7 Low-Budget Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

More than ever, the current business world depends on digital marketing. Millions, if not hundreds of thousands, of potential clients are searching online for exactly what your company has to offer. Using your marketing methods to connect with the people likely to invest in your products is critical to getting their attention and converting them into paying customers.

No company, regardless of size, can afford to devote considerable resources to marketing and advertising tactics that won’t yield fruitful outcomes. Fortunately, there are several low-cost and compelling marketing tools to streamline, simplify, and improve your marketing strategy.

Below are seven low-cost marketing tools that may help give your company a much-needed boost.

Social Media Tools

Social media marketing is a well-liked and frequently employed modern marketing strategy. It’s revolutionary for improving your brand’s visibility, recognition, and online presence.

You can pick from various platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit.

Determining where potential customers spend most of their time is the key to success. For example, post helpful, engaging content daily on your website, and you’re likely to develop customer connections. This supports customer and brand trust development and is a cost-effective way to engage customers.

Reaching your audience and minimizing the time needed to monitor your social networks depends on your choice of social media management tool. For example, Social Pilot, a social media scheduling and automation tool, costs $30-50 per month. Still, it potentially saves your team hours of expensive, billable time setting up social media posts.

Another social media tool is a service like Crowdfire. Crowdfire is an excellent tool for small businesses with limited staff and few social media accounts to connect. The service costs $9.99 per month, allows 5 connected accounts, and even has a free plan to test before committing resources to it. 

Other social media tools are services for managing other popular platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok are OnlyPult, Social Bee, Later, and eClincher.

So, to select the best social media management tool for your business, understand your exact requirements. Before registering for a service, carefully review each platform’s capabilities. Finally, use any risk-free trial periods provided to test the platform before investing money and resources.

Email Marketing Tools 

Email marketing has been used by businesses for years and remains an effective, low-cost marketing tool. Well done email campaigns help your business connect with customers and engage them in your company’s brand. In addition, the data from a well-developed email marketing list is invaluable and increases the likelihood of delivering relevant content. Relevant, targeted email messages increase sales conversions and enable you to keep in touch with your current clients. 

If you’re just starting with email marketing, below are a few reliable email service providers to check out:

• Mailchimp – Mailchimp is an email service provider free for up to 2,000 subscribers to your mailing lists. It has many fantastic features and sports a simple user interface. It’s excellent for compiling lists of contacts and grouping customers based on similar interests. The overall price reflects the size of your email list. It’s a sensible place to start if your email lists are small.   
• SendinBlue – SendinBlue is another user-friendly platform with numerous features for growing businesses, such as landing pages, client relationship management, and marketing automation. Sendinblue’s email design features allow beginners to create good-looking emails with their selection of design templates.
• Constant Contact – With over 10 million members, Constant Contact is a well-known brand used heavily in the corporate sector. They offer a free trial with the option to pay if you continue to use their services. They also offer a mobile app to manage campaigns on the go. Additionally, they provide a support team, email builder, newsletter editor, and affiliate program.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a powerful method for changing customer behavior. It’s often known as inbound marketing. This marketing approach allows your company to connect with new target market segments by offering relevant content through consistent distribution.

Search engine optimization paid search, social media ads, and even blogs are frequently used tools to improve customer engagement.

The nature of these marketing tools places heavy emphasis on the quality and the consistency of content produced for customers to stay in the customer mindset.

Below are a few content marketing tools that can improve the quality of the content you provide, even if you’re not a writer or artist. 

Narrato is a fantastic platform for finding skilled, independent content writers at reasonable prices. You only pay if you approve the content, and it is immediately delivered. To match your needs with writers’ abilities, Narrato uses sophisticated algorithms. 

DupliChecker is a plagiarism checker to examine your text to see if it has been plagiarized or not. This tool is handy in identifying instances of plagiarism in your content, intended or not.

Another popular content marketing tool is Canva. Canva helps content creators spin up visually appealing text and graphics in minutes. For example, you can create logos, invitation cards, picture collages, social media banners, posts, certifications, and informative infographics.

Cross Promotions

Another effective, low-cost marketing tool is the technique of cross-promotion. Enterprises and small businesses can cross-promote each other’s products and services to improve visibility and reach more customers. Additionally, cross-promotion enables your company to work with others that operate similarly and are happy to promote your services to their clients. You’ll return the favor by promoting their business.

