Top 5 FREE Digital Marketing Apps All Start-up Businesses NEED to learn about!

Whether you are a start-up or a mainstream company like an Amazon or google, all companies must have a strong Digital Marketing strategy for their business to be as successful as possible. In recent years we have seen a shift away from how consumers would traditionally consume media. Traditional forms of advertising in media like a printed ad in the newspaper or a Tv advertisement are no longer as effective as they once were as we have now shifted into the Digital age with most people spending more time surfing the net then flicking through tv channels or turning the pages in a newspaper.

It is easier for powerhouse organisations like Amazon or Google to inject money into their digital marketing strategy fund to reach these people but what about small start-up businesses who do not have the finance to do so?

Well don’t worry as we got you covered! In this blog post, we will look at 5 FREE digital marketing apps you can use and apply to your start-up to ensure your digital marketing strategy is as effective as possible.

1.      Canva 

      The element of design for start-up businesses needs to a high priority for team members as users expect the digital presentation of your product to be of a high quality (Chew, 2015, p.40). A poll conducted by Patrick Llewellyn, who is the CEO of 99designs, revealed that out of 1500 entrepreneurs which included start-up founders and small business owners, 80% of those surveyed found the logos and other digital branding designs to be either important or very important to their success (Chew, 2015, p.40). How can you create high quality designs for your start-up’s website or social media accounts?

The answer is Canva. Canva is a website that allows you to create graphic designs for your social media pages, infographics, presentations amongst others (Canva, 2022). The interface is easy to use so you don not have to be a graphic designer to use it. Another great feature is that other members of your team can be made admins on whatever project you may be working on which would allow them to collaborate with you and make edits.

Link to Canva - https://www.canva.com/en_gb/

2.      Hootsuite

When looking at social media accounts that are run for businesses nothing looks worse than random posting. When posts are not consistent it can make the social media pages look less like a professional business page and more like spam. The app Hootsuite would help you keep on top of these problems as you can manage your social media channels and schedule posts for these channels all at once. Hootsuite also includes a schedule feature which would inform you on the best times of day to post (Ahlbeand, 2014, p.14). Another efficient tool is the ability to send out messages to multiple social media accounts simultaneously (Ahlbeand, 2014, p.14). The free version of this app allows you to control 2 social accounts at once however one drawback with the free version is that only 1 user from your team will be able to use the free version unlike cameo which allows for a collaborative team effort (Hootsuite, 2022).

Link to Hootsuite - https://www.hootsuite.com/

3.      Google Analytics

Any time you create a digital marketing campaign for your start-up it is important to ensure that there is a return on the investment of time you put into this campaign. Google Analytics is a web analytics platform that would allow you to measure the results from your campaigns to give you a better idea on what is and what isn’t working with your audience.

Link to Google Analytics - https://analytics.withgoogle.com/

4.      Trello

We talked a little in this blog about the importance of team collaboration and like Canva, Trello allows for all team member to access the site at once to collaborate and edit whatever project is being created. Trello is a tool that allows teams to better create and organise projects effectively. Say you are making a video commercial and need to delegate tasks amongst team members, Trello will allow you to do this with its smart and very visual interface which would ensure the best productivity possible (Trello, 2022). The interface is made up of boards and cards (Robbs, 2020, p.6). A board may be titled “social media” and cards can be titled as specific tasks for the team member to complete on social media. Each card can then be assigned a colour to specify if it has been completed or not so red for example would mean it hasn’t and green would mean it has.

Link to Trello - https://trello.com/en

5.      Google Forms

Google forms, speaking from personal experience is a fantastic application should you be trying to get data from the audience you are targeting with your start-up. For example, should you be looking for more data to improve your business strategy you can create a survey on google forms to distribute across social media channels. Google can then organise the results into categories which gives you useful information on the people who completed the survey like age groups and genders. Useful information for identifying your target audience. Global reach and time efficiency must also be taking into account when using online surveys like one google forms would provide. The accessibility of the internet would allow your survey to reach people all over the world and it would only take a few minutes for the person doing the survey to complete it.

Link to Google Forms - https://www.google.com/forms/about/

So, there it is! 5 different digital marketing apps you can use to optimise your digital marketing strategies to reach the most amount of people possible and the best part is they are all FREE! Let us know on our social media accounts linked below how you got on using these tools and make sure to drop us a follow. See You next week where we show you ways to market your Start-Up business on a budget.

#DigitalMarketingApps #Start-upBusinesses #FREE

Written by Jason Flood

Bibliography

Ahlbrand, A (2014) , ‘Tweeted Out: Management Tweeted Out: Management Tools to Prevent Social Media from Monopolizing Your Time’. An article at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3504&context=facpub (Accessed: 01 February 2022).

Canva (2022) ‘Canva. Design for everyone.’ Available at: https://www.canva.com/q/pro/?&msclkid=04ff6ebe501e11538ba00f475fe8d440&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=REV_UK_EN_CanvaPro_Branded_Tier1_Core_EM&utm_term=canva&utm_content=REV_UK_EN_CanvaPro_Branded_Tier1_Canva_EM&gclid=04ff6ebe501e11538ba00f475fe8d440&gclsrc=3p.ds (Accessed: 01 February 2022).

Chew, S (2015) ‘Designers as Entrepreneurs: An Investigation on Why Start-ups Need Design and Design Need start-up’s’, Ohio State University, 1(0), pp.40-42. JURN (online). (Accessed: 01 February 2022).

Hootsuite (2022) ‘Pick a plan that’s right for you.’ Available at: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/c2c-digital-magazine-spring--summer-2020-/Trello-project-mgmt-use-cases (Accessed: 01 February 2022).

https://www.hootsuite.com/plans (Accessed: 01 February 2022).

Robbs, A (2020) ‘Trello for Project Management: Use Cases’, Ottawa University, 1(0), pp.6-18. JURN (Online).

Trello (2022) ‘Learn Trello board basics. Available at:

https://trello.com/guide/trello-101 (Accessed: 01 February 2022).