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We live in a world where more and more people are starting their own businesses, but building a brand can be difficult. There are so many tools out there that will help you get started with various aspects of your social media marketing, graphic design, and more. But which marketing tools do you really need to begin with? Inside this article, I share FIVE must-have easy to use marketing tools for designing and building your brand. Let’s review what your small business marketing strategy needs.
Which Online Marketing Tools Do You Need?
We live in a world where more and more people are starting their own businesses, but building a brand can be difficult.
There are so many tools out there that will help you get started with various aspects of your social media marketing, graphic design, and more.
When I teach clients how to build their brand using my Branding Roadmap, four phases walk you thru how to communicate your uniqueness to the world.
And no, it doesn’t start with marketing your product.
By planning and putting effort into the development process just as much as the marketing one, you will work more efficiently and effectively.
Your time is valuable – develop your brand before you promote it.
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5 Best Marketing Tools to Build Your Brand Online This Year
With that said, there are 5 must-have marketing tools you need once you have your CORE Foundation determined, your brand messaging defined, and your brand identity designed.
1 – Start by creating a website
Bluehost’s WordPress hosting service has been around since 2003 and is an excellent option for anyone looking to start their own blog and have their own online space to showcase their brand. Bluehost offers a free domain name for the first year, 24/7 customer support, and unlimited storage space and bandwidth for your website.
At CORE Brand Marketing Group, we help our clients set up a WordPress Site using Bluehost; then, we install a custom theme builder called Divi to design their website with a blog add-on.
Ep 109: How To Write A Blog Post For Maximum SEO
2 – Use Canva to create visuals for your blog and social sites
Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that makes it easy to create professional-looking visuals for your blog posts. You can create custom graphics, logos, and more in minutes, without any prior design experience. Canva’s platform is simple, and there’s a wealth of tutorials available for free on their site. The site includes visual guidelines for different types of work such as social media posts, print materials, banners, etc. Canva puts the power to create in your hands with tool choices for both beginners and pros.
It has a simple, drag-and-drop interface PLUS lots of unique templates for anything you can think of – cover photos, social media images, eBook covers, highlight albums, presentations, and more.
You can add pictures, text, icons, graphics, backgrounds, lines, shapes, etc., and then export in several different formats, including gif, mp4, and png.
I highly suggest paying for Canva Pro for unlimited access to premium tools and content such as images, graphics, the background remover tool, magic resize, and 100GB of storage. The cost for this upgrade is $120 per year.
A free plan is available, but we use the Pro version to have more storage, premium stock photos and graphics, brand kits, extra tools, and saved templates. Click HERE to start for free and view the latest offers.
Favorite Features:
- Automatically crop your photos for the exact sizes that you need.
- Includes templates, layouts, and designs for every situation.
- The pro subscription gives you access to a library of images, icons, graphics, and more.
- Create galleries and grids of images.
- Add text to photos with a variety of fonts, effects, and styles.
- Add photo effects, textures, transparency backgrounds, and more.
3 – Install Google Analytics on your website
This free web analytics tool will help you track the number of visitors your website receives, where they’re coming from, and how they interact with your content.
If you have a Google Drive account login, setting up Google Analytics is a breeze. Use this tutorial on setting up your blog with analytics, but I highly suggest doing this from the start so you can monitor data such as the number of site visitors per day, which pages they are visiting most, and how you are acquiring these readers. Understanding the behaviors of your readers will help you in what content to create.
A big part of successful marketing is knowing what works and what needs improvement. Google Analytics helps you do just that by providing your website analytics in an easy-to-use dashboard. Track website visitors, products, marketing goals, and conversions easily. Over 55% of all websites use Google analytics, so yes, you must set up this free tool for your sites.
Click here to start your free account.
To view a beginner’s tutorial click here.
Favorite Features:
- Reports the traffic your site is getting each day
- See what keywords people used to find you
- See what third party websites sent you traffic
- Set up conversion tracking
4 – Use an email marketing platform
Email marketing remains one of the best ways to turn leads into customers.
Drip is a powerful email marketing platform that will allow you to create custom email newsletters, manage clients and track analytics. This platform can be especially helpful if you’re looking to grow your email list or want more insight into how your content is performing.
One of the things I love about Drip for my business is connecting the Woocommerce Cart on my blog, where I sell courses to track all purchases and engagement.
