Hello and welcome to the Monday morning marketing podcast.
My name is Melanie
and I'm Esther.
And today we're going to be talking about. Well, how to keep costs down. Ultimately, when we're all setting up our business, or frankly, even if we're running our business on an ongoing basis, we always have to try and do our best to keep the costs down. So we're going to go and tell you about some of the shortcuts, some of the updates. Some of the platforms. Some of the tools that we use that will hopefully help you keep your costs down, too. So Esther, can you start us off?
When we first started out in business with IPA Group we love and to this day still love a freely platform that will help you grow your business. Yes, there are platforms out there with all the bells and whistles that do everything in one single platform. But when you're starting out, you don't have the finances, usually to go and purchase something at like, I don't know, $5 a month or 500 euros a month or whatever it is. And so when you're starting out, we find that there are so many good platforms that are maybe also just starting out. So we use a platform called AppSumo, AppSumo and there you can find platforms that are just starting out or platforms that have been around for a while but are adding on new features. And if you get in there early enough, you can get deals from as low as $20 and that's it. You don't pay up anymore. There's others that go all the way up to $100 or slightly more, but you never pay again for it because there's other platforms that you pay, and every month you're paying the same amount for every year you're paying an annual fee. But these platforms like AppSumo and there can be anything from Time Management, which is where we find. The one that we use is called Infinity. It's sort of like Asana, Trello, which have their free versions, but Infinity had an offer on it and we love it, and they're constantly adding new things to it. Yes, it takes a longer because it's not an established platform, but stick with them and you will get to the level of the other ones for a fraction of the cost. What's the one that you use Melanie?.
Well, to be honest with you. When I first started and I'm trying to get a presence online, it wasn't always my content I was putting up. It was obviously other people's content as well. So I'll be honest with you. I just did a Google search on a regular basis looking up news with search engine Optimised Word. So my particular field was marketing, so I would look up content in the marketing world that was only a couple of days old or even came out hours ago, which frequently happened because obviously fresh content going up on the web all the time and I just Google Search, and then I schedule that to go out. When you first started, you don't have any money at all really speak of its Google search rather than you can bootstrap and you can buy some stuff. You can do the free trials, but it gets so fiddly. When does it finish? Nine times out of ten they take your debit card or credit card from the beginning. Anyway, you end up paying a monthly or even a annual fee if you don't stay on top of it. So yeah I just Google Search, but you know, as much as what you can put out there, that is going to be beneficial at the end of the day. So if you think of something else that might help our audience out, yeah.
Yeah, definitely. A lot of people will talk about using a scheduling tool, but stick with the native platforms when you're just getting started. Facebook Instagram use Creator Studio, which is free and just stick to those. Yes, it means jumping from platform to platform, but the real realistically that's a small amount of time that you will be spending in between them. If you have like me 20,000 tabs open, you'll just skip from one tab to the other and you'll never even notice that you've moved platform. But that's also where I keep the analytics and where I see those and rather than paying and then up to thousands for a scheduling tool that also gives you analytics and reporting when you're just starting out and you have less than 100 followers, less than a thousand followers, those native platforms are the best and to keep your statistics correct as well.
But there are some platforms out there that do offer you free options as well or very low cost. But there is Agorapulse, of course, and we will have to put our hands up here and say that we're both agorapulse ambassadors. We have more than a little bit biassed, but there are other platforms also that offer you free options. It may limit you to the amount of times you can post a month. They may give you basic analytics, but why not use them eventually? The hope is, is your pick up the pace. You'll bring in some regular clients, regardless of what you're selling, whether its services or products. And you can then step the step up onto the paid platforms. But there is one thing I want to mention, and it's going to be awkward for you to mention because of what you do. But the temptation is that a lot of people will go "well, I don't want a website because it's so expensive". And granted, good websites here's, good websites are expensive, but just to get yourself a template websites, most of them do it these days, don't they? Wix do it, Squarespace do it, WordPress they all do template websites that you just fill in the hole, this is where you put your logo, this is, you know. They may have four or five standard pages, which frankly, is all you need when you first start and just get a page, a website sorry, that helps you get found in search. And as long as you've got one area, just one area that you update on a regular basis, like a calendar of events or a blog or latest news or something like that, that you don't have to do it weekly like you see your competitors doing. I mean, it will be nice, but it's very time consuming and they tend to have staff to fill that gap. But if it's just you just get yourself a template website. When you've got a few Bucks, then you can find somebody who can update for you. I don't know all the correct words is it CSS, isn't it?.
Yeah
And then you can deal with the correct stuff to update it and update the script and make it faster and make the pictures optimised? And there's lots and lots of other stuff you can do, but just get a website in the first place, although it may take a bit of time. Frankly, doing it at the beginning is the best time to do it, because let's face it, you don't have got a lot of work on.
Yes. And from that I would say if you're worried about how to do it, just go to YouTube, go to YouTube and find a tutorial on that or any other thing that you might be doing. Like how to use Canva for your images for your social media, how to post to Pinterest or LinkedIn. What do I say? There are videos on YouTube about literally anything and everything you do not need to at the beginning again. Now you get what you pay for. So at the beginning, when you're just starting out and you don't have the finances or the resources, find out as much information as you can from the free webinars that you always see advertised. They might not all agree with your thoughts or what it is that you need to sell and things, but you'll discern from those what it is that you need to do. Use resources like YouTube. Use the free version of Canva, you don't need the pro version. You know, like I said, you get what you pay for. So if after a few months you've got your clients starting to come in and you realise "Oh that logo that I got from Fiver looks a lot like another logo that somebody else has to" stop you to not get into trouble with said other company. Let's go to graphic designer and get a logo made. Let's go to a web designer and get my website properly done, you know, plus the government support out there.
Oh, God, yeah. Every country will have some sort of start up fund and there'll be some sort of state body out there in whichever country you're in listening to this that will be there to support you right from initial setup of your business, whether it's tech or product or service. And don't be afraid to ask. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong isn't it Esther?. They forget that they can ask. There's not behaving stupid. Nobody expects you to know this stuff from the get go.
No, especially it doesn't matter how old or young you are or whether this is not the first business that you set up. Times change, everything changes, so you need to roll with the changes. And like Melanie said, ask for help. Ask for support. Just even if you put up a simple post on your own Facebook page, your profile, or on Twitter, just an urgent tweet "help. I need help. I don't know what I'm doing". There will be people that you might not even know that will be watching and jumping and to help you.
There you go. There's another free thing that you can do. Build up your network. Build up your network there are lots of networks that you could become a part of. These are very inexpensively or completely free. And build up a rapport with your connections online, whether it's through LinkedIn Twitter, wherever you are. And if you ask for help there, you'll be gobsmacked at the amount of people who Is down tools and say, what can I do? How can I help?
Yes, because they've been there, done that and definitely got the T shirt.
Well, I hope these tips mean we basically had a cheque, which is, frankly, what we do every week. Pretty much. But, you know, if you don't start simple, you don't start. In the great words of somebody we both admire, start now. Start simple. We would really like you to just embrace the changes, confront the battle from the beginning, and just accept help where it's offered. Because if we hadn't have done that with both of our businesses, we wouldn't be talking to you today. And we love talking to you guys.
We do. And we'll be back next week to talk to you with more stuff. Until then. Bye-bye from Me. And bye-bye from her.