Running a successful small business demands an immense amount of dedication and effort.
In 2020, statistics indicate the presence of 31.7 million small businesses within the U.S. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 82% of small businesses manage to survive for a duration of merely 1 year, 50% are able to overcome challenges and remain operational for a span of 5 years, while only 35% persist for 10 years or longer.
By utilizing digital marketing tools, as a small business owner, you have the potential to enhance your chances of success and improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
This article will provide you with information on the advantages of utilizing marketing tools for small businesses. It will also discuss the key characteristics to consider and provide recommendations for marketing software that can assist in the planning, management, and tracking of your marketing strategies and campaigns.
What Are the Benefits of Using Marketing Tools?
It appears that there is a constant influx of new marketing tools. According to data from Statista, the global martech industry had a value of $344.8 billion in 2021. Given this information, it is not surprising that 96% of marketers have utilized a marketing automation platform.
When you are a small business owner, it is essential to constantly search for ways to enhance your business. Just as you would employ imaginative approaches to recruit a new employee, you must think innovatively to enhance your marketing strategies.
Looking at the fact that the majority of marketers utilize marketing automation platforms, it is evident that there is value in doing so. It is important to understand the reasons behind why marketing tools should be implemented in your small business.
- Marketing tools automate your workflow
Continuously working can occasionally create a feeling of being trapped on an eternal wheel, leaving you and your employees unable to find an escape route. And the reality is, this might actually be the case.
When you are extremely busy with various projects, it can be difficult to take a step back and assess the overall situation. Are the marketing strategies that you have implemented producing favorable results? Is there a solution that you can employ in order to create more time for yourself?
Your marketing team will surely appreciate digital marketing tools that can automate workflows.
Instead of doing every step of a process by hand, efficient digital marketing tools can automate workflows, allowing employees to have more time for larger and more important projects. Workflow automation ensures improved communication, better quality work as there will be less chances of human errors, and enhanced accountability for the employees.
The overall growth of the company will be contributed to by all of these benefits.
- Marketing tools help you reach a wider audience
If you are a small business owner, you may seek ways to expand your following and broaden your reach, as marketing primarily entails connecting individuals.
Statistics indicate that if you want to reach a wide audience through your marketing team, it is important to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These platforms are the most prevalent social media platforms.
By utilizing the appropriate marketing tools, your team can efficiently create a strategy to expand the audience of your small business via social media.
- Marketing tools collect feedback to improve customer experience
Approximately 68% of consumers indicate their readiness to spend extra on products and services provided by a brand that delivers commendable experiences in customer service. Nevertheless, the sole approach to achieving a positive customer service experience is to wholeheartedly accept and incorporate customer feedback.
You should seek out marketing tools to collect customer feedback and improve your small business every step of the way as a small business owner and your marketing team.
- Marketing tools keep track of your goals and progress
In order to determine what is effective and what is not for your small business, it is necessary to establish objectives for your marketing tools and campaigns. By utilizing suitable marketing tools, you can monitor your goals, evaluate your progress, and optimize your marketing endeavors.
As you introduce new marketing tools into your small business, make sure to select tools that enable you to monitor your objectives. For instance, if your ultimate goal is to enhance website traffic, specify the desired amount of traffic you aim to achieve within a specific timeframe.
To rephrase the text while maintaining the same meaning: Break down the process into individual steps, and for each new tool adopted, establish specific goals and timelines to gauge its effectiveness in your business.
It is important to select marketing tools for your small business that enable you to measure your progress. One effective approach is to define key result areas for marketing in your small business. Another method to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and tools is by setting marketing OKRs and tracking metrics.
Marketing tools enable you to assess and monitor numerous aspects in a step-by-step manner.
- Customer engagement
- Conversion rate
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Marketing qualified leads (MQL)
- Marketing tools deliver projects on time and within the budget
It is common to get caught up in the fast-paced nature of completing tasks and submitting them just before, or at, the deadline. As a small business, you likely have numerous employees juggling various roles in order to meet the increasing demands of your business.
What is the consequence if a team member forgets about a project? Additionally, what if the team is unaware of a critical component that should have been included in the project?
As a small business owner, it is important to look for ways to enhance productivity and establish practical workloads.
