October, 2017: Marketing Tools to Help Small Businesses 🔨

Short 3 min read.

As a small business, it’s advantageous to make the most of systems and technology that’s out there to save you time, money, stress and maybe even a migraine. The idea behind this blog is to expose all of my findings within the marketing field and different projects. I’m always actively searching for new software, programs and shortcuts to increase productivity, efficiency and results. Most likely you will have already struck a few of these recommendations in your musings around the web but hopefully, I can surprise you with a new idea or program for you to try out.

Main takeaway: Find shortcuts and automate processes through external apps/tools. This will make marketing your brand online more effective, easier on you and less time intensive.

What to put to the test ↓

Helpful general business tools:

Google’s Online suite ~ The go-to for collaborative documents and shared content between colleagues. - Free - 

Grammarly ~ This free Google Chrome extension could well save those typos that get away on you. It’s a proofreader that will let you know about little slip-ups in emails, blogs, and other online content. - Free for Basic - 

Canva ~ Need quick design work done? Canva is a great free tool to make little edits to graphics such as adding logos to photos or visually appealing posters. - Free for Basic - 

The world of social media/content marketing for business:

Hootsuite ~ this is a great platform for social media management. It hosts an easy to use dashboard to manage of your platforms in one place. This is a huge timesaver if you use a range of social media channels. - Free 30-day trial - 

Buzzsumo ~ Interested in content marketing? Discover trending topics in your industry with this useful keyword researcher. - Free - 

Email Marketing:

Mailchimp ~ (RECOMMENDATION OF THE MONTH) Easily create email campaigns to reach your customers. Email marketing is a sure-fire high ROI tool in bring into your strategy and MailChimp is the best platform I’ve seen to start on. - Free for basic plan - 

Sumo ~ This is a great free platform to create effective website pop-ups. You can easily integrate Sumo on your site with a opt in box to capture emails/lead or a hello bar to direct people to specials/top products. - Free for Basic plan - 

Maitre app ~ Referral campaign manager and support. This is a great way to grow an email list from scratch through incentivising your subscribers to bring more people on board.  - Basic = $99 one off payment -  

Advertising online:

Yoost ~ Simplifying SEO for any Wordpress site. - Free - Upgrade for additional features  

Bumper videos ~ Well worth considering when advertising with Google. With a typically high ROI, a bumper video is a great option to advertise through. Video content is where the attention is and it allows you to convey a story and let people know more about your brand. This doesn’t have to be hard programs like Promo help make the video editing process easy and user-friendly. - Free Trial on Promo - 

Interesting stuff I’ve found:

Airbnb's Instagram: This is a powerful example of connecting with an audience through sharing value in the form of interesting content around Airbnb destinations and what the brand represents.

I'm not incentivised by any of these apps I've just experimented with these and believe they're genuinely helpful programs. Thanks for reading and I hope at least one of these tools will come in handy for your business.

If you’d like to hear about more tools I send out a fortnightly newsletter where I dive deep into digital marketing tools for small business. To receive this monthly list directly in your inbox sign up to the newsletter here. If you want help marketing your NZ small/growing business on the internet be sure to get in touch and let me know what works for you in the comments!