If you are a financial advisor hoping to grow your business, it is imperative that you have a marketing plan in place. The value of effective marketing is irreplaceable -- it helps you cultivate your client base, maintain your brand, and grow your profits. That being said, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on marketing tools to execute your marketing plan successfully. We are sharing our favorite free tools that will step up your marketing game, most of which our marketing team uses at AdvicePay! 

Branding and Design

• Canva: Whatever design you need, and I mean WHATEVER you need, Canva likely has a template for it. You can create designs for social media, your website, logos, and much more! Establishing consistent visuals across your various platforms helps your clients better understand what to expect from your brand. And guess what? No design experience necessary. 😊 
• BrandBuilder: BrandBuilder is a great tool to use when you are initially building your brand. It’s an easy-to-use tool that helps create a professional brand that you can tweak, edit, and adjust to your liking. You can customize the essential elements of your visual identity: logo, color, typography, pattern, and photography.
• Free Stock Photos: When searching for free imagery to use on your website, content offers, and social media, I recommend checking out Pexels or Pixabay. 
• HubSpot Signature Maker: Use HubSpot’s free signature maker tool to create a professional email signature that matches your brand. You can include your logo, headshot, and even a call-to-action to book a meeting with you.  
• PersonaGenerator: Use PersonaGenerator to help you develop and outline your ideal clients. Be sure to continually reference these personas when implementing your marketing plan. 

Website

• Website Builders: Building and maintaining your website can sometimes feel intimidating and, quite frankly, overwhelming. Luckily, in today’s world, we have access to easier-to-use drag and drop website builders. Wix and SquareSpace are both intuitive and easy to use.
• HubSpot Forms: Easily capture leads with the free pop-up forms tool on HubSpot. I recommend adding a form to your home-page at a minimum (perhaps a free content download?)

Communication and Scheduling Tools 

• Calendly: Calendly is a great tool to use for scheduling meetings with prospects and current clients. 
• Tip: Include your Calendly link in the call-to-action section of your HubSpot signature.
• Email Marketing: Mailchimp and MailerLite are both great email marketing tools. You can also create landing pages, automation workflows, and more!
• SurveyMonkey: Gain feedback from prospects and clients using SurveyMonkey. You can distribute these surveys via email, forms, and social media. 

Social Media

• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn: Use social media channels to connect with your clients and prospects. Be sure to post regularly!
• Scheduling Posts: Use Hootsuite or Later for managing and scheduling your social media posts in advance. 
• Mention: Mention is a great tool to use when you want to be notified when you, your firm, or competitors are mentioned anywhere online. This is a great tool to help you keep up with what your clients are saying about you on social media platforms as well. 

Content

• Videos: Host your videos on YouTube or Wistia. You can also embed these videos on your website.
• Tip: Use Canva to create your branded intros and outros. 
• Self-Editing: When it comes to editing your content, I recommend using Grammarly. You can install the Chrome Browser extension so that it catches your grammar mistakes as you make them. 😉

Analytics

• Google Analytics: Add Google Analytics to your website to track and analyze visitor behavior. Then, create a few dashboards that can quickly demonstrate KPIs to help you understand your visitor behavior. These KPIs could include metrics like traffic, conversions, acquisition, etc.
• HotJar: Create heatmaps using HotJar so that you can easily visualize the behavior of your website visitors. 

Project Management

• When managing all of your marketing efforts, I recommend using a project management tool like Asana or Notion. You can assign tasks, set due dates, reminders, and collaborate with your team easily. 

Marketing (and the tools that come with it) doesn’t have to be expensive or overwhelming. You also don’t need to use every single tool mentioned in this blog post -- focus on implementing the ones that solve your immediate problems.