My $0 Marketing Stack: How I Created All My Launch Assets for Free

One of the biggest hurdles for any solo founder is marketing. We’re builders, not necessarily designers or marketers, and the cost of creating professional assets can be daunting. For my latest project, I challenged myself to create all the initial marketing visuals with a budget of exactly $0. Here’s the simple, free stack I used: 1. The "Good Enough" Logo: Tool: Canva Free Logo Maker Why: It’s not going to win any design awards, but for a V1, you can get a clean, simple logo in about 10 minutes. Perfect for getting started. 2. The Color Palette: Tool: Coolors.co Why: It lets you instantly generate beautiful, harmonious color palettes. I hit the spacebar until I found a palette that matched the feel of my project, and saved the hex codes. 3. The Ad Banners & Social Media Posts (The Game-Changer): Tool: AI Banner (aibanner.co) Why: This was the biggest discovery for me. I needed banners for social media, upcoming blog posts, and a few simple ads. Hiring a designer was out of my budget. I found that I could create professional-looking banners just by typing a description. I wrote prompts like "a minimalist banner for a new SaaS app, with a dark mode aesthetic and a placeholder for a screenshot" and got incredible results in seconds. It’s free and doesn't even require a login, which is perfect for the fast-moving maker. 4. The Illustrations: Tool: unDraw Why: A huge library of open-source SVG illustrations that you can customize with your brand color from Step 2. They are perfect for feature sections and landing pages. 5. The Screenshot Polish: Tool: Figma (Free Tier) Why: I used Figma to take my raw application screenshots, place them into clean browser mockups, and add a nice background. By combining these free tools, I was able to build a complete set of marketing assets that looked professional enough for a proper launch. It proves that you don't need a big budget to look legit anymore. What’s in your zero-dollar marketing stack?