Desires and possibilities are two vastly different things. We all know the important role marketing plays in the success of a business undertaking, but not everyone has the resources, both human and financial, to create a marketing campaign as they would desire.
But just because you are at a place where your best bet is a DIY marketing effort, that does not mean it has to be poor, or lacking in any way. As a matter of fact, with the help of some cool software, you can build a strong marketing campaign and grow your business all by yourself.
Below you will find a list of ten DIY marketing tools that will make your life easy and help you grow your business until you can even out those desires and possibilities.
1. Canva
Designing banners and ads is a scientific discipline in itself, and the mainstream software (read: Photoshop) is not exactly helping, as the sheer amount of features can be intimidating. However, with Canva you can awaken the DIY master inside and create simple yet effective banners in mere minutes. It comes with a number of presets and design templates, and organizes its UI around dragging and dropping different elements. It offers a ton of photos and fonts, making sure that your banners and ads stay unique despite being in a template.
2. WordPress
Modern marketing is unimaginable without a strong inbound effort, so the WordPress blogging tools will be your biggest ally in that endeavor. It is extremely easy to set up, as it takes literally minutes to get everything up and running. It comes with a whole sea of different add-ons and tools, helping you create a unique, stand-out blog that is bound to draw in many visitors.
Among add-ons and tools that are particularly worth mentioning are landing page builders, like Pagewiz or Elementor. Landing pages will be your biggest allies in your quest towards marketing success, so being able to build them on your own, quickly and efficiently will be a key consideration. These tools will allow you to create landing pages that combine text, images and other multimedia (for example YouTube videos), as well as simple call-to-action and social media sharing features.
Those looking beyond WordPress for landing page builders can also consider Wix, as it is a strong contender with a large userbase and a good overall image among marketers.
With cybercrime being as widespread among businesses as it is today, it is important to note that WordPress comes with regular security updates that keep your blog safe and secure.
3. Portent Title Maker
The first couple of months, creating content for your inbound marketing is relatively easy. But what do you do when the well of ideas runs dry? How do you keep coming up with new, exciting and relevant topics for your audience week in, week out? With the help of the Portent Title Maker, of course. This is a great tool for coming up with fresh content. Just feed it your desired topics, for example, “content marketing”, and let it do its thing.
4. Hootsuite
Being so popular and virtually omnipresent, social media are a vital part of every marketing campaign. However, choosing the right content to share, and picking the right moment to share it can be a tedious, time-consuming task. With Hootsuite, you can easily automate these tasks, scheduling posts to go on various platforms, exactly when you want them. One of the more interesting features of Hootsuite is Bulk Upload, allowing you to schedule up to 350 social media posts at once.
5. BuzzSumo
Social media marketing can be touch to track, and its success hard to measure. However, with the help of tools like BuzzSumo, that too can be achieved with relative ease. For example, this tool allows you to track top content, seeing which content gets most shares across the social media plane. It can help you spot the biggest influencers in your industry, as well as track mentions of a brand and topic. All this information can be aggregated and exported through its social reports feature.
6. Google Analytics
The alpha and the omega of all website analytics tools. Mastering Google Analytics is the first step to every successful marketing effort. This free tool gives you a full picture of your website and its visitors, including where they are coming from, what they do when they visit your page, or how long they stick around.
The depth of the tool makes it appealing to everyone – from startups, to small businesses, to large, multinational enterprises. This tool is a must-have for everyone.
7. Hotjar
Though essentially an analytics tool, do not mistake it for a Google Analytics alternative. Rather, consider it a complementing tool, as Hotjar tackles analytics from the perspective of user experience.
Its Touch Heatmaps tool allows you to see exactly how the visitors interact with your site, presenting all clicks, taps and swipes in a visually appealing, easy to consume way. The Recordings feature offers a real-time recording of your visitor’s interaction, simplifying hunting for bugs and roadblocks in user experience. Finally, the Forms tool helps you create forms for users, an amazing tool for getting valuable user feedback.
8. MailChimp
Even though some might tell you otherwise, email marketing is still an amazingly effective tool. It will help you nurture your leads and create a meaningful, lasting relationship with potential clients. It will boost website visits, increase conversions, and reduce bounce rates. MailChimp allows you to automate email marketing. Build great newsletters through its built-in templates, create customizable sign-up forms and track the entire performance with its built-in reporting tools.
9. Smoove
Smoove is a marketing automation platform that takes automation to new levels. It allows you to build personalized email templates, set behavior-based triggers on when the emails are sent, and attract new visitors through smart landing pages, pop-ups and personalized forms. It is an all-in-one tool which likes to present itself as a platform for “smart marketing“.
10. Snip.ly
With Snip.ly, you can add a small pop-up with any sort of CTA, to virtually any website that you share. Basically, it allows you to use the power of anyone’s content to promote your own website or page, as long as the content is being spread around via a link that you provided. It is very simple to use. Just choose the content you’d like to share, paste the URL into Snip.ly, and it will provide you with a shortened link. That link, when opened, takes the reader to the exact same original piece of content, but this time it has the pop-up with your CTA.
Final words
There are a lot of things you can do for your startup’s marketing, including paid media, inbound, email marketing and analytics. On the outside, looking in, it might seem overwhelming and too much for a small startup to handle. But with the proper mindset, and the right tools, it becomes a walk in the park. You get to see your startup grow, and there’s no one to tap on the shoulder for that but yourself. Well done.
