Starting a business is a significant undertaking, and marketing a startup comes with its own set of difficulties. Regardless of the industry, most startups face a common obstacle: limited funding. Due to constrained budgets, they often lack the necessary resources to execute extensive marketing campaigns.
If you are wondering how to inform the world about your amazing product, you have come to the right place. We will guide you through the top marketing tools for startups, and don’t worry, the majority of them are either free or inexpensive. As for the ones that require payment, their prices are designed to assist startups that do not have a lot of financial resources.
Without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Top marketing tools for startups
Marketing is necessary, whether a company is bootstrapped or not. Regardless of the quality of a product, if it is not marketed, no one will be aware of its existence. Startups, therefore, should make use of all available resources to spread the word about their offerings. The following are our recommended digital marketing tools to assist you with your do-it-yourself marketing efforts.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that plays a crucial role in your marketing strategy. It is our top choice because, despite the high costs of other data analytics tools, Google Analytics provides powerful insights into the origin of traffic on your website and their activities, among other things. Therefore, every startup should have Google Analytics in their toolbox.
Why is data important in marketing? It is important because it helps you gain a better understanding of your target audience, allowing you to determine the most effective marketing campaigns. Since content consumption occurs on various devices nowadays, it is crucial to identify the devices favored by your target audience and focus more on those platforms.
Experienced marketers affirm the capacity of data to significantly enhance marketing’s return on investment (ROI). An illustrative instance is Mumzworld, which achieved a 300 percent ROI on their advertising expenditure through valuable insights from Google Analytics. Is there anything else to add?
- Hotjar
It can be frustrating to have a sales funnel that is leaking. After all, considerable time, effort, and money are invested in its construction with the expectation that it will lead to conversions, isn’t it?
Repair any leaks on your website using Hotjar. Similar to Google Analytics, Hotjar is a web analytics tool that provides data on visitor activities, such as clicks and scrolls. It offers insights into user interactions and, crucially, identifies where users abandon your website.
Hotjar may require payment, but its pricing is reasonable, starting at $89/month for websites with up to 20,000 daily visitors. If you’re hesitant, you can opt for a 15-day trial. However, if you have some extra funds, investing in Hotjar is highly recommended as it is among the top marketing channels.
- Emma
Emma is an affordable marketing platform that boasts of ROIs of up to 4400%, making it an effective choice for email marketing.
Emma, an efficient email marketing tool, enables you to effortlessly construct an email list, establish a personal connection with your audience, and execute impactful campaigns. With its user-friendly interface and robust functionalities (such as advanced segmentation and analytics tools), you can quickly start utilizing Emma. Moreover, Emma guarantees a near-perfect delivery rate, ensuring that your emails reach the intended recipients. In addition, it offers various other features such as XYZ.
- Emma HQ: Emma HQ allows for the approval and monitoring of email campaigns across multiple locations.
- An analytics dashboard: Get insight into how people interact with your emails.
- A/B testing: Send the best email by split-testing different elements of your emails and amalgamating the ones that perform best.
- Landing page builder: Build landing pages as easily as you would compose an email with Emma’s drag-and-drop landing page builder.
Having a targeted audience is crucial for launching a startup successfully, and email is the ideal platform for pitching your product to them. This is why Emma is ranked among the top marketing tools for startups, as it provides direct access to your desired customers.
- KWFinder
Content marketing is an essential and affordable marketing strategy that involves creating content to enhance your online presence and promote your product. In order to achieve your desired outcomes, it is imperative to engage in keyword research, which allows you to understand the specific phrases your target customers use when searching for the solution you offer.
This is where KWFinder enters the picture.
KWFinder offers both keyword suggestions for your target ranking and details about your competitors’ rankings with those terms.
With that knowledge, you are able to construct a proficient content calendar and produce top-performing content that generates website traffic and enhances your financial results.
