Small businesses need to manage their resources effectively in order to grow. They need to have cost effective marketing tools at their disposal in order to help manage their advertising and marketing efforts. With all the different software tools that are available for marketing online, it can leave you feeling overwhelmed as a business owner.
You don’t need a ton of tools to help you manage your businesses effectively. It’s important to identify areas in your businesses which use automation and use the necessary tools to help you automate cumbersome tasks.
Let’s take a look at some of the best marketing tools for small businesses that can help you get ahead and automate your business.
What Are The Best Marketing Tools for Small Businesses ?
As a small business you need marketing tools that will help you get more business and also help you identify where your business could use improvements. Every business has different needs and it’s important you identify those needs and find the right marketing tool to handle the job effectively.
Let’s take a look at marketing tools that can help improve your business.
Email Marketing Automation
If your business has an online presence it’s extremely important that you have a consistent way of communicating with your customers. Email providers such as MailChimp are a great way for you to integrate email marketing inside your business in order to build a list and market to them.
Email marketing makes your business look professional and it’s an effective way to engage with your customers that doesn’t take a lot of time. If you have a brand new product or service coming out, sending an email to your list of email subscribers is a great way to let them know directly.
Google Analytics
Having an online presence is one thing, but knowing what kind of traffic your website receives and how visitors are engaging with your website’s pages can help you understand your own business much better.
It’s highly recommended that you install Google Analytics on your website and start analyzing your traffic and how people are engaging with your website. It will allow you to see some very cool information on your website such as:
- How many visitors your website receives per day
- How long people stayed on your website
- The device that you website was viewed on (desktop or mobile)
- The location of the website visitor
- Top visited pages
This is some of the basic information that you can see by using Google Analytics on your website. Best of all it’s 100% free to use and it’s very accurate. At the end of the day, it’s Google.
Google Keyword Planner
If you plan on creating your own content for your website you will have to perform the necessary keyword research in order to create effective pieces of content. The Google Keyword Planner Tool is a free resource you can use to find low competition keywords to help you create the right content for your website.
Recommended Reading: How to Do Keyword Research For SEO
The Keyword Planner tool allows you to search and find keywords that are related to your products and services and determine how often they are queried in Google. Finding this information out can help your businesses narrow down the keywords it should use for the content of your website.
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is another popular and free tool by Google which can help you analyze the performance of your website. Adding your website to the Google Search console is important so you can see which keywords your website is starting to rank for, along with their ranking position in Google.
By using Search Console’s reports and tools you can measure your website’s search traffic and performance, fix any technical issues and ensure your website begins to rank in search engine results.
Canva
Canva is a full scale drag and drop design platform to help you create professional graphic designs for all parts of your business. It has both a free version and a paid version and it’s a great option for small businesses who want to create their own graphic designs for their business.
It allows you to:
- Create professional presentations
- Build social media graphics
- Design banner ads
- Create album covers
- Edit photos professionally
- Create custom color palettes
These are just a few of the many design options that are available to you in Canva. Their platform is extremely easy and intuitive to use and allows you to quickly create graphics for your business that stand out.
HubSpot
Hubspot is a full scale CRM platform for marketing, sales and customer services. They offer a completely free CRM and can be extremely powerful for small businesses who want a free solution to help manage their marketing, sales and customer service needs.
With Hubspot small businesses can organize, track and build relationships with their customers with their state of the art CRM. On top of being free to use, Hubspot offers plenty of educational resources to help you learn the right ways to manage your growing business.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is an app which can help you find content that is trending and performs the best online. Their content discovery allows you to find hot content ideas by browsing certain trends and topics which are buzzing with volume around the web.
It’s a great tool to use to find out where real-time interest is currently at and how you can tap into it by creating a piece of content which aligns with that interest.
With it’s find influencers options you can find industry leaders and influencers who are currently at the top of their field. BuzzSumo is a great way for small businesses to find creative content ideas that can stand out.
Slack
Slack is a messaging platform for businesses of all sizes. People can exchange messages, files, host meetings, connect their favorite software tools and find information they need for their work.
With COVID-19 still going strong, more and more businesses are transitioning to working remote. Slack is a great platform to help businesses facilitate their day to day activities in a secure environment.
It allows businesses to automate tasks by:
- Creating workflows using webhooks
- Setting reminders
- Work with apps using shortcuts
- Creating custom work channels
These are just a few of the many options available through slack which can help businesses of all sizes communicate better.
Yoast
Yoast is considered by many people as the #1 WordPress SEO plugin. If you run your own businesses website through WordPress chances are that you have either heard of the Yoast SEO plugin or you already use it.
The plugin is designed to help you structure your content in a way that makes it easy for search engines to find. It allows you to easily optimize your website content for SEO and the keywords you are trying to rank for.
This is helpful for small businesses because it allows you to handle all the SEO work on your own instead of hiring expensive SEO agencies to do the work for you.
Conclusion
As a small business it’s important to use marketing tools that will automate and make time consuming tasks easier inside your business. These marketing tools can help you take control of your business and improve it. Take the time to fully access what your business needs from an operational standpoint before you start using these recommended tools.