Building your supplement business takes a lot of work! Much of that work is figuring out how best to market your supplements in order to grow your sales. When you’re just starting out you probably don’t have a ton of money to invest in the coolest, sexiest marketing campaign of all time. Instead you have to do it yourself and find the best tools you can afford.
Fortunately there are a lot of high-quality marketing tools out there today that you can use for free. Here are 10 of them.
1. Canva
Having well designed images for your website, social media, emails, etc. is really important to give your brand that professional look. However software like Adobe’s Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator are both complex and expensive. It can take a lot of time to learn how to use these tools and if you pay for classes that’s just another added expense.
Canva on the other hand allows you to create high-quality images for your marketing, it’s easy to use and best of all it’s free! While it doesn’t compare to any Adobe’s creative suites you can easily and quickly create on-brand images at no cost.
Obviously there are paid versions of Canva that give you access to more tools, images, templates, etc. but what you get for can definitely do the job. With their free plan you get:
- 8,000+ free templates
- 100+ design types (social media posts, presentations, letters, and more)
- Hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics
2. Buffer
Social media has become a huge part of every business’ marketing strategy. There are some marketing experts that suggest posting 30+ times throughout the day on different platforms. That’s a lot of work if you’re posting each individual post manually. That’s where a tool like Buffer comes in.
Buffer allows you to plan and schedule all of your social media posts all in one place! This makes keeping up with social media simple and easy. Instead of having to take time out of each day to post on social, you can take one day a week to plan and schedule everything out.
Just like Canva there are paid versions of Buffer that give you access to more features but the free version includes quite a bit. It’s definitely a great place to get started. With their free plan you get:
- 3 Social Channels
- 10 Scheduled Posts
- 1 User
3. HotJar
Have you ever wondered what visitors to your website are actually doing? How far do they scroll down? Where are they clicking the most? Well a heatmap can give you these answers. This kind of info can help you optimize your website for better conversion. HotJar is an easy to use heat mapping tool that has a free version that you can try out for yourself.
With HotJar you can see exactly what visitors to your site are doing. With scrolling heatmaps you can see where people make it to on a page before leaving. This can help you to know if you need to spice up a page or blog to keep people interested. You can also see where people are clicking. Are they clicking where you want them to click? If not you can test out different ways of presenting your call to action to make them more visible or enticing.
The free version of HotJar only allows you to collect data from 2,000 visits per day. This might be plenty if your site doesn’t get a lot of traffic. In addition you’re limited in the number of reports you can run at one time. With all that being said, it’s a great place to start.
4. MailChimp
Email is one of the best ways to market to your leads and customers. It’s a powerful and often underrated marketing tool in the age of social media. Unlike social media though you can reach customers directly at a much lower cost with a much more targeted message.
There are many marketing email software options available but MailChimp has been around for years. They’re not only trustworthy but they’re a great place to start because their free option gives you a lot of bang for no buck.
Here’s everything you get with Mailchimp’s free plan:
- 2,000 contacts
- 1 audience
- 7 marketing channels
- 1-click automations
- Basic templates
- Marketing CRM
- Behavioral targeting
- Custom domains
- Websites
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there. For giving you actionable information and insights into your website Google Analytics simply can’t be beat. You can gain valuable insight into your marketing and website without having to be an expert. At the same time this is a tool that can go really deep the more you learn about how to use it.
While there is a paid version of Google Analytics it’s mostly for larger or enterprise organizations. The free version is used very commonly so there’s no need to worry about whether you’re missing out. It’s simple to get started using Google Analytics all you have to do is add a bit of code to the back end of your website so that it can start gathering data.
Check Out Google Analytics Here
6. Trello
Running a supplement business is a lot like juggling, you have to keep a lot of balls in the air at the same time. Keeping track of all your projects and tasks can be difficult and lead to balls getting dropped if you’re not careful. Using a project management app can be a helpful way to manage your to-do list and workload. Trello is a great tool to use in order to set up to-do lists and organize tasks.
Trello allows you to set up cards and boards to organize tasks for different projects. You can even create checklists, make notes and create due dates for each card. Not only can this help you figure organize your to-dos but also a way to see what tasks you’ve done. This can be really helpful when looking back on your day or week and wonder what you’ve accomplished.
7. BuzzSumo
Content is king when it comes to creating a successful marketing strategy. The more high quality content you put out there the more you can grow your brand. Knowing what content is trending and what your target market is interested in is key though. Guessing at what will do well isn’t going to cut it. That’s where a tool like BuzzSumo can help.
BuzzSumo helps you analyze content to see what’s trending and move in the right direction. Once you know what topics and content is getting the most attention you know which direction to turn next. All you have to do is search a keyword and see what comes up. This is a great way to get content ideas and also keep an eye on what’s going on in whatever niche you’re focusing on.
8. SEMRush
Of course all the best content in the world doesn’t matter unless your audience sees it. Search engine optimization has become an invaluable tool that every market should be using to get found. Finding the right keywords for you and discovering what you’re already ranking for are both very important places to start. SEMRush is the tool that many marketers are turning to in order to do both.
SEMRush can help you generate keyword ideas as well as finding out what your top keywords are. The free version is much more limited compared to their paid plans but what limited capability there is can go a long way in helping you strategically choose new keywords while capitalizing on what you already have.
9. Google Trends
The supplement industry is constantly on the move. New trends are popping up every day and the landscape seems to be constantly shifting. It’s important to be able to keep up with these ever moving trends so that you can stay ahead of the competition. Google Trends is a great free tool that can help you keep track of interest in any keyword you can think of. Gauging these changes in interest can help you keep your brand at the forefront.
Google Trends is great because it’s completely free and completely underappreciated. Try searching for different supplements and see if interest is trending up or down in order to help you decide which supplements you should sell.
10. Grammarly
Grammarly is a free plug-in that can help you not only produce mistake free content but improve your writing altogether. Mistakes happen to everyone, even large corporations but even in today’s casual business world proper spelling and grammar is a way to appear professional and trustworthy. Social media posts or emails riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes can come across as scammy and suspect.
According to Grammarly, they can help you, “Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistant.” That’s a great tool for anyone but especially a small business or startup who can use all the free marketing tool they can get to help grow.
The Takeaway
Starting and growing your own supplement business takes a lot of work but you don’t have to invest a lot of money into expensive marketing tools and software to get the job done. There are many free resources out there that you can take advantage of. Doing so can help you increase your sales while saving a buck or two at the same time.
At On Demand Fulfillment we’re here to help make your dream a reality. Signing up with us and setting up your own online supplement store isn’t enough to make the sales just come rolling in. That’s why we want to help you out and be your partner along the way. For more tips on getting started…