As a dance studio owner, the responsibility of marketing classes and events probably falls on you. It’s a big task and much more complicated than some people realize, especially if you want to do a great job. To make the most of the time you spend on marketing, you should use any and all resources available, especially when you can find free marketing tools to lower your budgeting needs. These five free marketing tools can be extremely helpful to your marketing strategy, and the best part is that they’re free!
SurveyMonkey
If you want to get feedback from your students and parents, you can go the traditional route of handing out questionnaires. However, then you have to print them out, distribute them, hound people to fill them out, and manually record the results. It’s a time-consuming process to say the least.
Enter SurveyMonkey. This free tool lets you create questionnaires and surveys online that can be easily shared with your customers. You can include multiple choice, open-ended and optional questions, and respondents can be anonymous if you choose. Once you’ve gotten responses, the program generates graphics to help you easily understand the results.
Blog Topic Generator
If you have a blog set up for your studio, you should try to post content regularly. Some days it will be easy to come up with topics, but other times you might be stumped. On those tough days, BufferApp recommended using Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator to get yourself writing. All you do with this tool is enter two or three words that pertain to your topic. For example, you might enter “dance” and “techniques.” The program will then provide you with five potential story ideas, such as “10 Quick Tips About Dance.” Use these titles for inspiration, and you’ll be writing in no time. It’s a convenient way to brainstorm new content ideas when you’re in a rut.
MailChimp
Of the available free marketing tools online, MailChimp is a must-have for any studio owner who wants to start a newsletter. This program stores all your contacts, helps you build custom emails and provides detailed analytics on each campaign you send. There are pre-made templates available that are great for beginners. It’s short work to send out a professional newsletter to your parents and students. Once you get more comfortable with the software, you can build your own personalized template from scratch. You can also integrate your MailChimp account with your Twitter and Facebook profiles so people can easily sign up for the newsletter and read the latest updates.
HootSuite
If you can’t find time every day to update social media, HootSuite will be your best friend. It allows you to create Facebook posts and Twitter updates ahead of time and schedule them to go live at a later date. You can easily curate a week’s worth of content on Sunday and not worry about posting anything during the week! HootSuite also brings all your social profiles together on your dashboard. This allows you to reply to commenters from one place, instead of bouncing back and forth between social media sites.
Pixlr
Finally, make Pixlr your go-to site for photo editing. There’s really no need to purchase expensive editing programs when you have this tool in your belt. There are different versions of the software to choose from: Editor, the most comprehensive program; Express, which provides the most basic tools; or O-Matic, which allows you to add fun effects and borders. These different programs will prove invaluable when you need to crop, rotate or remove blemishes from pictures. It will ensure that all the photos you include on your website, in newsletters and in marketing materials are high quality.
