Which of us hasn’t struggled with the high costs of marketing for our products and services? Between social media marketing, email threads, branding, etc…, the increasing demand for an ingenious marketing strategy is one that weighs heavily on the mind of the modern business owner especially if we don’t want to tether ourselves to working capital loans for small business or other sources of working capital finance. Factor in the daily operations of many small business owners do themselves and figuring out what the best marketing tools are for our small businesses seems more like an insurmountable challenge than an attainable goal especially without a fair amount of working capital. There are some small blessings that we can use to assist us, however. The three main tools that are available for free to business owners to help with marketing are as follows:
Due
Due is used to help us keep track of how much time we spend on our various marketing projects. Time management is one of the main drains on a small business owner. Due is a free app that enables us to know how much time we use and how to allot that time more productively if necessary. Due is also able to help us keep track of our own billable hours in addition to allowing us to create invoices and categorize various payments.
Canva
Canva is another free app that has changed the game regarding visual content and how it can be created. Small businesses are no longer held hostage by expensive graphic designers with exclusive content knowledge. Canva allows us regular joes to point and click our way to creative advertisements. Visual content is one of the most popular modes of advertising, especially in our current internet culture. Canva enables us to create professional and creative graphic designs for our companies. Canva has a plethora of fonts, templates, graphics, and colors to choose from and is extraordinarily user-friendly.
Evernote
Evernote is an amazing organizational tool. Evernote is essentially a digital planner where we can keep track of ideas, notes, trends, and those random strokes of genius that every entrepreneur experiences from time to time. Evernote is the perfect place to hold and organize content ideas and any marketing research that we’re doing and be able to access it in real time on any device.