Before Drip, I used Active Campaign, but after much comparison, I chose Drip because of its simple workflows, email design, and pricing. If you have less than 500 subscribers, the price is just $19 per month.
CLICK HERE FOR A FREE TRIAL OF DRIP!
5 – Set up a social media scheduler
Social media is a great way to build your brand, but it can also be very time-consuming. Social media is a great place to connect with your target audience regularly, but it can be challenging to keep up with all of the different platforms at once. Use the Sked app for social media scheduling so that you can post updates on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more in one convenient location!
We choose Sked for our CORE Brand Marketing maintenance clients because of how simple it is to schedule Instagram stories and layout content ahead of time. They also have a built-in library to drop in images ahead of time then build out your content later.
If there’s a type of business tool I’ve tried dozens of- it would be social media marketing tools. But after finding Sked Social in 2020, it has quickly become my favorite social media management platform for Instagram, Facebook, Groups, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more! It’s got everything you need to visually plan, create, analyze and schedule your posts and stories.
The best part about SKED is it doesn’t use an API system to make scheduled posts – they have phones lined up on their walls where they log in to the IG app and make a post just how you or I would. So if you’ve heard that scheduled posts get fewer views, this isn’t the case with SKED. All your posts go out just as if you posted it yourself.
We use the Professional version to have more Instagram accounts, competitor tracking, and product tags. Click HERE to start for free and view the latest offers.
Favorite Features:
- Schedule your social media posts for the perfect time for each platform based on analytics.
- Customize your posts to match the format of each different platform.
- Stored library of commonly used captions and hashtags.
- Analytics allow you to see your most successful posts across each platform and saves engagement, shares, etc.
- Create custom post schedules for each platform and even each day!
- View your content months ahead with the social media calendar view.
- Schedule IG Stories to auto-post – no push notifications here – set and forget!
Ep 107: 5 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Branding
To Recap: Online Marketing Tools
So as you know already, building your brand online can be a daunting task, but these five online marketing tools should help make it a little bit easier!
While there are other tools to choose from, after years of research and trying dozens of platforms, these are the current five that I suggest starting with for our CORE Brand Marketing Clients, and they’re the ones I use in my own business today.
To recap, if you’re looking to start your own blog, the Bluehost hosting service has been around since 2003 and is an excellent option for setting up your website!
You can also use Canva if you need help with creating visuals. Google Analytics should be installed on any site that wants insight into how people are interacting with the content on their website, while Drip provides an email marketing platform that’s perfect for growing lists or understanding how customers react to certain kinds of content like email newsletters.
Finally, Sked allows users to post updates across multiple social media platforms simultaneously, so they never have to worry about missing out on engagement opportunities again!
FOR A FULL LIST OF ALL MY FAVORITE TOOLS CLICK HERE!
1. Start by creating a website using Bluehost
2. Use Canva to create visuals for your blog
3. Install Google Analytics on your website
4. Use Drip for email marketing
5. Set up Sked for social media scheduling
Ep 87: 12 Essential Business Tools You Need This Year
Where to start when Building a Brand
If you’re like most women entrepreneurs, you are ready to start building a brand. You’ve got the right idea to build a brand, but you’re not sure how to get started. It seems like there are so many steps and pieces that you don’t know where to begin!
For years we’ve been using traditional marketing tactics to build our brands, but it’s time for something new.
Traditional marketing methods are outdated and expensive and don’t always produce results that last. We’re ready for something better!
The Personal Branding Roadmap will help guide you through each step of the process so that your brand grows in a way that’s authentic to YOU!
Unlock your copy below!
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
- Build a Continuous Flow of New Clients Using This Simple Profit Pipeline™ – HERE!
- Turn Your Chaos Into Clarity in Just 90 Minutes with this One Call – HERE!
- Obtain the Support System You Need Inside Our Coaching Group – HERE!
Since I share awe-inspiring resources and must-have products for business builders like you who want to streamline their business – my content may contain affiliate links for products I use and love. If you take action (i.e. subscribe, make a purchase) after clicking one of these links, I’ll earn a small commission. While it has no effect on your pricing, it’s my responsibility to let you know that an income (however small or large it may be) is made from recommending products I love, use, and share with other awesome people like yourself. With your support, I’m able to commit time to this blog and to each of you on your journey!
