Being a small business owner has never been easy. It can be challenging to secure funding, establish an effective team, and effectively market your product or service. The year 2021 hasn’t been kind to small enterprises, and with so few of them managing to remain profitable, the outlook for the rest of them is grim. But there’s no need to be discouraged just yet with marketing tools for small businesses!
According to the World Bank, small firms account for 90% of all businesses. At the same time, the US Small Business Administration estimates that there are 28 million in the US only—these are staggering figures. The good news is that you can design and manage effective marketing tools for small businesses. Because there are currently tools available that cover every aspect of marketing and can assist you in achieving your small business’s objectives.
While there are numerous marketing methods to learn and practice, such as video marketing, CRM software selection, small business SEO, and financial management in online accounting software, knowing what tools to employ is critical in moving forward. To assist you with selecting the appropriate tools, we’ve prepared a list of 16 online marketing tools for small businesses that will offer you the competitive advantage you need to succeed.
The Tools You’ll Need to Succeed In 2021
1. Hubspot
HubSpot is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses with marketing, lead generation and management, advertising, customer support, and CRM software, giving them everything they need to expand their business and improve conversion rates. They also offers several free tools to assist with small business SEO, marketing automation, and social media marketing.
Their premium plan also includes a service desk and a customer ticketing system, which you can use to funnel everything through their free CRM to get a full understanding of your consumers. Initially, the service was primarily for email campaigns. The platform’s increasing popularity among users has transformed it into a multi-channel marketing automation giant.
The platform contains customized landing page templates and other features such as live chat and user action events that help you increase engagement and transform more visitors into buyers.
HubSpot also has the following features:
- Optimized landing pages
- Email templates
- Tools for optimizing content
- Marketing automation
- Lead management
- Social media management
- Analytics
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free application that provides valuable insights into who visits your website and how they interact with it. It works best when used in collaboration with Google Search Console, which is also a free tool for digital marketing that helps you detect and fix issues with your website while also optimizing it.
Google Analytics also provides you with the following:
- The number of website visitors by day, week, month, or any other time.
- Where do these visits come from – do they come from other websites, organic search, advertisements, social media, or direct?
- The search terms and keywords that people use to reach your website on Google
- Your users’ demographics and interests
- How long each visitor stays on your site and which pages they visit
All of this information is fascinating, but it’s also important information that may help you improve your website and marketing initiatives.
3. MailChimp
Email marketing should be a component of your overall plan regardless of how big or small your business is. When a customer joins your mailing list, they’re welcoming you into their inbox right away. As a result, email marketing outperforms all other marketing strategies in terms of return on investment.
To begin working with email marketing, you’ll need a tool that can help you collect emails, manage lists, send emails frequently or on a schedule, and track interaction. If you’re beginning or running a small business, Mailchimp is a great option. Until your list reaches 2,000 subscribers, Mailchimp’s standard service is free. It provides the essential features you require without making email marketing too challenging to manage.
Plus, Mailchimp now has a plethora of new features and digital marketing capabilities (some of which are available with subscription plans):
- Personalization and segmentation
- Landing page builders
- Audience insights
- Form builders
- Predictive insights
- CRM tools
4. Hootsuite
There’s no doubt about it—to be competitive in any industry, you must maintain a social media presence. You’re probably also aware that social media, especially if used just for marketing objectives rather than mindless scrolling, can be a significant time sink.
Fortunately, digital marketing solutions such as Hootsuite are available to help you cut on this inefficiency. Hootsuite is a social media management application that allows you to schedule posts in advance, allowing you to prepare all of your social media material for the coming weeks or months in one sitting. You also get extensive reporting tools to discover which of your social media campaigns are the most productive and compute ROI using this information.
You can track all of your brand mentions and manage reactions on one dashboard. Hootsuite now includes options for promoting your social media postings directly from the platform.
5. SendPulse
SendPulse is continually expanding the capabilities of existing marketing channels while also offering new ways to communicate with your consumers. The program enables clients to manage marketing emails, SMS, and web push alerts and construct chatbots for major messengers such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
Additionally, SendPulse provides an email verification system, a landing page builder, and a free marketing and sales CRM. The platform’s popularity can be explained by the mix of an easy-to-use user interface and the little to no technical knowledge required to use it, a wide range of customer-facing channels, as well as a smart pricing policy that allows users to select solutions that best suit their budget and company structure.
It’s also worth mentioning that the site is available in six different languages, which provides a hint of diversity and distinguishes it from its competitors.
6. BuzzSumo
Your content strategy shouldn’t be based on wild guesses about what topics your audience will be interested in. That’s why 60% of the most successful B2B firms have a written content marketing plan. Meanwhile, just 21% of the firms with the least successful content claim to have a strategy in place.
