What comes to mind when you hear the phrase, “tight budget?” I imagine walking a tight rope between two skyscrapers. My heart is pumping fast. I’m so high up, I can barely breathe.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Yes, traditional marketing costs a pretty penny, but there are many alternatives, even for a tight budget.  Many of them can be a fun break from the traditional methods. What’s more, these methods are effective and can be easily tracked. Take a look through some of our best ways to market on a tight budget.

Jumplead is a decent option in marketing automation software for small businesses. It has all of the basics a company needs to convert visitors to leads and nurture them into customers. Jumplead doesn’t bombard you with unnecessary features, only the essentials. For some companies, this will be perfect; others may want a little more. Here are a few pros and cons to help you make the right decision when choosing marketing automation software.

Marketo claims to be a high end, quality marketing automation software, and for good reason. With some of the most in-depth analytics and seamless integration, Marketo is hard to beat. Marketo may be the cream of the crop, but with a costly price tag and a high learning curve, it isn’t for everyone. Below are some pros and cons to help you decide if Marketo is right for your company.

In today’s digital marketing world, it’s hard to imagine what life would be like without social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Well, there was a time when traditional print ads, billboards, and TV commercials ruled advertising. In order to fully understand the ever changing digital realm, it’s important to understand where it all came from and how it has evolved. Here are the biggest trend changes in the history of social media.

HubSpot is one of the most popular marketing automation software and services around. Being spammed is a nearly universal experience, and an annoying one to boot. HubSpot takes pride in supplying alternative methods to attract visitors to clients’ websites. But it’s not for every business. Below are a few of HubSpot’s pros and cons to ensure that you’re choosing the right marketing automation software.

It’s 9 a.m. Sunday morning. In tradition, you and your family hop in the van and drive seven minutes to Joe’s Family Diner for breakfast. All the wait staff knows you by name and wants updates on your children’s soccer games. Joe, the owner, comes out from the kitchen to give a wise life lesson. The food is pretty cheap and tastes great, but the real reason you drive up to Joe’s Family Diner every Sunday—rather than Big Boy or IHOP—is because of the relationships you’ve made there.

Marketing can be a tough task, not to mention the amount of time it takes to get a plan off the ground. We’re here to tell it to you straight: professional marketing is done best by those who practice it. An in-house department with few employees may put crucial aspects of the job on the backburner, leading to sub-par marketing.

Facebook Insights, Facebook’s social media monitoring tool, has made Facebook a top contender for digital marketing. With all kinds of data on likes, reach, and blog post analytics, this tool is a marketing goldmine. Best of all? You get tons of information at absolutely no cost. Here’s an overview of the different marketing tools available on Facebook Insights.