Small businesses require all the assistance they can get to compete with competitor companies fighting for online visibility. Luckily, small- and medium-sized business (SMB) owners may now compete with larger organizations due to readily available marketing tools that can be used for free or at a minimal monthly membership cost.
However, what are the top marketing tools for small companies with little budget for advertising? Which marketing methods are most appropriate for novice small business owners? Let’s explore best marketing tools for small businesses.
Table of Contents
Why use online marketing tools for small businesses?
The best marketing tools for small businesses help level the playing field, enabling them to compete successfully, improve efficiency, and spur expansion.
Numerous cost-effective marketing tools for small businesses can lower expenses and increase return on investment (ROI).They can automate marketing tasks.
Using Internet marketing tools for small businesses can result in more focused, data-driven campaigns that improve outcomes and support your company’s long-term growth.
Increase the accuracy of identifying your potential clientele and develop tailored marketing efforts that appeal to them.
The best marketing tools will expand your small business. Your marketing system may adapt to your changing needs by adding extra users, features, or integrations as needed.
Best marketing tools for small businesses
You may focus on managing your business by using marketing tools to handle your campaigns and free up more time. To achieve the most return on investment from your marketing initiatives, they may also assist you with tracking and monitoring your outcomes.
Selecting the right tools for your business can be challenging, ranging from customer management to enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions. project management tools for small businesses and social media management tools can boost your business growth in a limited time.
We’ve put together this list of 2024 marketing strategies and digital marketing tools that will be ideal for expanding your small business to assist you.
Google Analytics
You could be losing out on one of the greatest marketing tools available if you’re not utilising Google Analytics, which can provide amazing insights into your internet marketing tactics. You may monitor the effectiveness and traffic to your website using Google Analytics, a useful tool for web analysis. This tool can also help you better understand the actions taken by visitors to your website and app, enabling you to monitor your marketing campaigns and improve business outcomes.
You want to pay attention to these crucial statistics regarding your website and marketing initiatives. Understanding your users is the secret to finding successful marketing strategies that send leads to your website. Once you have google analytics , you can optimise your techniques to increase leads and conversions. you must need to use analytics tools to ensure your marketing efforts.
TopicRanker
TopicRanker provides a list of keywords you can rank for based on search engine vulnerabilities and issues. After registering and using TopicRanker, Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko, referred to it as “the future of keyword research.”
TopicRanker concentrates on particular issues and shortcomings in search results rather than “keyword search volume” or “keyword difficulty.”
As an illustration, TopicRanker robots found the term “empire flippers alternative” as a keyword for which new material should be written.
Because of these particular SERP problems, according to Topic Ranker’s algorithm, this is Falcon River’s best opportunity keyword (each icon below denotes a different SERP vulnerability).
MarketingCloudFX
We don’t only claim that MarketingCloudFX is the best ROI tracking technology platform in the market because it’s our product. This is the best digital marketing tool available; it gives you all the information you need to track your ROI, view intricate analyses, conduct industry research, and more at your fingertips.
With this insightful data, you can enhance user experience and pinpoint marketing initiatives producing results, leading to increased leads and conversions and, eventually, sales that will propel your company to new heights. Furthermore, a mobile app can access your data while on the road.
Ahrefs
One of the greatest content marketing tools to help you get the most out of your SEO tactics is Ahrefs. Additionally, you can access their Keywords Explorer tool, which provides useful information about keywords like traffic potential and ranking difficulty. Ahrefs allows you to do various tasks, including researching what your consumers are searching for; analysing your competition, optimising your website for search engines, and seeing your top-ranking content. Ahrefs can help you with keyword research and show you where you stand in search results. it is one of the top content marketing tools for local businesses.
Content Harmony
When it comes to quickly developing content briefs, Content Harmony is “the bomb”! It’s a straightforward application that creates stunning-looking content briefs for your authors to utilise when composing articles using data and artificial intelligence.
Simply enter a keyword after setting up your account and creating a project, and the AI will provide a keyword report for you to examine and confirm that it covers the topics and subtopics you wish to cover.
The tool generates the content brief in seconds after you approve the keyword report. The article can be written using this content brief as a guide. Additionally, the tool assists writers in grading their articles after they have completed them. Trial pricing is $10 for 10 content workflow credits; after that, a yearly payment of $42 is required for 5 content workflow credits each month.
Content Harmony.
MarketMuse
With the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, MarketMuse is a content optimisation tool that can help you enhance and optimise your content to outrank rivals on Google. MarketMuse handles competitor research, keyword research, subject suggestions, and much more.
It analyses material, makes recommendations for subjects to cover, and creates briefs using artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist your business or agency produce better content.