Marketing Tools Small Businesses Need To Know About in 2023
Deciding on the appropriate marketing tools for your small business might appear a bit daunting, but we have conducted the necessary research to simplify the process for you. Take a look at these essential marketing tools that no small business should overlook.
- ClickUp
Ideal for project management and effective collaboration among teams.
Are you in need of a more effective approach to managing your projects and collaborating with your team?
If you are someone who thinks systematically, then this tool is ideal for you.
By using ClickUp, a versatile and efficient project management tool, your marketing team will have all the necessary tools to efficiently plan, manage, and monitor projects, marketing campaigns, and more. As your business expands, a project management tool like ClickUp becomes essential for your marketing teams, enabling them to oversee marketing initiatives, monitor employee workload, and manage projects at a more strategic level.
ClickUp is considered one of the best tools for businesses because of its flexibility, functionality, and scalability. It caters to individuals and teams of any size in various industries, providing numerous advanced project management and collaboration features to efficiently handle workflows of varying complexities.
Since the platform is fully customizable, you and your team can create ClickUp to match your workflow, preferences, and project requirements, and modify it as your business grows.
If you want to make your work more efficient, you can integrate ClickUp with over 1,000 work apps and other important marketing tools. This will result in a smooth workflow and allow you to keep all your work in a single centralized location.
Important characteristics
- Custom views: Choose from 15+ custom views to manage your work, including, Timeline, Gantt, Workload view, and more
- Build a CRM in ClickUp: Easily organize and grow your customer relationships with tracking, data visualizations, email, and more—all in one place
- Custom Dashboards: Build your ideal Dashboard and get a high-level overview of your work at a glance
- Calendar view: Manage your content calendar in the Calendar view
- Digital Whiteboards and ClickUp Docs: Map and document your digital marketing strategy in ClickUp Whiteboards or Docs, and so much more
- Email in ClickUp: Send and receive emails directly within a task in ClickUp to streamline team and client communications
Restrictions or constraints.
- Some of the advanced features are only available in the paid version
The process of determining the cost of a product or service.
- Free Forever: Feature-rich free plan
- Unlimited: $5 per month/user
- Business: $12 per month/user
- Business Plus: $19 per month/user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- Slack
The most suitable option for communication within a team.
Project management requires communication with colleagues, which can be facilitated by using Slack. Slack is an application for group messaging and team collaboration that streamlines business communication.
This app allows you and your small business to engage in open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging. Additionally, it provides deep contextual search, message archiving, and file sharing capabilities. Rather than resorting to phone calls, emails, or physical visits, this messaging app enables you to conveniently message each other and efficiently resolve issues throughout the day.
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- Collaboration tools
- Audio conferencing
- Video conferencing
- File sharing
- Web applications & countless integrations
- Mobile app
The constraints or restrictions that exist.
- Messages can get disorganized and chaotic if not managed properly
Step-by-step consideration is required when determining the cost of a product or service.
- Free with some limitations
- Standard: $6.67 per user/month billed annually
- Plus: $12.50 per user/month billed annually
- Enterprise Grid: available on a customizable basis
- Sendinblue
The most suitable option for an all-in-one digital marketing platform.
The software Sendinblue is designed to handle tasks concerning managing marketing automation, email campaigns, transactional emails, and SMS messages in the field of marketing communication.
This tool has the capability to assist small businesses in digitally sending out newsletters and mass communications.
Sendinblue offers advanced, real-time reporting, which will prove highly beneficial in monitoring the metrics of your small business.
With the ability to continuously add contacts to your database, it serves as a great choice for marketing communication that can expand alongside the growth of your company.
The key features should be thought of in a step-by-step manner without adding or removing any information.
- Marketing automation
- SMS messaging
- Advanced, real-time reporting
- Email and phone customer support
- Pre-schedule campaigns
- Unlimited contacts
Constraints or restrictions that prevent certain actions or outcomes from being achieved.
- A limited number of integrations
Pricing, when considering things, requires a step-by-step thought process without adding or removing any information.
- Free: Free with unlimited contacts
- Starter: Starting from $25 per month
- Business: Starting from $65 per month
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- Mailchimp
ideal for marketing, automation, and email platform
Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing platform that aids small businesses in marketing more intelligently in order to achieve faster growth.
