Essential Marketing Tools for Your Business
2020-03-04
Businesses have long relied on well-defined marketing strategies to reach their target market. By investing in promotional materials, businesses can generate actionable metrics that can turn into conversions. In the long run, a good marketing strategy can increase your ROI and grow your business. However, recent technological advancements during this digital era paved the way for the evolution of consumer needs. Today, there’s a huge difference between offline and online consumer behavior. Luckily, countless essential marketing tools emerged with technology to match fast-paced advancements. This means entrepreneurs, businesses, and companies can access free marketing tools that can help you promote products, engage with customers, and track actionable metrics.
Entrepreneur Starter Pack: Essential Marketing Tools
Most marketing tools are available via monthly subscriptions. Some offer free trials so you can test its features and decide if it’s the right marketing tool for your business. If you’re not ready to commit to a monthly subscription, there are several free tools that you can access with a click of a button. But it can get quite difficult to choose which tool can help your business achieve its goals. Plus, it can be time-consuming to read reviews, feedback, or do your research. This is why we listed down essential marketing tools to give you a general idea of what you’ll need.
For Social Media Marketing
Social media is the best way to connect with people who are not within the vicinity of your business. Upon launching, your target market has no idea that you nor your business exists. In order to make your services known, you’ll have to be consistent in posting about your products, services, and the value you bring to customers. But be wary, social media is filled with businesses yearning to be heard by the millions of users within the platform. One way you can stand out is to make sure all your posts are more visual, creative, and informative.
Hootsuite is a social media marketing tool that automates your social strategy across several social media networks. Now, most small businesses don’t see the value of social media automation. But scheduling your posts in advance can help you preserve the most valuable resource you have - time. Hootsuite will allow you to post what you need to post in advance and consistently disseminate your branding while you do more important tasks. This will give you more free time to focus on other aspects of your business. As a bonus, you get a holistic view of how your target customers react to your social media networks. You can view reports that will let you identify the effectiveness of your communication channels.
For Search Engine Optimization
Content is, and always will be, king of marketing. If you constantly write blog posts about the problems your product solves, potential customers will one way or another, end up on your website. Or so you think! If you don’t use the right keywords, your content might remain in the abyss of search engine libraries. This is why you need to consider keyword research and analysis before you plan out your content strategy.
Yoast is a free Wordpress plugin that can analyze your content before you post in on your website. This tool will let you know if your content has good readability scores, competitive keywords, and well-placed links. Ideally, Yoast can help you reduce your bounce rates because readers find your content easy-to-read and informative. While Google’s previous algorithms celebrated keyword spamming, it no longer tolerates content that doesn’t bring value to readers even though it has relative keywords. In order to rank with a high score on search engines, you need to be able to bring value with what you write. Installing Yoast on your website can help determine whether your blog will be penalized or rewarded by search engines.
For Graphic Design
Gone are the days when aspiring entrepreneurs would spend hours on YouTube watching Adobe tutorials to create visually attractive posters. Today, you can spend less than an hour to create graphics to promote your products and engage with customers. While creativity is a learned skill, there are design tools you can now conveniently use to quickly whip up a creative poster for your marketing efforts.
If you’re looking for a simple way to create marketing posters, Canva is a marketing tool for all your design needs. Once you’re logged into its dashboard, you’ll be able to choose from hundreds of free design templates. These templates can be used royalty-free and without Canva’s watermarks. It’s a drag-and-drop tool that you can customize according to your own personal branding. Upload your own logos, photos, and move the text around as you see fit. While you can use Canva as a free service, the paid version gives you access to a vast library of graphic materials you can use to further customize your posters.
Grow Your Business with the Right Marketing Tools
The most common mistake business owners do is remaining stagnant with their promotional strategies. It’s alright to focus on direct client acquisition. But consumer behavior is rapidly and constantly evolving. Most of your potential customers are online, looking for your products without you even knowing. Therefore, you need to be present online as well. If you increase your online presence with the right keywords and visuals, you can serve your content to customers who are looking for it. And by tracking the right metrics, you can identify which of your marketing efforts work and which of them doesn’t.
Once you start pushing content in different online platforms using the marketing tools above, it’s time to start tracking your visitors’ behavior. Perform A/B Testing to identify your best marketing efforts and set aside more budget for that. Always remember that your brand’s online behavior can change the way your business works. If you’re not ready to commit to the paid services of the marketing tools above, try them out for free. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll notice significant changes in how your brand appears online. So, get started today - plan your marketing calendars, subscribe to the free trials of the marketing tools above, and execute your marketing strategy.