It is most effective when used by medium-sized to larger agencies or companies with SEO writers who want to develop a successful content marketing plan grounded in facts rather than conjecture.
In previous years, it has won numerous industry honours from Red Herring, G2 Crowd, Content Marketing Institute, and US Search Awards.
MarketMuse offers two primary feature categories: Applications, tools for content planning and research, and Inventory, which keeps track of all the content on your website and provides reports on it.
Users enter a topic in the Research Application, and MarketMuse generates a list of terms to use in your content. The software indicates the number of times you should use each term or phrase in your article. The Complete Application aids in the user’s comprehension of the rival material. MarketMuse identifies content gaps to fill and displays the content that ranks highest for major keywords.
For the “MarketMuse review,” for instance, it recommends covering subjects like “social media” and “content marketing,” which are either not mentioned at all or not enough in the content of many competitors. This makes your material stand out from anything already released on the market.
You can use the Optimise Application to see how your content compares to those of competitors. You may view your content score and determine which extra subjects to address by simply pasting your material into the MarketMuse window.
When you enter the URL of your post and the keyword you want to rank for, the tool will tell you which topics your competitors have covered in their articles, how well you scored on topical depth for your keyword, and what topics you need to include in your article to outrank them. The programme will ask you for a keyword if you still need to publish an article, and it will then create a content brief with questions to answer and subjects to cover while creating the new piece of content.
Mailchimp
Whether you are looking for an advanced solution or a basic digital marketing tool, Mailchimp is an excellent place to start email marketing for small businesses.it is one of the best email marketing tools for your marketing team.
Based on how big your email list or lists are. If there are 500 contacts or fewer, the Essentials plan starts at $13/month. Your plan will be more extensive the more connections you have, and the more sends you need to make each month. If you have fewer than 500 contacts, a limited free plan is available.
Even though Mailchimp has a well-known free service tier, its pricing has become less competitive despite its continuous evolution and improvement. Compared to earlier, its lower grades offer fewer functions. It is still a great service for creating multichannel marketing strategies. With Campaign Manager, you can easily build, analyse, and optimise your marketing thanks to an upgraded toolkit. It has a useful calendar summary along with targets, send-day optimisation, time frame settings, and general industry data. You can create email campaigns and assign or add tasks for your team.
More prebuilt layouts, drag-and-drop building possibilities, and enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) suggestions are all included in the new Email Builder. Although most of these capabilities are still in development, the email tool has gotten more AI-driven.
Currently, the AI suggests text modifications to shorten and improve language, but we anticipate that this will grow to include generative AI features like text prompts for email production.
With tools for creating websites, marketing automation, reports, and support for multichannel campaigns, Mailchimp has evolved into a comprehensive digital marketing hub. The platform covers nearly everything a small business needs to get started.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor sets itself apart from the competitors in email marketing with its user-friendly tools that skilfully track and automate the customer experience. Accessible at every pricing tier, the comprehensive campaign monitoring analytics are a great fit for small to midsize businesses (SMBs). Additional helpful features for design include the ability to drag & drop graphic elements and one-click access to a stock image library. Despite this advantage, Campaign Monitor needs to improve in customer service and customisation.
Though the company makes it very easy to determine your acceptable price range, Campaign Monitor is a touch pricy for what it offers. The plan price depends on the size of your contacts list, which you may estimate using a slider on the Campaign Monitor website. You can view the required price for each plan by swiping over to the number.
Additionally, Campaign Monitor allows SMS messaging. Adding it to your account, however, requires a special subscription plan, the price of which you will need to inquire with sales. Compared to services like Klaviyo, which offers SMS bundles, and Brevo, which offers easily accessible pricing tables for SMS add-ons, this stands out.
ConvertKit
Email marketers of all stripes, including professional bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and course developers, are the target audience for ConvertKit. Its features make it easier for businesses to sell digital goods, automate marketing, and expand and monetize their audience.
Therefore, ConvertKit has some helpful characteristics that make the platform the go-to software for the job as an email marketing tool targeted at this target demographic.
With the help of this email marketing service, customers can easily learn how to use and get all the tools they need to persuade and convert their audience. A newsletter referral system, the ability to sell digital goods and subscriptions, and other intriguing specialised features aren’t present on different sites.
However, it might not be the best option if you want total creative control over your marketing campaigns or a cost-effective solution with robust statistics to expand and enhance your digital strategy.
Email marketing is a field where automation is vital, and ConvertKit gives you peace of mind immediately!
The tool features an excellent visual workflow builder that is simple to use. Additionally, you can access 28 pre-made automation templates from the platform, which should suffice for most authors. To put it mildly, this is remarkable!