This tool is perfect for small businesses because it enables them to automate workflows in their marketing department.
Powered by AI, it assists in sending marketing emails and automated messages, generating targeted ad campaigns, constructing landing pages, sending postcards, facilitating reporting and analytics, and enabling online sales.
Key features are to be rephrased while maintaining the same meaning, without adding or removing any information. Characteristics of particular importance
- Provides templates
- Has WYSIWYG email editor
- Dynamic content with the ability to test it
- Mobile Optimization
- Email deliverability reporting
- List management
- Triggered drip sequences
Restrictions or constraints.
- Restrictions to certain features and designs when using the free version
Pricing should be considered systematically and methodically, without missing any steps and without omitting any aspects.
- Free: Free based on 500 contacts
- Essentials: Starts at $13 per month
- Standard: Starts at $20 per month
- Premium: Starts at $350 per month
- Hootsuite
The most optimal choice for promoting on social media platforms is social media marketing.
Hootsuite, a social media and marketing management tool, is an excellent choice for small businesses as it can effectively replace the need for extensive manual effort in handling social media posts.
For your small business, you can perform various tasks in one place using this app. These tasks include scheduling posts on multiple social networks, managing both organic and paid social content, monitoring customer conversations, and obtaining valuable real-time insights from social media. These features enable you to make important marketing decisions.
Features that are important or significant.
- Post scheduling
- Automated publishing
- Multi-account management
- Contact management
- Content management
- Reporting and analytics
- Customer segmentation
Constraints or restrictions
- Analytics could still use some improvement
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- Professional: $49 per month
- Team: $249 per month
- Business: $739 per month
- Enterprise: available on a customizable basis
- Canva
Ideal for graphic design, as well as editing photos and videos.
Canva is a tool for graphic design that makes it easier to create graphics.
If you and your marketing team are new to creating graphics for your small business, this program is both user-friendly and comprehensive, offering a wide range of visual options.
This app allows you to generate exclusive content for various purposes such as social media, presentations, invitations, posters, brochures, and business cards. Instead of utilizing multiple apps for each visual, all of these tasks are consolidated in one place, making it a superb tool for your small business.
Features that are important
- Template creation
- Design and Editing
- Ad management
- File storage
- Historical snapshots
Restrictions
- Limited features and customization options
Pricing: Reconstructing the text while maintaining the same meaning, step by step, without adding or removing any information.
- Free with some limitations
- Pro: $12.99 per month for one person
- Teams: $30 per month for the first five people
- KWfinder
KWFinder serves as a tool for conducting keyword research in search marketing.
This tool is excellent for tracking the best keywords for SEO as your small business expands. It discovers low SEO difficulty long-tail keywords, offers an index value for SEO difficulty using different ranking factors, and provides insights into pay-per-click advertising.
When you or your marketing team feel stuck, KWfinder can help generate ideas and inspiration for new projects, making it a great tool for coming up with fresh concepts.
Features that are important or essential.
- Ratings of keywords
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Alternate keyword suggestions
- Keyword difficulty
- SERP analysis
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- Limited page quality statistics
Pricing, considering each step, should be rephrased while maintaining the same meaning.
- Free: 10-day trial
- Basic: $29.90 per month
- Premium: $44.90 per month
- Agency: $89.90 per month
With over 722 million members, LinkedIn, the most trusted social media network in the U.S., is a valuable free tool for businesses, particularly B2B companies.
Currently, there are over 55 million companies on LinkedIn, making it an excellent resource to assist in the expansion of your business. The process of establishing a LinkedIn profile, engaging with fellow professionals, and generating insightful content can be achieved effortlessly.
- Buffer
You are aware that being active on social media is important, but it can take up a lot of time to post regularly. That is why having the appropriate social media scheduler can be extremely helpful. With Buffer and its forever-free plan, you can effectively use social media in a timely manner.
You have the option to add three different social media channels to your account through this plan. For instance, you can opt for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. After that, you have the capability to schedule a maximum of 10 posts per week.
