Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to get your company off the ground. There are plenty of budget-friendly ways to get the word out about your products. The key is to invest your money into marketing initiatives that yield the biggest ROI (return on investment), while not spending money where you could learn to do it yourself.
We’ll give you the low-down on many free tools you can use to cut costs for your marketing initiatives, as well as offer up some ideas for paid marketing that yields the biggest ROI.
1. Create visuals with Canva
Canva is a free platform that helps you create different visuals using a simple drag-and-drop method. You can choose what sort of visual you’re creating first (Facebook post, cover photo, etc.), and you’ll be given a canvas that’s already measured to size. You can get inspired by their pre-made designer examples, or totally go off on your own.
2. Free lifestyle images for your marketing materials
Lifestyle photos are a great way of giving soul to your marketing images. The problem is that to make your own they require a lot of funds and effort – not only staging a photo shoot, but also hiring the models and of course, the photographer.
Stock photos have come a long way and aren’t the soulless garbage they used to be. There are many new platforms out there where photographers make their images available under the Creative Commons Zero license, meaning that you can freely use the images.
Here are some great sites to start with:
3. Free mockup and product placement photos
It’s important to show your products in use or in real life. Here are a few tools that will give you the chance to place your designs on mockups.
4. Make gifs/videos for free
Videos are having a moment, there’s no denying it. Both gifs and video content are great as they not only convey more meaning than an image, but they also catch your reader’s eye as they’re scrolling through their feeds.
Here are some Gif tools to consider:
Video tools to consider:
5. Free communication channels for content distribution
Rather than shelling out the cash to distribute your content through means like Google ads or other PPC platforms, take advantage of the channels that are free to use and make the most of them.
Here are some ideas:
We’ll give you the low-down on many free tools you can use to cut costs for your marketing initiatives, as well as offer up some ideas for paid marketing that yields the biggest ROI.
Free tools for minimizing content creation costs
When on a budget, the most important would be to minimize costs where it’s possible.1. Create visuals with Canva
Canva is a free platform that helps you create different visuals using a simple drag-and-drop method. You can choose what sort of visual you’re creating first (Facebook post, cover photo, etc.), and you’ll be given a canvas that’s already measured to size. You can get inspired by their pre-made designer examples, or totally go off on your own.
2. Free lifestyle images for your marketing materials
Lifestyle photos are a great way of giving soul to your marketing images. The problem is that to make your own they require a lot of funds and effort – not only staging a photo shoot, but also hiring the models and of course, the photographer.
Stock photos have come a long way and aren’t the soulless garbage they used to be. There are many new platforms out there where photographers make their images available under the Creative Commons Zero license, meaning that you can freely use the images.
Here are some great sites to start with:
- Unsplash
- Stock up
- Momenti
- Pexels
3. Free mockup and product placement photos
It’s important to show your products in use or in real life. Here are a few tools that will give you the chance to place your designs on mockups.
- Pixelbuddah photorealistic t-shirts mockups – download the PSD templates and use photoshop to superimpose your design over the t-shirts
- Printful’s mockup generator – free to use
- Mockup World – offers high-quality PSD mockups for practically any product you can think of.
- PlaceIt – search through hundreds of realistic mockups for t-shirts, wall art, phones, etc. and then simply drag and drop your design
4. Make gifs/videos for free
Videos are having a moment, there’s no denying it. Both gifs and video content are great as they not only convey more meaning than an image, but they also catch your reader’s eye as they’re scrolling through their feeds.
Here are some Gif tools to consider:
- Gifs.com – create gifs out of existing videos (eg. ones available on Youtube)
- Giphy slideshow – stitch together different images to create your own gif
- Gifmaker.me – create your own gif by combining different images
Video tools to consider:
- iMovie app – available for iOS only, this is the lighter version of the iMovie OS software
- Magisto – the app is free to download, it costs $0.99 to download a movie. Use it to compile photos and video material into a movie
5. Free communication channels for content distribution
Rather than shelling out the cash to distribute your content through means like Google ads or other PPC platforms, take advantage of the channels that are free to use and make the most of them.
Here are some ideas:
- No-pitch publications – create stories and publish them on platforms that have a low barrier to entry. Here’s a list of 10 platforms that will feature you for free.
- Reddit or relevant forums – forums a great place to spread the word about your product, because they already attract like-minded people. Just make sure not to come off too spammy. One rule of thumb is to always be helpful.
- Social media – the obvious distribution platform that can be used for free. Take it a step up by using tools that the platforms themselves are pushing: Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories
Comments
Post a Comment