You need to perform your research properly to be effective in content marketing, which is why BuzzSumo is one of the most effective content marketing tools for small businesses. Based on searched terms, BuzzSumo displays information that is popular throughout social media. Following your search, you can examine the results to discover what appeals to you and to generate ideas for new topics to write about.
BuzzSumo, on the other hand, is expanding beyond basic content research and viral posts. Today, BuzzSumo provides a wide range of digital marketing solutions, including:
- Keyword research
- Look for influencers
- Social media feeds organized by topic
- Content analysis
- Brand monitoring tools
- Crisis management
7. KWFinder
If you’re wondering how to market a small business, SEO is a vital aspect of business marketing that must be done correctly. Not only should you ensure that your site is correctly built and mobile-friendly, but your content should also include important keywords that you have a decent chance of ranking for in search results. To identify those appropriate keywords and begin your search, you’ll need a unique digital marketing tool. From the free Google Keyword Planner to more complicated suites of products like SECockpit, you have various possibilities.
Monthly subscription rates for the more powerful digital marketing tools start at $100 or more per month. Options like KWFinder, on the other hand, provide small businesses with economical, accurate, and valuable insights at an ideal price range.
Simply enter a seed keyword, and the tool will return hundreds of ideas, as well as data on search traffic, trends, and a rating difficulty level for each word or phrase. Mangools, the company behind KWFinder, offers individual tool plans and a whole suite that includes a backlink tool, SERP watchers, website analysis, and more – as well as a handy browser extension.
8. Canva
To keep your audience interested, you’ll need graphics. For instance, you may keep your readers interested by using high-quality photographs, creating inspirational quote visuals, visualizing data with beautiful graphs, and creating highly engaging infographics.
Canva is constantly evolving, adding new graphic design tools and templates for infographics, social media campaigns, marketing posters, business cards, eBooks, and everything else you could need.
9. Ahrefs
While old-school SEO was all about the number of backlinks, new SEO strategies emphasize creating relevant, organic backlinks. Search engines will recognize how credible and trustworthy your website is if quality links are connecting to it. Off-page backlink analysis is the foundation of your digital marketing approach for this reason. Although there are various excellent tools available, many digital marketers consider Ahrefs to be the one and only.
Ahrefs has evolved significantly over the years, and now provides sophisticated tools for:
- Backlink profiles and website analysis
- Keyword research
- Auditing your website for keyword mismatches and performance problems
- Track your ranking to see how you’ve improved over time.
- Content explorer to stay on top of your industry
10. Slack
In the realm of digital marketing tools, a project’s outcome is determined by the ease with which teams can communicate. That’s why you should invest in simple software that allows your team to collaborate and share data without interruption.
Slack is one of the most widely used team collaboration tools. Because of its straightforward data sharing and message discovery capabilities, this wonderful tool has earned the hearts of several digital marketers. Slack also integrates with all important project management, office management, sales, workflow, design, and development tools, making it easy to stay ahead of every area of your digital marketing strategy.
Go Old-School With These Tips
There’s no arguing that we live in the modern world, and with the inevitable rise of smartphones and laptops, advertisers are increasingly focusing their efforts online. Even in the 21st century, these old-school marketing strategies produce excellent results with the help of TemplateMonkey!
11. Flyers
Flyers are an excellent way to quickly generate awareness of special deals, promotions, sales, and events if your company operates in a local area. If you’re in the real estate industry, check out these sample flyers that you can use!
The background image of houses on this realty company flyer stands out against the blue and white color palette. It’s also simple to change the text and images to suit your needs.
Allow this property sale flier to add some spice to your life. Its vibrant green accents add excitement and brilliance to the template, keeping eyes wide open.
12. Vouchers
Vouchers are excellent marketing tools for small businesses! Don’t know how to design one? Check out below for ready-made templates just for you.
If you own or operate a coffee shop, this coffee shop template is ideal for you! It uses colors of coffee in the design to express the aroma of coffee. To complete the design, handy images complement and offset the design highlights and plain typography.
Running a dental clinic service? This ready-made dental clinic voucher is made just for you! On its side, you can see it has a tooth pattern that suggests what the coupon is about.
13. Posters
A small business can never go wrong with posters, one of the original marketing tools for small businesses! You may quickly market your brand, business, product, and services with a poster. Take a look at the ready-to-use templates below!
This digital marketing template with bold blue accents is perfect for your business as it can attract a lot of potential clients.
Your marketing approach must be able to reach the appropriate audience. Luckily, this networking ad poster stands out even in crowded settings thanks to its brilliant color scheme and powerful lettering.