Simple Marketing Tools for Solo Entrepreneurs

Are you a one-person marketing show? We’ve been there, and it’s overwhelming! So we decided to share our favorite tools that can help you make your marketing and communications better, faster and work on a shoestring budget!

Here’s a quick list of our resource suggestions, and you can scroll to the bottom to watch the whole session we produced.

Welcome to the marketing portfolio of Bushy Tail Coffee Shop, our imaginary small business! Here’s how we would approach boosting our revenue through a great marketing plan.

1. Make a marketing plan and creative brief

   • Write down your plan so you don’t get lost along the way! Here’s a template of a marketing plan.

   • Your creative brief will guide the look, feel and message of your content. Here’s a template of a creative brief.

2. Create some content

   You may have heard it before, but content is king. And not just any content, it has to be relevant, strategic, on-brand, and polished. As a DIY Marketer, you’ll need the basics: graphics, written content, and video. We have tools to help you out!

   • Design

     • Canva and Spark are great drag-and-drop design tools that can save you an enormous amount of time and energy. They have templates for everything, and have free versions you can do a lot with.

     • Unsplash is my favorite free stock photo resource. The photos are beautiful, free, and you can use them for anything. There isn’t as much variety as a subscription to something like Big Stock, but you can probably find what you need.

   • Writing

     Blogs and articles are great at helping with all marketing efforts from search engine optimization and social media to helping potential media learn more about your business. Need great blogs and articles but need to produce them quickly? Temi and Grammarly can help!

     • Temi allows you to upload videos or voice recordings and transcribes them in minutes. It also coordinates the recording with the transcription so if the transcribed information doesn’t make sense, you can go back, tap the sentence, and Temi will play the audio or video so you can adjust.  Transcribing takes FOREVER – this is worth it!

     • Grammarly is super helpful. When creating content, poor grammar and typos can do much more harm than you may realize. Entrepreneurs may not have time or capacity for proofreading content, and this can help a lot. Grammarly uses artificial intelligence to analyze copy written in English. It catches typos, grammatical errors, lets you set goals for tone and audience, and scores your work. Run everything through Grammarly and your work will greatly improve.

   • Video/Audio

     • Social video tools – If you’re on Instagram or Tiktok, might as well use their video recording/editing features. They’re easier and, frankly, more fun.

     • iMovie – If you use Mac stuff, it’s already on your phone, it’s free, and it’s relatively easy to use. You’ll need to watch a tutorial or two to get started. Keep it simple to keep it polished!

3. Distribute Your Content

   You need a website. Social media is great, but you have no control over it. You need a space that you own online. If for nothing else, pay for this one! Your website will be the core of your online presence, and anyone who visits should be able to find the Who, what, where, why and how of your business.

   • Websites

     • If you need fast and easy and don’t care too much about customization, Squarespace or Wix is your ticket. Like Canva, there are beautiful templates that you can customize to your brand and be done with it!

     • If you find yourself frustrated that SS or Wix won’t do what you want them to do, you might be more of a WordPress person. There’s more of a learning curve, but you’ll have a lot more control and options.

   • SEO

     • What do people ask Google that your business could be the answer to? Put yourself into the shoes of your audience, and use the words and questions that they are likely to Google on your website. That’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization)!

   • Manage Your Social Media

     The key to effective digital marketing and marketing on social channels is consistency, timeliness, accuracy, and relevance. If you’re getting your good interviews and using Grammarly, we know what you’re putting out is accurate! But consistency and timeliness is tricky. You’ve got to have messages going out all the time, and the easiest way to do that is to schedule as much as you can ahead of time.

     • There are many tools available to help you automate your communications on social media. AgoraPulse allows multiple members of your team to contribute to the communications schedule. It’s super simple to set up, and it’s cost-effective. Our favorite features are the publishing lists and the community management piece. You can chat back and forth with commenters easily right on Agorapulse.

   • Email

     • Get your customer’s emails when you get the chance, and send your content straight to their inbox! We like MailChimp for its strong promotion capabilities, customizability, and the segmented list possibilities.

4. Measure and Adjust

   • Google Analytics for your website. It can be overwhelming, but just focus on a few data points at first.

   • Social media analytics – each platform will have its own analytics and insights for business accounts. Plus, if you use something like AgoraPulse, it will have that info all in one place.

   • Good old spreadsheets work great for tracking results and sharing information. Just log it!

The biggest thing to know about marketing is that you don’t have to be an expert on anything. You need to know your brand inside and out, be strategic, and then have fun with it. Every area of marketing has incredible depth, but don’t let that scare you away from learning as you go and using what you know in your own marketing. If you get stuck or want to learn something new, YouTube is an incredible source of information. There are tons of free tutorials available and we’ve learned a lot from them. Also, the platforms you use for content always have tutorials available. They want their customers to be successful with their products so they work hard to provide helpful information.

Finally, if you need help with marketing (or any other area of your business!) please reach out to us at The Venture Center. We have a mentorship program that provides help for people in all areas of business, including marketing. Email us at founders@venturecenter.co and we’ll get you connected!

Now, get your bushy tails out there and get to marketing!

**access our powerpoint presentation here.