Paid vs free marketing: Which is best for your business?

If you're looking to promote your products and services on a budget, you need to understand when it's best to pay to communicate or use free options.

In this Lunch and Learn, Louise Chandler from Soundbite Media offers practical insights to help you plan and understand the best ways to find inspiration and direction for your marketing efforts.

Louise is a two-time award-winning marketing and communications specialist with over 20 years of experience. She has developed her expertise working with great brands, such as BBC, Superdrug, HSBC, Nationwide Building Society and Prince’s Trust.

In her pursuit to upskill and empower others, Louise launched 14 different downloadable PR and marketing toolkit resources.

Topics covered in this session

• When to use free marketing to build brand awareness and when to invest in paid ads for better targeting and audience insights

• Practical advice on using platforms like MailChimp, Canva and Google Digital Garage to create content, grow your brand and boost your online presence.

• How to set up effective paid ad campaigns, access valuable audience data and use advanced tools like Vuelio to scale up your PR efforts

Louise's key points from the webinar

Being strategic with your marketing approach

• If you're a new business, free marketing is ideal for experimenting, understanding your target audience and building brand awareness. Paid advertising gives you more control and comes with better targeting options and detailed data insights.

• When choosing between free and paid marketing, consider your business goals and the stage you're at with your business.

• With paid ads, start with a low budget of £200 to £300 on platforms like Meta, Spotify and Google. Set a budget limit to avoid overspending.

Free marketing tactics

• Use a free email newsletter platform like MailChimp to create custom templates, promote your brand, share valuable content and offer readers your insights.

• Canva is a free graphic design platform for creating content. But remember to upload to your personal space and disable remix options to protect your work.

• Use Google Digital Garage for free online tutorials and courses, and boost your online presence by setting up a Google Business Profile.

Paid marketing methods

• Paid advertising provides detailed data and insights about audience demographics, geographic engagement and buying behaviour. This information helps you understand who interacts with your content.

• With paid ads, you gain control over where, when and how your message is seen, allowing you to target your ideal customer. You can also choose your ad format and size.

Content strategy

• Free marketing and communications are excellent for telling your story and being the face of your business, especially in the early stages.

• Use free marketing to understand your target audience's pain points, demographics, lifestyle and interests, as this will help you make your communication much more effective.

Advanced tools

• Consider Vuelio, a paid PR database, for tutorials, webinars and blogs on PR and communications. But be aware of its significant price tag.

• When selecting an email newsletter platform, choose one that offers free functionality for a certain number of subscribers (for example, 200 people) before you have to pay to upgrade.

About Enterprise Nation

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About Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers email and digital marketing tools that make it easy for your small business or nonprofit to get the attention and revenue it deserves. Constant Contact has joined Lunch and Learn to share its extensive marketing expertise.