- ActiveCampaign
Companies in various industries can utilize ActiveCampaign’s customer experience automation (CXA) platform to automate and personalize their marketing strategies. The platform offers features such as automated email follow-ups, tracking engagement with contacts, custom fields, performance reports, and more. Additionally, businesses have the opportunity to test ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation platform through a free trial and can later upgrade to one of the paid models (Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise) when they are prepared to enhance their marketing automation efforts.
- GetResponse
GetResponse is a marketing software platform that caters to entrepreneurs, online marketers, marketing managers, and companies by providing them with the necessary tools to enhance content creation, boost sales, and increase traffic. The platform offers a range of marketing automation features, such as pre-built workflows, email automation, contact segmentation, behavioral targeting, and more. GetResponse offers four pricing options, namely Basic, Plus, Professional, and MAX, along with a free trial period of 30 days, making it suitable for companies of different sizes and budget constraints.
- HubSpot
Hubspot Marketing Hub is suitable for both enterprises and SMBs. The platform’s marketing automation features are designed to assist companies in attracting their target audience, converting visitors into customers, and managing complete inbound marketing campaigns through a single, user-friendly interface. Additionally, HubSpot Marketing Hub has the ability to scale with a small business. It provides a range of free tools that can be upgraded and supplemented with the Starter, Professional, or Enterprise packages. While it is possible for companies to purchase Marketing Hub separately, SMBs may want to consider utilizing HubSpot’s CRM, which is also offered in free and affordable versions and includes additional functionalities for sales, marketing, operations, and service.
- Keap
Keap is a company that offers CRM and marketing automation solutions specifically designed for small businesses. By utilizing Keap’s sales and marketing automation solutions, SMBs can effectively convert a higher number of leads through personalized and automated follow-up messages, as well as capture lead behavior to improve engagement. Additionally, Keap’s marketing automation capabilities can seamlessly integrate with third-party apps, aiding in generating additional sales opportunities for companies. Keap offers three different pricing models—Lite, Pro, and Max—that can be tailored to the number of users within a company’s system.
- Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers growth-focused e-commerce brands a marketing automation platform specifically created to boost sales through email, Facebook, and Instagram marketing campaigns that are targeted and relevant. This platform includes segmentation, web tracking, autoresponders, automated email flows, reporting, AB testing, email content creation, and additional features. Furthermore, Klaviyo is capable of tracking essential data from the e-commerce platform used by a company due to its integrations with prominent platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento. Klaviyo provides flexible pricing models without annual contracts, ensuring that companies only pay for the tools and features they utilize.
- MailChimp
MailChimp is a marketing and commerce platform that includes audience management, analytics, marketing automation, and creative tools. Keap’s marketing automation features can be used by companies to create customizable workflows, trigger-based messaging, and scheduling tools. It also offers pre-built automation, visual journeys, custom triggers, and e-commerce automation through integration with platforms like WooCommerce, ShopSync, BigCommerce, and others. MailChimp offers different versions of its platform (Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium) to cater to the needs of all sizes of companies.
- Omnisend
The Omnisend platform fulfills a company’s e-commerce, email marketing, SMS, and automation requirements. Companies utilize Iterable’s centralized marketing platform and automation tools to create omnichannel workflows and pre-designed messages, conduct A/B tests, monitor performance with reporting tools, and utilize over fifty integrations. Omnisend provides a free version of its platform for companies to begin with email marketing. The Standard package includes marketing automation, pre-designed workflows, the ability to send 15,000 emails per month, and additional features.
- Sendinblue
SendinBlue is a platform for marketing that caters to small businesses aiming to expand, offering email marketing, SMS marketing, CRM, and marketing automation. By utilizing its marketing automation features, SMBs can customize each stage of the customer journey, create outreach strategies across multiple channels, and convert website visitors into customers. These features consist of tools for transactional email, audience segmentation, integration with CRM systems, SMS marketing, web chats, landing pages, signup forms, Facebook ads, email marketing, and additional functionalities.