Deciding whether to use a free app or a paid solution

How starting with free software can cause problems when you grow

Sometimes “free” isn’t the best option. Yes social media is “free”, you can build a “free” website, or even use a “free” email service, but this is a huge mistake.

You are a real business and if you want to be taken seriously you must be prepared to write a check.

Would you show up at a job site in a rental truck? Then why do you think it’s ok to use a yahoo account for your company email?

Your clients are paying attention to details like this and it could be costing you business.

Here I’m joined by Richie DeMarco as we teach you to use free tools but nothing that is facing the customer… You can find a list here –

Starting off “free” will cause a lot of pain later… both Richie and I  have experience transitioning from free to paid and it’s not fun.

Your turn – have you had any experiences with “free” that turned out to cost you much more?

Hi this is Richard Demarco for Constructing Your Brand and I’m here with Denise Butchko. Today we are going to discuss when free isn’t good.

It makes me a little crazy that people feel like digital marketing should be free. Because yes, you can go on Facebook for free and you can go on Twitter for free and you can even build a Web site for free.

However, if you are serious about your business and about your branding, you need to consider the paid, professional options in some scenarios. Yes, you can use free tools we use free tools to but this is an investment. This is real business.

Yes you can create things for free on these platforms but don’t get your knickers in a bunch when somebody starts talking to you about how to monetize something, about investing in Facebook advertising, about doing local Twitter advertising, about doing paid advertising on Houzz

How you weave these tools in organically for free and then how you weave in the monetary aspect so that you really leverage your exposure and your use of the platform.

So it’s a win/win for everybody and even to take it a step further, with your email marketing, for example. You know there are free platforms out there to get started or even with your free website you can go to a Houzz and create a web site in three minutes for free. But you get started and begin to promote that and it ends up that you don’t own the real estate. It’s not yours. You could have banners showing up from other companies advertising and that kind of thing. You need to own the real estate of your websites and it you need to you know write a check make a payment.

And you need to start properly and that’s a huge deal because we have these experiences of going in and cleaning up the mess. And it really is a mess and it’s so common. So don’t feel bad if this is what you’ve done because you’re a vast majority, but you don’t keep track, you create different pages on different social media platforms. You don’t really track the password. You’re not really figuring out how you’re going to use them, how it’s going to be organized if other people are going to help you, how they’re going to access this. Then when you build an audience are you going to spend some money to really use this tool professionally.

So this is not 2007. That’s good and bad. But it’s more sophisticated. It’s all more evolved. It’s also more important. And it’s time to stop. Take a look. Allocate some resources to how to professionally brand your business online.

And even if even if you are the one doing things yourself and you have all the knowledge and you have it down, then comes to time. So what is your time worth. Time is not free. Time is money even if you’re doing it off hours.

So no matter what, ultimately you are looking at spending some either sweat equity or money to really create that brand and really get it from your customers.