- Google My Business
If your dependence on local businesses is strong, it is necessary for you to claim your Google My Business listing. By doing so, you can ensure that when customers search for businesses similar to yours on Google, you will not be pushed aside by your competitors.
In order to fully optimize your listing, it is important not to simply claim it and stop there. Enhance your listing by including pictures, keeping your business details up to date, and actively requesting customers to provide feedback.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a tool available at no cost which enables small businesses to monitor their website’s activity and engagement. It aids in assessing the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and provides detailed insights into customer demographics.
Google Analytics can assist you in identifying the effectiveness of your present marketing strategy by allowing you to observe the main sources of your website traffic and the webpages that attract the greatest interest from visitors.
- Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a creative way to engage in competitor research as it allows businesses to sign up and receive alerts whenever their company is mentioned online. It is also one of the best free marketing tools available, as it enables users to monitor mentions of their competitors.
- Help a Reporter Out
If you want to gain publicity for your business, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a valuable resource that links journalists to qualified sources. HARO can be used to obtain free publicity by having someone from your business quoted in a well-known publication. Additionally, it can help generate backlinks to your website, increasing your visibility in Google search results.
- CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
If you want to ensure that visitors to your website actually read your blog posts, you should use the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer. This tool is free and will analyze the word balance, word count, and overall clarity of your headlines.
- AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a tool that first gathers autocomplete data from search engines such as Google. It then offers helpful phrases and questions that individuals commonly inquire about related to your chosen keyword.
By following a step-by-step approach, your small business marketing team can gain valuable understanding of readers’ preferences and subsequently utilize this knowledge to generate innovative and beneficial content and products.
If you or your team lack ideas, this search feature is an excellent source of inspiration. With the free version, you can conduct up to three searches per day, allowing you to explore its capabilities and understand its worth.
The text cannot be rephrased as it only consists of two words, “Key features.”
- Easy to use
- Helps overcome writer’s block
- Keyword rank tracking
- Keyword research tools
- Competitive analysis & comparison charts
Keep in mind that there are restrictions or boundaries to consider.
- The free version limits you to just three searches a day
Pricing should be thought through carefully, considering each step and maintaining the same meaning without adding or removing any information.
- Free with some limitations
- Monthly: $99 per month
- Annual: $79 per month, billed annually
- Expert: $199 per month
What to Look for When Choosing Marketing Tools
When faced with numerous options, it can be time-consuming and difficult to determine which options are worth both your time and money, and which ones you should disregard. As you search for small business marketing tools, it is essential to consider the following key features that every marketing tool should possess.
When considering the text below, rephrase it step by step while keeping the same meaning. Do not add or remove any information. “User-friendliness and functionality.”
If a program lacks user-friendliness, even if it has many amazing features, it is advisable to avoid using it.
Regardless of any promises made by the tool, you should be able to access it and learn how to use the app or website easily. In addition, if the tool offers helpful tutorials and how-to guides with screenshots demonstrating navigation, that would be a valuable advantage.
The worst thing you can do is to invest in a tool and then realize the amount of time you need to dedicate to learning how it works.
The choice between practicality and cost.
The program you choose should be practical when considering your options.
When considering the tool, always evaluate its practicality for both you and your team, taking into account the cost. Determine whether the features are genuinely useful or simply additional benefits that are unnecessary or unrelated to your requirements.
If the costs of using marketing tools outweigh the practicality and usefulness, then it is advisable to continue your search for alternatives that better suit your needs.
When considering scalability and flexibility, it is important to think in a systematic manner.
When searching for advanced tools, ensure that they are adaptable enough to meet your current requirements and can adapt as your business grows. Hence, it is important to seek out tools that provide customization options and a diverse range of features that can assist with a variety of tasks, from simple to intricate.
Instead of investing in a tool that only solves your current problems, it is better to search for a long-term solution that can meet your present and future business requirements.
Level Up Your Small Business by Having the Right Tools
The implementation of marketing tools is essential for every small business, allowing the marketing team to allocate more time to larger and more impactful projects.
If you remove anything from this list, carefully think about the characteristics of each tool. Look for one that satisfies the most requirements so that your team can depend on fewer tools. In case you are still lacking important features, ensure that the tool can smoothly integrate with your preferred platform.