We may have the most incredible offer or service within our industry, but if we aren’t attracting people, grabbing their attention, keeping that attention and encouraging our audiences to engage with us, our small businesses aren’t going to be viable for very long (as you won’t have persuaded anyone to trade your services/products for real, actual money).

I’m guessing the industry you’re in is getting increasingly competitive, with more and more ‘hobbyists’ coming out of the woodwork since they’ve had a lot of time to think about things during lockdown and now want to give their part-time-passion a go in the long run. 

You need to stand out from the crowd. So, your marketing needs to make an impact.

These 5 business tools for marketing have been responsible for allowing me to keep a consistent aesthetic across all my marketing materials, be creative and strengthen my online presence, whilst not needing a lot of tech know-how/eliminating hours of frustration learning a new piece of software.

(Again, most of them are free!)

*disclaimer* If you head over to Squarespace or Dubsado, they are both affiliate links, because I think they’re such versatile platforms and I get a little bonus from them if anyone creates an account using my link. Thanks in advance!*

MY GO-TO BUSINESS TOOLS FOR MARKETING ARE…

CANVA

Ensuring there is consistency across the visuals of your website/social media/adverts is an effective way of proving to your audience that you are reliable (and from that you will develop trust).

If your social media pages are a mess, there’s no cohesive colour scheme, or you’re using 8 different fonts on your website, you’ve created a sure fire way of repelling potential customers.

Canva is my go-to platform to make easy graphics and social media posts, where I can make sure all my brand colours, fonts and styles are consistent. It’s basically a dummy's version of  Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Most features are totally free and there are different designs to ensure your graphics are the right size to fit a story, reel, cover image or advert, specific to the platform you’re using it for. 

If you’re not design minded, there are 100s of pre-made templates in which you can just replace your logo, add your brand colours and immediately have it looking engaging and consistent with whatever colours/fonts you use on your website.

*top tip* I also use this for my website designs, to make fancy backgrounds and custom graphics, ensuring my squarespace website doesn’t look like one of the templates (it’s really telling when you land on a website and they’ve used a template - unfortunately I can spot it from a mile off!)

SQUARESPACE

Your website is your strongest business tool for marketing. No one is going to take you seriously if you don’t have a website (or if it’s a real mess).

It’s the first place people will look if they’re interested in what you have to offer.

It’s your one stop shop for exhibiting your experience and expertise, transforming on-the-fence-ers into intrigued (and eventually paying) customers. It also gives you more space to bring across your unique selling point than your social media does. And without a website, you’ll also look much less legit.

The fact that the Squarespace website design platform is so easy to use is integral to helping clients update their websites (post-design process) and not get overwhelmed by all the tech and more complicated options out there. 

The integrations are fantastic - there are so many handy things you can incorporate: built-in analytics, scheduling tools (I spoke a bit about how great Acuity Scheduling was in my other blog post on my fave business tools for the smooth-running of my own business), clean and sexy Instagram designs that perfectly fit in with your website’s aesthetic, the list goes on…

Ok, it’s not completely free, but it’s really reasonably priced. Their customer support is awesome and they’re always updating it with new features to make your life easier.

I’ve tried WIX before and it’s super fiddly (therefore crazy time consuming). I’ve also worked with WordPress which isn’t so straight forward: you can’t see what you’re doing/changing on the screen, which means you have to load a new page to see what your changes look like in real life. Also the more integrations you start using for your website, the more susceptible your site is to errors and faults. Plus they’ll also start slowing your site down.

*top top*  If you’re on a budget, you can still make your website look clean and professional - so if you want to DIY your Squarespace site, just click on this link to let me know if you’re going to give it a crack yourself and I’ll give you a few little secrets to make it look less DIY and more designer.

MAKEAGIF.COM

You might know by now that when you’re running your own business, it’s as important to find new potential customers/followers/leads as building relationships and trust with your existing audience.

Email marketing is a great (and easy) way to do this.

I’ve only just discovered Makeagif.com, but I’m going to be using it a lot more in the future, for sure.

Upload your own short video and turn it into a fun .gif that you can add to web pages or email marketing campaigns, to make it that little bit more personal.

*top tip* It ends up looking a bit like a Boomerang video on Instagram: I record a video on my Instagram app (which I’ve set to automatically save to my phone whenever I create a new story) or laptop camera. Just upload it to the makeagif.com website, then download to put straight into an email.

UBERSUGGEST.COM

Building your online presence and sphere of influence using SEO is important regardless of whether you’re a local, brick-and-mortar business or you function solely online.

And it doesn’t need to be super expensive to utilise this marketing strategy, with the view to expand your sphere of influence online.

Ubersuggest is where I do all my keyword research. The man who created it, Neil Patel, is an SEO genius. The website is full of how-tos and tech blogs if you’re into learning about backlinks and analytics.

Personally I use the paid version of Ubersuggest, but you can have a go with the free version which gives you a certain number of searches per day.

It is the easiest tool I’ve found for discovering which keywords are popular, which ones aren’t, and what your competitors are ranking for.

DUBSADO

Keeping track of multiple projects, invoice deadlines (and reminders, sadly), rewriting and rewriting proposals. It doesn’t have to take up half your week.

It used to take me days. Literally. Days. Days that I could be actually doing client work. Or time that I could have spent away from my laptop.

Dubsado has been a GAMECHANGER for me. It’s a space where I can keep track of each different project, duplicate forms at the click of my mouse, send invoice reminders whilst I’m getting my beauty sleep, and create a private portal for all my clients to track their own progress too (because who likes to be in the dark when they’ve finally decided to trust someone else with their business baby, eh??!) AND it’s all branded up to look like my website.

If you’re a service-based business or offer experiences of some kind to your customers, you. need. Dubsado.

Use this link to nab your free trial and get a 20% discount here too, if you decide you want to get your time back on silly admin tasks.

Or type in ‘alicewritescopy’ as the affiliate code.

**Yes there is a ££ implication of clicking the link. But I’d be shouting out this amazing platform even if there wasn’t. But you still get the discount. #dubsadoforever **

*top tip* If you’re getting stung by website selling fees, there is zero commission with payments on Dubsado, so you can avoid that sneaky 3% that gets added onto your Stripe/PayPal fee. So if you’re selling ebooks or passive courses, just use a Dubsado form instead of the Squarespace/Wordpress/Wix shop feature + set up a trigger to send these emails once payment is made. Then you can watch the sales roll in, without you having to send a single thing manually.

If you’re looking to make life running your own business a little easier / more stress free / more efficient, these articles may also help ➝