Hannah WigintonIt helps to have the right tools to succeed in marketing your business. For small businesses who don’t have a massive marketing budget, these tools will give you a starting point until you’re ready to upgrade.
From design to posting on social media to organizing everything, these tools will help you stay organized, look professional, and will propel your business forward.
In this article:
In this article:
Get Started with Marketing
– Design Marketing
– Social Media Marketing
– Email Marketing
Get Started with Marketing
If you haven’t already, create a company page on at least 1 of the 3 major social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The right one really depends on where your target customer spends their time. However, I’ve seen more success for small businesses on Facebook or Instagram.
Once you’ve set up your platform, make a commitment to post consistently. This can be 2 times a week, every day, or 1 time a week.
I recommend you post no less than 1 time each week. If you don’t, you risk not being seen in news feeds. When you are posting consistently, people know you are engaged and available for business.
Design Marketing
Creating designs for your social accounts or for your business doesn’t have to be a struggle. Use pre-made templates and you have accomplished 75% of the job. While these don’t replace a custom design by an established designer, you can make almost anything to help market your services and products with this tool.
🔵 Canva
Canva is one of the easiest design tools to use. They have a variety of ready-made posts. You search for template size, add your text, and change a couple of colors.
The example above shows an Instagram template. It’s sized to correct Instagram dimensions and displays several pre-made designs on the side.
Social Media Marketing
Now that you have a way to create your posts, you want to post them when your customers are using Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. (You probably don’t want to post at 12 AM when they are most likely asleep!)
Instead, schedule your posts for when your followers will most likely be active and engage with your post!
A scheduling tool provides an easy way for you to create a calendar of posts to automatically send on a schedule. One of the easiest tools I use is HootSuite.
🔵 HootSuite
With HootSuite, you can create several posts at once and schedule them on different days.
Maybe your business is selling insurance. You can create 5 different posts about each type of insurance you sell. Monday’s post is about home insurance, Tuesday’s post is about life insurance, Wednesday’s post is about car insurance, and so on.
HootSuite gives you the option to schedule each of the posts on different days at whatever time you would like. You don’t even have to think about it!
Email Marketing
Next is engaging with your customers where you KNOW they are paying the most attention – their EMAIL INBOX!
Email is still one of the most connected digital mediums available. It also has the best Return-on-Investment (ROI). This is a great avenue to focus on to engage your customers or potential customers in a personal way.
(Image from Emma email marketing)
With all these emails you’ll be sending, you want to send them using a proven and reliable email service.
>> Don’t send an email to hundreds of customers with your basic Gmail or Yahoo email account! Your account will be marked as Spam by many other email providers and your customers won’t receive your emails.
Promise me you won’t do that, okay?
Use a trustworthy email service like MailChimp.
🔵 MailChimp
The simplest free solution to use when you are just starting to collect emails is MailChimp. Silly name but intuitive email service.
MailChimp has several template layouts. The service guides you through each step of creating the email from writing the subject line, organizing your email, and choosing the right people to receive your email.
For existing customers, always ask for an email! They have used your services and have an immediate connection with your business.
Once you have a customer’s email, you can send occasional updates, sales, discounts, or just get some feedback.
What’s amazing about email is you can send it and they can read it when they have a moment to spare. You know it will land directly in their inbox as opposed to hoping they see it on a social media news feed.
While I still think phone calls are one of the best ways to stay in touch with your customer, you can use email as a way to communicate in between those phone calls.
If you need ideas for more in-depth email designs, go check out Really Good Emails. They have a variety of categories to see what others have done.
Organization
You have all these great ideas for posts and emails, now you need one central location to keep everything organized.
🔵 Notion
Notion is your all-in-one organizing tool! You can save notes, images, and more.
This handy app available in your browser or on iPhone or Android will help you keep track of your social media posts and marketing ideas.
(Notion can do SO much for your business. We’ll get to that in another post soon!)
Here’s what my Notion blog post organizer looks like. This can be used to keep track of what you posted on social media.
I even made you a template to get started!
All you need to do is create a Notion account. Once your account is created, click on my Social Media Post Calendar and click Duplicate at the top to add it to your dashboard.
Related: How to Add a Quick Note to Notion on iPhone
Don’t be stuck wondering when you posted or forgetting that stellar idea you had about an email to send. Stay organized with this tool.
Now you’ve got the tools to start connecting with your customers and potential customers online. Create a post, schedule it, send an email, and keep it all organized. Start marketing and create a space for your business in the digital world.
