Marketing is the crux of all small business success, and no small business can afford to ignore it. It is this reason why we’ve created a handy list of the best marketing tools for small businesses so that you can not only obtain support from your target audience but also obtain help from your target audience.
To create a successful small business these days, you need to stand out from the crowd in order to gain traffic. One of the most effective ways to do this is through native advertising. This is where companies or brands will pay media owners to advertise themselves on their newspaper, magazine, TV show or website.
HubSpot
If you’re running multiple campaigns across numerous marketing channels, not only is it a huge challenge to manage them all, but you also have to figure out exactly what’s working and where to make improvements.
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software solution that enables you to bring all your different marketing channels together, and optimize for more traffic, a higher conversion rate, and better ROI.
The tool includes optimized templates that are ideal for creating landing pages along with other features like live chat and user action events which ramp up your engagement and convert more visitors into customers.
Other features of HubSpot include:
- Content optimization tools
- Optimized landing pages
- Email templates
- Marketing automation
- Lead management
- Analytics
- Social media management
The full version of HubSpot has a hefty price tag but small businesses on lower budgets can get started with their free or basic package.
HubSpot has also made the switch from an inbound marketing tool to a complete CRM platform, now offering free and paid sales hubs, customer service hubs, and content management (on top of the free/paid marketing hub).
However, the complete content management platform is only available in paid versions.
Canva
You need visuals to keep your audience engaged.
For example, you could use quality photos to keep your readers interested, come up with motivating quote graphics, visualize complex data with colorful graphs, and create highly engaging infographics.
Now, what if I told you that there is an awesome tool that will help you create original, visually appealing content in just a few minutes? Of course, I’m talking about Canva!
Canva keeps evolving, offering more graphic design tools and templates all the time: social media, infographics, marketing posters, business cards, eBooks, and anything else you could possibly need.
And Canva’s free templates (and entire freemium version) are actually useful too!
Use photos already featured on the site, upload and polish up your own images, or even create brand new ones.
Most importantly, you don’t need to have any graphic design experience to create high-quality graphics. With its easy-to-use drag and drop features, Canva arms you with a wide range of photo editing options, color palettes, font combinations, effects, and custom image sizes.
Convertkit
Email marketing software designed for professional bloggers and content creators.
Price: $29/month for 1,000 subscribers.
Pros:
- Includes a landing page editor.
Cons:
- Expensive, especially if you’re starting out. It can take a long time to reach 1,000 subscribers.
- Limited design and templates.
Zoho
Zoho delivers vital features and integrations at a competitive price. It is PC Mag’s top pick for CRM software in 2021.
Price: $12-45 per user/month. The most popular option is $35
Pros:
- One-stop-shop for many small businesses.
- Includes email marketing automation and communication tools.
Cons:
- Features are limited at the lower price levels.
MobileMonkey
MobileMonkey is a must-have chat marketing automation tool that gives customers a way to chat with you, and you with them automatically.
With 75% of customers reporting that chatting or texting with a business is a better way to connect than email or phone, getting your customer chat up and running can’t be ignored by any business.
MobileMonkey is a great choice for marketing and support because it connects to all your customers’ favorite messaging channels including:
- Instagram DMs
- SMS text messaging
- Live chat
- Facebook Messenger
With MobileMonkey, everything you need for customer chat from Instagram marketing tools to Facebook messaging lead ads to live chat is available in a single platform.
Not only can you use one inbox to view and respond to the incoming messages from all your messaging accounts, MobileMonkey makes it easy to set up automations to respond, collect lead info, and send leads straight into your other marketing systems.
I’m using MobileMonkey Instagram marketing tools to automatically reply to Instagram post comments and story mentions. It improves my Instagram engagement rate and boosts my content reach to gain more followers.
Trello
Trello is a digital marketing tool that helps you to manage projects and stay on the same page as your team–a sound digital marketing practice if you want to save time and frustration.
For example, you can share blog posts on Trello before you publish them. This gives others on your team the opportunity to review the post, weigh in with their thoughts and make changes that could strengthen the piece before it goes live.
In the past, before the days of Trello and similar programs, email was the best way to collaborate with your team. While this is still helpful, to a certain degree, it can lead to confusion, missed messages, and frustration.
With Trello, everything related to your online marketing strategy can be shared in the same place. It only takes a few minutes to set up a board. Even better, you can quickly invite your entire staff, all of whom can jump in on the action without delay.
Trello isn’t the only digital marketing tool of its kind, but it’s, by far, one of the best. When it comes to collaborating with others regarding marketing tasks, this tool is hard to beat.
Conclusion
Marketing your small business is essential for success. Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness, build relationships or generate interest in your product or service, we’ve gathered some of the best marketing tools and resources available online to help.
This article provides a brief review of the best marketing tools for businesses under limited budget. Marketing can be a very effective way to promote your business and attract new customers, but it also requires a good amount of money for promotional activities or materials.