select icons, photos and charts to use in your documents.
Surveys
Being able to collate data is an important part of marketing, and if you need to find out more about your target audience, you can use surveys to glean that information. One of the best providers of free survey creators is SurveyMonkey, which will allow you to send out up to ten questions for free. The account upgrade will enable you to send out bigger surveys, but for short surveys and great analytical reports, SurveyMonkey will get the job done with zero extra costs.
Marketing does not have to cost a huge amount of money, especially if you can find good tools that will be able to perform standard marketing methods. Providers are constantly launching new software and programs, so keep an eye out for any free services that you can make use of for your marketing strategy.
