Marketing is just as crucial for small businesses as it is for large enterprises. In fact, data cited by Wifitalents says a majority of small businesses plan to increase their marketing budget in the next year.
Fortunately, you don’t need to spend an arm and a leg to hire a marketing agency or an in-house team. With a wide range of marketing tools for small businesses available, you can market your brand for an affordable price – or even for free.
Here are the top marketing tools for small businesses:
HubSpot (For Marketing Automation)
If you’re looking for a digital marketing automation platform that can handle most of your marketing needs, check out Hubspot. This platform is user-friendly but offers powerful features, making it an all-in-one tool you can use for AI email marketing, CRM (customer relationship management), content management, and more.
In addition to the features mentioned above, you can also use Hubspot to nurture leads, build landing pages, and track customer interactions.
- Pricing: Hubspot offers free marketing tools for small businesses, while its paid tiers start at $15 per seat monthly.
Mailchimp (For Email Marketing)
Mailchimp is a popular email marketing and automation tool that helps manage email campaigns. That said, you can use this platform not only for creating and sending emails but also for managing subscriber lists as well as tracking campaign performance.
If you go for the platform’s paid plans, you’ll also have access to Intuit Assist, which uses generative AI. This feature helps users optimize their campaigns and deliver relevant content quickly.
- Pricing: Mailchimp is one of the best free marketing tools for small businesses if you’re okay with limited and limited features. Paid plans start at $13 monthly.
Google Analytics (For Optimizing Marketing Strategies)
Though often overlooked by many small business owners, Google Analytics is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools. After all, it allows you to understand your customers across devices and gives you insights into your customer journey.
These features, in turn, allow you to make the most out of your marketing efforts. You’ll better understand whether your social media management tools, SEO competitor analysis tools, content creation tools, and other tools are working for you. Best of all, it’s one of the most popular analytics tools that wouldn’t cost you a cent.
Hootsuite (For Social Media Marketing)
If you’re looking for social media marketing tools for small businesses, Hootsuite is worth checking out. This platform is one of the most popular social media marketing tools, allowing you to schedule posts, monitor social media channels, and analyze social media performance.
In addition, the platform can manage multiple social media profiles. This is extremely helpful if you own more than one brand and need detailed performance reports for each.
- Pricing: Hootsuite’s monthly plans start at $99 for ten social media accounts. Though it’s not necessarily included in our list of free marketing tools, you can avail of a free trial for 30 days.
Google Trends (For SEO Optimization)
Google Trends is one of the marketing tools for business ventures that help you track the popularity of search queries in Google Search across different regions and languages over time.
How can you use this data for your small business? By gaining insights into what topics are trending, you can identify keywords for content creation and marketing strategies. Doing so can optimize your SEO efforts and make your brand relevant to your audience.
Zapier (For Workflow Automation)
Check out Zapier if you want to automate your marketing workflow so you can focus on other crucial parts of your business. This tool allows you to create “Zaps,” workflows between various apps, including marketing tools.
For example, let’s say you want to automate the workflow of a lead nurturing campaign. For this campaign, you use Google Forms, a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, and an email marketing platform like Mailchimp. With a manual workflow, you must transfer the Google Forms data to your CRM and integrate it with Mailchimp. With Zapier, however, you can use the Google Form submission as a trigger. Doing so will set out the following steps (adding to CRM and sending a welcome email) without doing it yourself.
- Pricing: Zapier is one of the most affordable marketing tools for automation. Its free plan covers up to 100 monthly tasks, while paid tiers start at $19.99.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the most successful marketing tool for small businesses?
There is no one "most successful" marketing tool for small businesses. After all, success can vary based on each venture’s specific goals and needs. However, popular small business marketing tools include email marketing platforms, social media management tools, and SEO tools.
What type of marketing is best for small businesses?
Some of the most effective tools for small businesses include content, social media, and email marketing. These tools are both cost-efficient and allow the company to engage directly with customers.
What should a small business spend on marketing?
In a contributed article to Forbes, author and entrepreneur Thomas Minieri says advertising spending can be 5% to 10% of sales allocated if one wants to maintain the current sales rate. However, he emphasized that you could push that budget to 20% or even higher if you want to grow rapidly, such as in the case of startups.
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