The market has moved
There’s undoubtedly a subtle panic among everyone that uses the internet today. Everyone is asking how they’ll catch on or catch up with the fast pace of the ever-changing digital world. Business owners are now seemingly migrating to marketing their businesses online because according to Hootsuite, a social media management agency, the average person (worldwide) spends between 6 to 7 hours online. Herein lies all your prospects. Digital marketing is simply defined as the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.
Technology has stepped in
Digital marketing involves a chain of events that starts from concept creation to the final published product. Everything from basic research, and copywriting to finding the right images can be very time consuming to any business owner and can be taxing on manpower. But thanks to the morphing nature of technology, people are inventing tools and tricks to make the life of the internet business user much easier. Social media specifically, is open to all and allows your business to follow consumers' activities. This helps you stay informed about your audience's likes, dislikes, and interests so that you can create a better marketing strategy to attract more customers. But before you get discouraged and feel like you’re getting sucked into internet oblivion, here are a few free and easy-to-use tools that can get you started on your online marketing approach for effective results:
1. Canva (for content creation) This is a powerful design tool that can be used to create projects that not only look great but also help you with the basics of digital design. Canva enables you to edit photos, design layouts, create bulk content and so much more. This tool saves you time and effort that would typically take you days or even weeks to develop and design a project from scratch. Explore the vibrant free templates created by designers from all over the world.
2. Hootsuite (for curation, scheduling and analytics) Hootsuite is a social media management tool with features to help with planning, scheduling, and syndicating social posts. Although not necessarily free, this platform offers you a 30-day free trial to unlock key features that include automatic scheduling, social media monitoring, performance reporting, basic task management and more. With Hootsuite, you can post updates, review responses, and connect with your customer base on popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+ and more. Hootsuite’s unique analytics feature gives you an in-depth view of how well your social media strategy is working in easy-to-gauge performance charts.
3. Mail Chimp (for email marketing) Email marketing is a great way to enhance customer engagement, find prospects and create brand awareness. Many will tell you that this type of marketing is outdated but over the years, email marketing has evolved, remained effective and even grown in popularity. A free email marketing tool you could explore is Mailchimp. Mailchimp allows you to email a maximum of 2000 contacts at a time when you sign up for the free subscription. You can also customise any of the easy email templates by editing the text and adding your own images.
4. Meta Business Manager (for scheduling, planning and analytics) According to statcounter.com, the most used social media platform in Zambia is Facebook. Facebook (or Meta as it is now officially called) has an in-built tool called Business Manager, that helps you organize and manage your business on Facebook. If you’re only using Facebook and Instagram to market your business and interact with customers, this tool allows you to schedule posts for months ahead and it shows you analytics reports on demand. Unlike Hootsuite, Meta Business Manager only runs with Facebook and Instagram (which are both owned by Meta).
There are so many digital marketing tools today that offer free subscriptions and are user friendly. Some may offer specific restricted functions such as content curation, content, scheduling, planning and analytics while others may offer all these functions all at once. The trick is to find what works best for you and run with it. Google what you’re looking for and AI will help you find possible software solutions! The best part about most of these tools is that they are created for anyone with access to a digital device to use with little to no supervision or training. Reaching the masses digitally is actually easier than you think. Try these today and give us feedback! We’d love to hear from you.