7 FREE Marketing Apps Every Small Business Needs in 2022

Running a small business is hard. Rewarding, but HARD.   

With all of the daily tasks on your plate, there doesn’t seem to be enough time for marketing your business effectively, a critical component to help drive sales and gain new clients or customers. 

Marketing can also get pretty expensive, pretty fast.

Did you know that the Small Business Administration recommends that most small businesses invest 7 to 8% of gross revenue in marketing? 

As small business owners ourselves we appreciate tools that help us get our jobs done quickly and affordably. We especially like FREE.  Like, a lot. So, we’re sharing some of our FREE go-to strategies to help you stay on track and kick your marketing into high gear. 

  1. CANVA – GRAPHIC DESIGN 

Professional graphic design can set you apart from your competitors. It’s the key to effectively communicating your brand and message to your audience. (clip art is so 2000). 

Since Canva came on the scene in 2012, it’s completely changed the game. Canva is a graphic design platform that lets users easily create beautiful graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. 

Want to create a drool worthy social media post? Choose from several templates that you can easily modify with your brand colors and fonts. Need a new business card or logo? You can design that here too. 

They also have a mobile app that lets you pick up where you left off on your desktop. The free version offers lots of bells and whistles; the paid plan has even more features, including the ability to upload your brand assets and animated templates and videos. 

Price: Free

Paid plan: $12.95/month or $9.95/month if you prepay annually. 

  2. MAILCHIMP E-MAIL MARKETING

Mailchimp is an e-mail marketing platforms that allow you to capture email address from prospective customers in order to market to them via e-mail. 

Why is email marketing important? It provides leads for sales, allows you to test new products or services, gain customer feedback – the list goes on. It’s one of the best and most cost-effective ways to build a relationship with an existing or potential customer. 

Mailchimp is still one of the easiest and most effective platforms for e-mail marketing and the free version works as a starting point for a new or small business.

Price: Free

Paid Plans: $11-$299

  3. LATER – SOCIAL MEDIA SCHEDULING 

 If you’re not sure why you need to be on social media platforms, consider this: 

1 BILLION people use Instagram monthly. 

And that’s just Instagram. Add to that Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest etc…and things can start to get overwhelming very quickly. 

In today’s business environment, it’s critical to have a social presence. And the key to success is …drumroll please….CONSISTENCY. Consistent in posting. Consistent in responding to customers. Consistent brand look. Consistent brand message. You get the picture…consistency. 

The downside is that it can start to take up large chunks of your time. We’ve found that the most efficient way to manage social media is to batch your posts and schedule them through a scheduling platform. 

We’ve tried a bunch and our consensus is: none are perfect. The reason is that they require an integration with Facebook and that’s when things can get wonky. Of the several we’ve tried, Later is the most reliable. It also has a “best time to post” feature that shows when your posts are most likely to get the best engagement. 

Price: Free plan– 1 profile per social platform and 30 posts per platform per month 

Paid plan: Starts at $7.50+ a month depending on the plan 

  4. UBERSUGGEST - SEO PLANNER 

SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Unlike the calming practice of yoga, SEO can be a frustrating, brow furrowing, time consuming experience. Luckily there are tools to help with that. 

Neil Patel, a leading online marketing guru, created Ubersuggest as a simple and effective tool to help with in your SEO efforts. With Ubersuggest, you can do competitive analysis (aka...spy on your competition), find keywords that are relevant for your business, and build backlinks to help grow your traffic and business. 

What are backlinks and why are they important? 

Simply put, backlinks are physical links from other sites that link back to your site. google likes these because it's the equivalent of a friend vouching for you. When you have a physical link to a high authority website, google ranks you higher and you show up more. 

Backlinks are a currently a HUGE component of Google’s algorithm, and they are also the hardest to get. Ubersuggest shows you what others in your industry are linking to so you can approach them too or create your own plan of attack for building links to your website. 

Price: Free plan available 

Paid plans start at $29/month 

5. CALENDLY - ONLINE SCHEDULING

If you book client meetings as part of your business, Calendly is a great tool. Sure, you can use Google Meet for free too, but in our opinion, it can be clunky to use. With Calendly, you can set your availability, allow polling for best times if you're scheduling more than one person, add a survey and connect via zoom.

Price: free plan available

Paid plans: $8-$16/month

  6. UNSPLASH- FREE STOCK IMAGES

If you’ve ever created a presentation, you understand the need for great images. They convey your message in a way that words can't . It’s easy enough to ‘borrow’ pics from the web for your internal presentations, but when you’re working with a client you need to be sure that you have the right to use that image, or risk legal ramifications. That’s where Unsplash comes in. Their site offers royalty-free (like really free) images that you can use commercially. There are images for most categories and industries and you can download a high quality version. 

Price: Free. 

7. LOOKA - LOGOMAKER 

If you’re just starting out, give Looka a whirl. Looka uses AI technology to help you design a custom logo. It's super easy to use and is a good starting point to help narrow down your style.  Play with fonts, colors and icons to create a custom design that you can be proud of. 

  Price: Free.