Top Online Marketing Tools For Small Business In Nigeria ($1 – $10)

So… you were able to convince your boss to try digital marketing for a change. Great!

He also requested that you map out an online marketing strategy and budget for reaching out to your target audience.

The problem is, as you present the carefully planned strategy and budget to him, your boss is suddenly sceptical.

He can only approve $200 dollars budget for online marketing each month.

Wait, what? Just $200 dollars, you say?

What can we achieve with $200 dollars when our competitors are spending between $1000 to $1 million dollars every month online? And our competitors’ ads and content are everywhere on the internet!

Calm down my friend. At least $200 is way better than none at all.

As a follow up to my previous post on how much it costs to do business online in Nigeria, I will show you how to successfully automate your marketing effort like a pro using online tools that cost $10 or less.

10 Online Marketing Tools For Small Business In Nigeria ($1 – $10)

LEAD GENERATION:

SumoMe = $6:

There’s a saying that ‘the money is in the list.’ If you don’t have an email list, you can’t make money online. Think I’m bluffing? Why do you think Facebook, Twitter and Konga always request for your email address before you can access their website? Is it now sinking in? Good! So like I wrote earlier, you need to build a list of eager subscribers who care about your product/service and are ready to buy what you sell. This is where Sumome List Builder plugin comes in. Install it on your website and BAM! You’ve officially turned your website into a lead generation machine.

EMAIL MARKETING:

MailChimp = $10

If you plan on building an email list, you need email marketing software like MailChimp that manages your database, sends out automated emails and gives you a report on who subscribed, opened and read your emails.  MailChimp has a free plan that allows you to acquire up to 2000 email addresses. But if you want to automate your email marketing process from first sign up to sale, you should spend at least $10 dollars per month.

SEO:

Positionly = $5

What’s the point of having a website if you don’t know how high you rank on Google search engine for your industry keyword? If you want to track how well your website is doing on Google search results, you need a keyword tracking software like Positionly. For example, if you run an interior design school, just type in a couple of long tail keywords such as; ‘interior design schools in nigeria’. Positionly will track these keywords every day and tell you whether you’re ranking page 1 or page 20 for that keyword.

EMAIL TRACKING:

Sidekick by HubSpot = $10

Every business sends emails to prospects, co-workers and vendors each day. But how do you track whether they actually read your email or not? If you want to stop asking this annoying question, “Did you get my email?” SideKick by Hubspot is the right email tracking software for you. With this tool, you can easily track that hot prospect and follow up on them at the right time.

Boomerang for Gmail = $4.99

Sent multiple emails to prospects but some of them didn’t respond? You have two options, either send each of them a reminder manually (this can be tough!) or better still, automate the process using Boomerang for Gmail. If you own a Google Apps for Work account for your company email, they work great together like bread and butter.

Google Apps for Work = $5

This tool makes your company email (e.g. info@companyname.com) to function like a normal Gmail account. It also integrates seamlessly with the email tracking tools I mentioned earlier (i.e. Sidekick & Boomerang for Gmail). If you really want to track your email marketing efforts and prevent SPAM-mails from entering your inbox, I strongly recommend this tool.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT:

Buffer = $10

From creating social media updates to posting and monitoring conversation and website traffic, you will agree that managing social media channels can be very tedious. Therefore, you need a tool that can help you automate your social media activities. This is where Buffer’s awesome plan comes in. You can create social media posts for 30 days, place them in an excel spreadsheet, save it as a .csv or .txt file and upload to Buffer via bulkpublish.com. Once that is done, and you can move on to other important aspects of your marketing.

NOTE TAKING:

Evernote: Free – $5

As a digital marketer, you can’t ignore jotting down ideas that might be useful in your next marketing campaign or blog post for instance. Evernote is my go-to tool for saving ideas I find on the web to taking down client’s requests and writing my blog posts. There’s a free plan, but as your free quota fills up, you can upgrade to the $5 dollar plan.

ADVERTISING:

Google AdWords = $10

Facebook Ads = $10

LinkedIn Ads = $10

Twitter Ads = $10

If you are new to online advertising, then it’s advised that you start with a small budget and a specific goal. The goals could range from driving traffic to your website, to lead generation or brand awareness. As you gain experience and leads, you can start pumping more cash into your advertising campaigns. The above-mentioned advertising channels allow you to test-run with a low budget.

VISUALS:

DollarPhotoClub = $1

If you want to grab your audience attention on social media, you need great images. Thanks to stock photo sites like DollarPhotoClub, you can download as many photos you need with just $1 per photo. Ridiculously cheap isn’t it?

SOCIAL LISTENING / MONITORING:

Hootsuite = $8.99

Want to know how your competitors are doing on social media? Want to find out what your target audience are talking about? You definitely need a social listening tool like hootsuite.com’s search tool to filter the noise and give you exactly what you’re looking for.

ECOMMERCE:

VoguePay: N1,500 ($8)
Online Payment Gateways like Interswitch can be very expensive, but it’s necessary if you don’t want your digital marketing efforts to be in vain. Instead of giving people your bank account details, you can get a highly secure tool for running transactions from your website. Setup an account at VoguePay, install the free voguepay for woocommerce plugin on your WordPress site and start accepting MasterCard, Visa or Verve card payments on your website. The best part is that it processes the deposit within two business days and doesn’t charge you a monthly fee.

CONCLUSION:

The good thing about most of the tools mentioned here is that they have mobile apps for Android and iOS. So go and make good use of them.