Trying to stay on top of the ever evolving world of marketing and keeping up with what’s new can be a daunting and overwhelming challenge.
You just get your head around Twitter, feeling pretty happy with yourself and the amount of followers you have, to then be told that you also need to be using Instagram and Pinterest. How are we supposed to find the time to do this and run a business?
Yes, marketing these days can be intimidating and quite a lot to get your head around, but we are also lucky in this day and age to have tools to help us save time bring our businesses into the 21st century to reach a wider audience (without having to be an expert). Best of all- so much of it is free. Quite simply said- if we don’t take advantage of these tools, we will get left behind.
Here are 5 free marketing tools which can help your business (and save you time):
WordPress:
Google WordPress the results show ‘Wordpress.com: Create a free website or blog’…and it’s as simple as that. It takes the legwork out for you, giving you hundreds of themes and customisable designs to create a website or blog that is mobile responsive so easy to read on a mobile or tablet. You don’t have to start from scratch – templates make it easy to use and you don’t need to be a design expert or coder to create something to suit your brand and give your website/blog its own identity. PS. You are reading this blog on WordPress, it’s an IJL favourite!
Canva:
Find it difficult to use photoshop? So do we. Thankfully someone clever has invented Canva, an easy to use online design tool with hundreds of templates that will make your online and print designs look like they have been designed by a pro. Simply choose a template for whatever design you want to create whether is be for Instagram, Twitter or an invitation and you will immediately start to feel inspired. You’ll be given a choice of design options and can simply upload your own images like logo’s and jewellery, change the text and customise the design as much as you like with different fonts and colours. Before you know it, you’ll be addicted, volunteering to design friend’s wedding and baby shower invitations just for fun. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
Start getting creative with Canva here
Canva also has a design school to help you along the way and get your creative juices flowing. Find it here.
Mailchimp
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to communicate with your target audience, but how can you send professional looking emails to a targeted audience without breaking the bank? The answer is tools like Mailchimp, a free and easy to use campaign designer which gives you drag and drop templates along with free reports to track how each campaign is doing. Send up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month for free or upgrade to send more. It’s a no-brainer.
Get mailing with Mailchimp here
Survey Monkey
The best way to evolve your business is to find out what you target audience wants and needs. Gone are the days of assumptions and predictions with no actual evidence to back it up. Survey Monkey’s slogan is ‘Create Surveys, Get Answers’ and answers are key for 2 main reasons: 1- research on what your customer wants will help you get ahead of the game and your competitors and 2- feedback on your products or services to learn and help improve your products and services. It’s free for up to 10 questions and 100 responses and very reasonable to upgrade to send more. There’s plenty of support and a live chat box for instant answers to help you get set up.
Simply Measured
Perhaps you have been doing social media for a while and have probably noticed that some posts do better than others. How do we get a high level overview of which posts do better so what to do more of? Simply Measured can give you Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest reports at no cost all, they might just ask you to like or follow them on social media. If you are thinking of doing any kind of social media advertising or boosting your posts, these reports will give you great insight into what kind of content is more engaging for your audience.
Sign up to Simply Measured here. If you have the budget – Sprout Social is a paid for service will give you great reporting and will allow you to schedule your social posts across multiple platforms.
So there it is in a nutshell and we hope you have learnt a thing or two about marketing for your business, but if you ever need any help or have any questions about any of the above for your jewellery design or retail business, please contact us.
Happy marketing!
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