One of the resources SME owners lack the most is time and from the beginning, you tend to wear all of the metaphorical hats. If you’ve been on the lookout for a great free marketing tool or if you’ve been juggling your accounting, marketing, sales and production then this post is about to make your life a whole lot easier. Take a look below at our top 5, FREE time-saving tools that will not only alleviate your stress but also elevate your marketing. Double win!
Create professional-looking graphics efficiently with this free marketing tool – Canva
You don’t need an expensive editing programme and multitudes of stock image subscriptions to create fantastic graphics. Canva is a free online service that is fast taking over the market, making design and branding something that is accessible for everyone. With over 400k templates for everything from Instagram posts to invoices and CVs, Canva should be a no-brainer for small businesses. The templates are super easy to edit and almost infinitely customisable to suit your brand’s colours and typography. Our team uses the Canva Pro, for less than R129 per month, which unlocks premium templates, stock images and more editing features.
Generate expert-level content with this free copywriting tool – Copy.Ai
Copy.ai is a free tool that takes in your provided copy (up to 1000 characters) and returns a number of copy suggestions based on what you are looking for e.g. blog introductions or Instagram captions. The computer is no Shakespear just yet, however, but the suggested copy forms the base from which we fine-tune, saving us many many hours!
Never let writer’s block stand in your way again with Answer The Public
Writer’s block? Try answering a question relevant to your product! Enter your brand or product name into Answer The Public and seconds later the site pops out the most common questions the public is asking across the web. Pick a question and answer it for your next social media post.
Scheduling is a sure way to improve your social media presence. We recommend Hootsuite
Are you still manually uploading each day you need to post? That is a waste of your time and a recipe for error. Hootsuite is here to save you from your posting problems. This free social media scheduling and management tool lets you upload your posts in advance and set the time you want them to go out. As a bonus, Hootsuite also suggests optimal days and times to post as well as hashtags so that you get the maximum impact on each post!
Increase your visibility organically by improving your SEO with this free marketing tool Ubersuggest
Mastering SEO can be tough and time-consuming. Ubersuggest peaks at your competitor’s websites and identifies their winning SEO strategies so you can level up your own site. Get keywords, and strategic insight and stay ahead of the competition with Ubersuggest. While this service isn’t technically free there is a 7-day free trial you can exploit.. we mean use, to get the data you need.
There you go. Five free(-ish) marketing tools that will save you time and improve what you’re putting out there! For those who would prefer to leave the marketing to the experts, we provide digital marketing to SMEs just like you. Get in touch!