There are many different methods of cross-promotions. However, when adequately executed, collaboration benefits both parties. Below are some common strategies:

• Influencer’s Posts – A person who can influence others’ purchasing decisions is known as an influencer. According to research, opinion influencers are effective at encouraging purchases. Statistics show that 58% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations for their purchases. So, it makes sense to consider partnerships to raise sales and brand recognition.
• Promotional Videos – Videos can be used for cross-promotion and can help your business target a specific demographic. YouTube is an excellent platform for this. Videos tend to have high engagement online and are effective at highlighting the best of your brand, products, and services.
• Giveaways and contests – Giveaways and competitions are highly engaging interactive content formats. Giveaways and competitions are also economical and may quickly grow your audience. Studies have shown that a contest or giveaway on Instagram can help gain followers 70% more quickly over three months. Furthermore, the conversion rate for competitions is 34%. By including giveaways in your marketing strategy, you have the opportunity to showcase your company and engage your followers. Additionally, contests and giveaways provide a chance to create memories, foster loyalty, and increase sales.

SEO

The success of your business is heavily affected by how well your website is optimized for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. So it makes sense that the easier it is for customers to find you using an online search, the better your marketing messages will work for you.

A favorable search engine ranking affects visibility, traffic, and company revenues. However, using online pay-per-click ads to drive a better search engine ranking can be pricey. Fortunately, free high-quality SEO tools are available to provide valuable search data and help you develop content to score well for keywords your customers like to use in search.

• Google Analytics – There are numerous search engines used across the globe, but Google currently reigns supreme. Optimizing your content for Google’s search algorithms can boost your website’s online findability. Fortunately, Google provides free tools to help you do so. Google Analytics is a free toolset offered that provides data on who visits your site, what pages rank well, and what tracked events are converting to sales and leads.
• Ubersuggest – Ubersuggest is a service owned by SEO specialist Neil Patel. The highlights of Ubersuggest feature a straightforward user interface and tools designed to help research keywords and the content your competition is using to rank well. Ubersuggest offers a free and paid level of use. The free level provides powerful tools that beginners will benefit from. And the paid service is also reasonably priced and well worth the cost. 

Personal Branding

Personal branding is a strategy for making a brand identity for an individual or a company. It’s generally a brand for you or your business and reflects how you amplify your brand values to potential customers.

Personal branding is a more “personable” approach to how you represent your business and gain trust and authority in the marketplace. There are numerous ways to exemplify your brand on a personal level. We’ve tried to note a few inexpensive tools below you can try:

Free Email Signature Tools 

Make an impression when sending emails. In just a few minutes, create a polished, professional email signature with all your pertinent information:

• WiseStamp
• Hubspot email signature generator
• CloudHQ Google Chrome Extensions

Free Video Meme App 

• InShot creates engaging social media videos. It has a powerful HD video editor and photo editor with industry-standard capabilities. Text, emoji, transition effects, filters, background blurring, and more can all be added! 

Free Brand Identity Tools

• Namechk: Find a name’s availability on all social networking sites by searching for it.
• About. Me: Create a free single-page website where you can stylishly list all of your professional information.

Tools for Free Reputation Monitoring

• Brand Yourself: Get a 60-second reputation report on your own brand.
• Google Alerts: Set up alerts for terms associated with your personal brand to keep track of who is mentioning you and what.

Referrals Marketing

One of the best low-cost marketing strategies for small businesses is customer recommendations. Apart from the effort in delivering excellent service, getting a referral costs practically nothing, and referrals frequently result in highly qualified leads.

Referral marketing involves promoting your goods or services using testimonies from your customers. This type of marketing is typically done through word-of-mouth and can be very successful. People who recommend your business do so because they’ve had a positive experience and believe others will benefit from engaging with your company. 

Additionally, recommendations create trust. And a referral tends to convert more often to a sale or lead because the potential customer has inherent confidence in the referral.  

You can collect references by:

• Simply include “tell a friend” in your order confirmation emails or receipts and get referrals.
• Add a Testimonial link to your business emails
• Create a customer loyalty program.
• Use marketing automation solutions like Referral Factory, Refersion, or FriendBuy, etc.). 
• Collect and add video testimonials to your website using a service like Testimonial.io. For more information on referrals, see our article “Word-of-Mouth Referrals are a great marketing tool for small business.“

You most definitely don’t need a substantial corporate marketing budget to gain brand recognition. These inexpensive marketing tools can help communicate to your customers that your brand and services can be trusted.

Final Thoughts

Marketers and entrepreneurs have many options to improve their company’s marketing efforts with minimal cost. With research and the right combination of tools, a small business can make significant gains with a modest investment. 

However, if you’re a solo entrepreneur or have a small staff, sometimes a third party helps organize your efforts or can even take some of the workloads so that you can concentrate on what you do best. Cooperata has experience in using most of the tools mentioned in this article. If you’d like some advice or need a helping hand, feel free to contact one of our specialists using the contact form on our website.