Digital Marketing for Small Business is often under-utilised by many small businesses due to the lack of time, expertise and resources needed. We hope to change that.
Online advertising is one of the most cost-effective online marketing tools for small business. This blog shares digital marketing tips for small business owners to empower them to effectively advertise their products and services online.
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.
Ahrefs
While old-school SEO was all about building backlinks, modern SEO practices are focused on understanding the search intent of keywords you can actually rank for, and building relevant and organic backlinks from authority sites.
With quality links leading to your content, search engines will know how authoritative and trustworthy your website is. That’s why off-page backlink analysis is the backbone of your digital marketing strategy.
Now, even with a plethora of amazing tools, Ahrefs is the one and only for many digital marketers.
With Ahrefs, you can do competitive analysis and see the keywords your competitors rank for in organic search results, find the best keywords ideas, access your backlink data instantly, find content relevant to your niche, keep track of your desktop and mobile keyword rankings, and get alerted whenever one of your competitors gets or loses a backlink.
Ahrefs has improved much over the years, now offering comprehensive tools for:
- Website analysis and backlink profiles
- Keyword research
- Website auditing for keyword gaps and performance issues
- Rank tracking to follow your performance over time
- Content explorer to stay on top of your niche
Less Annoying CRM
This one lives up to its name by focusing on the main features that matter to small businesses.
Price: Starts at $10 per user/month
Pros:
- Easy to use.
- Good price.
Cons:
- Reporting features are basic at best.
Trello
A brainstorming and project management platform built around kanban boards. This is a helpful tool for coming up with a digital marketing plan.
Price: Free for small teams, $9.99 per user/month for “Business Class.”
Pros:
- Enables remote brainstorming.
- A good choice for visual thinkers.
Cons:
- Lacks important integrations, like billing.
Image: Trello
A well-designed platform for keeping your team on track.
Price: Free – $24.99 per user/month.
Pros:
- The free version is enough for many small businesses.
Cons:
- You probably don’t need most of Asana’s features.
MailChimp
Get this: email marketing is used by eight out of ten marketers.
See How My Agency Can Drive Massive Amounts of Traffic to Your Website
- SEO – unlock massive amounts of SEO traffic. See real results.
- Content Marketing – our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
- Paid Media – effective paid strategies with clear ROI.
This isn’t something you should wait on. Instead, you should implement an email marketing strategy on day one.
With more than 12 million customers, MailChimp has claimed its spot as one of the top email marketing providers and digital marketing tools in the world.
While there are alternatives, this tool remains one of the best, for many reasons:
- History dating back to 2001, well before most companies began using email marketing
- Self-service support options, ensuring that you can quickly find answers to all of your questions
- Free plan for those with less than 2,000 subscribers and those who don’t send more than 12,000 emails per month
When starting a business, it’s not likely that you will have more than 2,000 subscribers. For this reason, you can get started with MailChimp early using the tool for free as you get your feet wet with email marketing and then move to a paid plan as you scale.
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.
Conclusion
The Internet is the most powerful marketing tool available to small businesses. It can help you build new revenue streams, increase traffic, and reach more people than ever before. For some small business owners, however, digital marketing tools can be confusing or downright intimidating. To make it easier for your business to succeed online, we designed this short course to guide website owners step-by-step through the process of implementing digital marketing strategies.