Hubspot
HubSpot CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tool that allows businesses of all kinds to track and manage leads and examine key performance indicators. Any B2B or B2C company operating in various industries, such as accountancy, marketing, sales, construction, retail, real estate, and more, can benefit from HubSpot. Features including email monitoring, lead management, contact management, sales automation, outbound and inbound marketing, customer relationship management, and more are available.
A visual dashboard providing a real-time picture of the whole sales funnel is provided by HubSpot CRM. Businesses can use the CRM system to automatically track customer interactions via phone calls, emails, social media posts, and live chat. All of these interactions are saved in a lead-organized timeline.
HubSpot CRM is a marketing platform that helps firms build and manage email templates, track the performance of those emails, and generate leads. It also offers email marketing automation features. Sales representatives may manage contacts, track deals, organise their sales funnel, and more with the HubSpot CRM sales capabilities. The platform is compatible with third-party platforms, including SugarCRM, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, and other HubSpot solutions like HubSpot Marketing Hub and HubSpot Sales Hub. HubSpot CRM offers a perpetual free plan that grants unlimited users access to the company’s sales, marketing, customer support, and contact management features.
OnePageCRM
A basic contact management solution is OnePageCRM. OnePageCRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) system that includes all the standard functions, but its main selling points are its ease of use and special to-do list functionality. With this CRM, you can mark tasks or reminders next to each contact and set up automatic reminders for when the next follow-up is due.
You may assign tasks and set due dates for reminders to each contact in your database using OnePageCRM. Your contacts can be sorted by task owing date, company name, or alphabetically. With OnePageCRM, you can manage your entire company without hopping between to-do applications and spreadsheets.
OnePageCRM’s numerous capabilities enable customers to expand their databases in the most effective manner possible. It is designed for developing organisations. With its exclusive Lead Clipper, you can quickly add new contacts to your CRM and copy contact details from any email, social media platform, or website.
You can view all of your contact information, including call details, notes, deals, emails, reminders, past interactions, and more, on a single scrollable page when you use OnePageCRM. With this CRM, you can also see the relationships between contacts—for instance, by identifying decision-makers, determining whether a contact is related to another, and so forth. If you collaborate with outside parties regularly (freelancers, for instance), you can give them access to only particular contacts by providing them Focused User access.
Slack
Slack is a communication and collaboration tool that can be used as a hub for any kind of organisation because it has thousands of connectors that make it simple to link applications you already use to its platform. It has tools to assist in boosting productivity and visibility across all teams (or silo information when needed), is simple to use, and offers a free plan.
To find out how simple or complicated it is to use Slack, we tested both the commercial and free versions of the software for hours. Our Slack review demonstrates how to turn Slack into the centre of your company’s IT stack, even though it lacks some features we would prefer to have in a productivity tool.
The main advantage of Slack is that, to some extent, it preserves all forms of communication, including group discussions, one-on-one conversations, and even chats that take place during huddles, which are Slack’s short video and audio call options. Slack may offer app integration in the areas where it lacks capabilities.
In addition to offering tools for teamwork and communication, Slack also has options for external contributors. You can create partner-specific Slack bases to maintain communication with each client apart from your business (while involving all stakeholders).
For users of top-tier plans, there are multiple security levels, including HIPAA compliance.
To be completely transparent, Slack is a popular communication tool used by organisations, and we at Forbes Advisor also use it. It’s an important instrument that maintains coordination. And while we connect several other apps to Slack, it’s not an all-in-one productivity solution. However, it’s still one of the greatest collaboration apps available, easily making our list of the top 10.
Slack is a business messaging platform that simplifies communication between teams, coworkers, and external clients or vendors.
There are so many options available for connecting that you’re likely to pick the one that suits you the best. Similar to chat rooms, channels serve to segregate and arrange subjects.
Canvases are virtual whiteboards you use with clients or coworkers to share files and documents, make lists, and generate ideas. Slack offers this kind of collaborative tool. Furthermore, Slack is simple to use and modify. You can create personalised emojis for your workspace, mute notifications in channels you follow casually, and join the channels that interest you.
Building a smooth system of marketing tools that work together
Creating an efficient system with all of the top small business marketing tools will help you increase efficiency and streamline your marketing procedures.
Select a core collection of marketing tools that complements your plan. These tools should cover essential elements like email marketing, social media management, content production, search engine optimisation, and analytics.
A CRM, e-commerce platform, or analytics platform are examples of software you may already use. Make sure the marketing tools you select work well with these systems.
You don’t have to use every tool right away. Start with the top small business marketing tools that support your current objectives. As your company expands, you can progressively add more tools to your marketing stack.