Any Entrepreneur knows that time is their most valuable resource. Money is of course a key resource too, and I wouldn’t downplay its importance. But time is truly finite, and that’s something to think about when planning your marketing activities.
Marketing is one of those areas where you need to squeeze every last drop of return out of your investments. You can’t avoid spending time on marketing – nor can you run a business without your marketing efforts.
Here are a few simple, time-saving online marketing tools for your web-based business. When you can produce quality marketing without a huge time investment, you are getting ahead of the game.
Leadpages
In the marketing world, we use ‘lead capture’ pages, ‘opt-in’ pages, ‘landing’ or ‘sales’ pages in much the same way. They are single web pages dedicated to the product or service you are offering. They always end with a call to action – which is typically either a purchase button or an opt-in form.
These pages are important to many types of online business, but particularly in service-based businesses. While ecommerce businesses can get away without landing pages for the most part, they could still make use of one to capture email addresses (leads).
If you don’t have the time or skills to build out your own landing pages on your website (or the budget to pay a web developer), then Leadpages.com could be your time-saving solution.
For a small subscription fee, you have access to endless customiseable landing page templates. They integrate with your choice of email software, which is great for growing your email list. And the page is hosted at a Leadpages URL, which you can share directly on social media, and link to from a button on your website.
Among the customisation options is the ability to upload your own branding, to really make the landing page match the rest of your online presence. If you need a new logo for this then LogoCreator.io is fast and free to use.
Mailchimp
Speaking of capturing leads and growing your email list, this is a really important piece of marketing that some small business owners overlook.
Contrary to what the social media platforms want you to believe, paying for social advertising is not the only route to market these days. In fact, email marketing still has statistically the best return on investment for businesses of all sizes.
Mailchimp is fast and simple to use; both for sending out email marketing, and for building your landing pages. So if you don’t need all the variety of Leadpages, then Mailchimp can be your all-in-one email software and landing page provider.
Everything you create in Mailchimp is done in a drag and drop builder which couldn’t be easier. To save more time, begin by creating your own email template before you send any emails out.
Upload your logo, branded header, and update the website and social links in the footer. Then save that template and create your first marketing email.
After your first email is sent, you can save even more time by cloning that old email to make your new one. If you have the same offers to carry over and only need to change a little bit of text, then this is a real time-saver.
Missinglettr
And finally we come to the social media corner, where loss of time is a real concern for many Entrepreneurs.
Half the problem with posting on social media is the distraction of being logged into a platform. You go in, ready to post about your business. But before you know it, something in your newsfeed has pulled your attention away.
We all fall foul of this trap.
The other half of the problem is the repetitive nature of posting on social for your business. Due to the fact that algorithms run the show these days, we have to keep posting our content over and over again, just for enough people to see it.
Missinglettr is a great online tool because it solves both problems. Firstly, you are not logged into your platforms, only your Missinglettr dashboard. And secondly, it repeats your posts for you, sharing each piece of content many times over the course of 12 months.
All you do is add one blog post or other content link, then Missinglettr helps you to create a year-long drip marketing campaign from it. It works really well on Facebook, LinkedIn, and can even re-publish to Medium if you have an account there.
In Summary
While Leadpages and Missinglettr both require a small subscription cost, Mailchimp has a free plan which is good enough to get you started. Although you might initially want to save as much budget as possible, it is something to be weighed up against your time investment.
Often it is worth investing a small amount of budget, if the time you claim back is put to good use elsewhere in your business. If you want to grow and scale, then time is a precious resource indeed.
Save it where you can, and see how much further you can go.
