Marketing software to save the small business owner

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There’s 10 million marketing tasks to be done when you run a small business. And small business owners need every bit of help and efficiency they can get. These programs have saved my money, my sanity, my time and my golden fairy sprinkle dust.

1. Canva Graphic designer I am not.

While I work with some of the most visually talented business owners in Virginia, that doesn't mean any of us have the time to custom design every instagram post, newsletter banner, youtube or reel cover image, or even the business cards (if anyone uses them anymore). What I do have time for is to get a branding shoot with a wonderful photographer, select a template on Canva, apply my branding font and colors with 1 click (OMG, my best friend), remove the background from an image of myself or our mas-cat Napoleon and download or publish directly from there.

Canva gets the credit for my wedding itinerary, and birthday invites too!

There’s no graphic designer in the world that could live off the $13 a month Canva charges. But software can be more helpful than people sometimes. You can even add your assistants to your Team plan when you stop having time to do the graphics design yourself. Sign up for a free month of their pro service here.

2. Infinity

Asana, Monday, Clickup, Trello, some new thing.

There’s TONS of project management tools out there, but none that have a pay once and never pay again deal. Currently $149 for lifetime access for 5 team members, it's cheaper than just 1 year of 1 team member vs most of the other software companies. It won a product of the year award from product hunt and adds new features every month. Infinitely customizable so you can build out whatever you need to.

I use the ical connection to build out my quarterly content calendar and track engagement on reels and IGTV’s. The unlimited subfolders let me break marketing campaigns by project or a time period. And the filters let me create reports without a single click once they are set up.

It also has a form section that lets me dump all my random ideas into my ‘Idea Garage’ or collect lead information from Virginian business owner’s looking for help.

Plus, they’ve got a customer service line that honestly can't be touched by any of the other players in the space. Check out which lifetime deal your business can grow into and save thousands here.

3. Flodesk

Email marking is NOT sexy. And yet…..it’s the best way to keep in contact with my people.

I love me some IG and TikTok, but at the end of the day, 30-40% of my people see my emails. Less than 10% of my people see any of my social media posts. Which one makes more sense for me to pour my time into? On top of that Flodesk is GORGEOUS. It has templates, AND stealable copy in them, not just that ad lorem incotour nonsense. Unlike EVERY other email system I’ve seen, it will not charge you for getting more subscribers.

The analytics are simple and easy to read. The segmentation is simple. The landing pages and website subscribe forms are easy to integrate and customize.

It's woman owned on top of everything.

Get 50% off your subscription and lock in $19 a month for sending all the emails to as big a list as you can muster here.

4. Plann

As a female-owned company, I also want to support companies owned by other disproportionately underrepresented groups in financial sustainable entrepreneurship.

From what I’ve seen, this is the ONLY female owned social media scheduling software out there. The can post to IG, Facebook and LinkedIn. I dont mess too much with Twitter and Canva Pro posts to Pinterest for me, so this is perfect for my business. It directly connects with google photos and canva, so I can edit to my heart’s delight.

I can preview my grid. The analytics are simple and clean. I can resize and copy posts from one social media platform to another right inside Plann. This makes sure that each piece of content I take the time to produce gets the most eyes on it possible. What’s better?

You can buy it here.

Hopefully you found something useful in these software programs. If you've got any questions about how to use them just shoot me a DM on Instagram @inlinelegal or just click here.