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79 Marketing Tools for Every Small Business & Budget
79 Marketing Tools for Every Small Business & Budget
For a small business, it seems like there are always new tools, tips, tricks, and trends to discover and use to help your marketing.
As a marketer myself, even I would struggle to keep up with them all. Hubspot recently made a list of their top 79 tools. I have taken their list and used it to curate this list from personal experience of the tools I think every small business marketer should know about and use.
The list of recommended tools below is sorted into different sections so you can get a better sense of what tools are available for different functions of the job.
Types of Marketing Tools
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Online Advertising
- Social Media
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Creation and Design
- Video Marketing
- Event Marketing
- Lead Capture and Conversion
- Lead Generation
- Website Optimization and CRO
- Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Data Reporting and Analytics
- Digital Asset Management
- Team Communication and Collaboration
- Project Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
You want an easy, organised way to sell your product or service — not fight with messy spreadsheets, cluttered inboxes, or lists on paper that slow you down. That’s why using a Customer Relationship Management System — also known as a CRM — is essential. Not only will it help you manage relationships, but a CRM will also help you to share give you those leads you generated to other members of your team.
CRMs are an essential part of any good marketing and sales team.
Featured CRM Tool:
This one is my favourite and the one I use – it works for me in keeping track of where my leads are in my pipeline and what the next activity should be. There is a free version and then various levels of paid for subscriptions.
Other CRM Tools:
Online Advertising Tools
If you are investing into PPC ad campaigns on platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it’s probably a bit of a hassle to manage all the different ad campaigns you’re running across each different network. Besides just managing them, you then have to try and report on the results of all of them. What a struggle. Luckily, there’s tools for that.
Featured Online Advertising Tool:
AdStage is a paid-for tool, but it takes the hassle out reporting on all of the PPC campaigns you’re running and puts it all in one place. AdStage helps you automate, create, and manage your campaigns across all of the major PPC platforms, then allows you to report on your results. With visual features and powerful automation tools, AdStage is a must for PPC experts and newbies alike.
Other Online Advertising Tools:
- HubSpot Ads Tracking Software
- Perfect Audience
- Google Keyword Planner– as a free tool this is the one I use and is free with your Google Ad Account.
- AdRoll
- WordStream
Social Media Tools
We all know the pain of posting that perfect social media post only to have a follower find a spelling mistake a minute later and call you out. For marketers, using a social media tool to schedule all of your posts (so you catch those typos beforehand) is a must. But it also helps to get the right analytics from your social posts, especially on channels where it can be hard to get that information.
Featured Social Media Tool:
Iconosquare is the perfect tool for marketers to grow their brand on Instagram with easy-to-use analytics.
Other Social Media Tools:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Whether its keyword research, content optimization or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning what content to create and how to optimize it for SEO.
Featured SEO Tool:
You need to plan which keywords to rank for and making sure the content they create actually meets their goal once created. Ryte is the ideal tool marketers can use to make sure their SEO efforts are having a real impact on their marketing strategy. They have a free account which gives you some basic tools to get you started
Other SEO Tools:
Content Creation and Design Tools
In the world of content creation, there are admittedly tons of different tools you could use to create various types of content. Whether it’s social images, logos, blog posts, or ebooks – the options and tools are endless.
Featured Content Creation Resource:
My favourite, again a free tool which you can use for designing social media posts, or even logos and documents. Easy to learn and use.
Other Content Creation and Design Tools:
Video Marketing Tools
Video is the thing everyone is talking about. But how do you actually implement it into your marketing?
Maybe your strategy is just to put a YouTube video embed on one of your blog posts or landing pages. But then what happens? Someone else’s ad plays on your landing page before your video even begins. That’s bad for your conversion rates, brand, and your user. Luckily, there’s a solution.
Featured Video Marketing Resource:
Wistia is a powerful video hosting platform that allows you to host your videos on your website — ad free — with a guaranteed smooth playback and responsive player. Wistia also helps you prove the ROI of your video efforts by offering you video analytics and key metrics to fine-tune your video marketing efforts over time. Ready to take your video marketing to the next level?
Other Video Marketing Tools:
- Vidyard another free extension – this one on Chrome, and is super easy to record on, great for sending video messages to people – these work really well on LinkedIn
- Vimeo a great place to store your videos if you don’t have a YouTube Account
- Loom Loom is a free extension for a PC or MAC, you can use it to record videos of your screen, or your face, or a combination of both.
Event Marketing Tools
Whether its for monthly customer and prospect events, yearly conferences, or just occasional community events, it’s important to have a good event marketing tool up your sleeve when the time comes to use it. After all, in-person events or webinars now we are all online are some of the best ways to interact with potential customers and create an experience that prospects, customers, and your community will remember.
Featured Event Marketing Resource:
Eventbrite is an efficient, easy-to-use tool to not only manage the logistics (like ticketing) of events but also to promote events. Eventbrite lets you create an event landing page and allows you to set up your ticketing and payment for the event all within the same platform. The best part? Eventbrite is always free if you’re hosting a free event!
Other Event Marketing Tools:
Lead Capture and Conversion Tools
When it comes to your profit goals, you probably want a few tools for not only attracting prospects, but just as importantly, converting those visitors into leads and customers.
Featured Lead Capture and Conversion Resource:
HubSpot’s free marketing tools can help do just that. The moment a lead shares their email, you’ll know who they are, where they work, and what pages they visited – all in real-time. When they view an offer or check your pricing, you’ll be ready to follow up right away.
And with simple but powerful analytics, you’ll learn more about what’s working and what’s not – like which traffic sources or pieces of content are driving the most conversions. It’s a risk-free way to find out what inbound marketing can do for you. No budget necessary.
Other Lead Capture and Conversion Tools:
Lead Generation Tools
If you’re looking for lead generation then you need to convert anonymous website visitors into contacts with email addresses that you can successfully nurture. Landing pages are a must for capturing lead information on important offers and opt-ins.
Featured Lead Generation Resource:
Groove Funnels is currently free and is great for creating landing pages if you have never tried to make your own before. You can quickly build mobile responsive landing pages without developer assistance. The tool also integrates with a number of different CMS platforms and software.
Other Lead Generation Tools:
Website Optimization and CRO Tools
As inexperienced marketer, it sometimes feels like we’re constantly making educated guesses about how our site visitors are going to engage with our content. While we might design a page to draw our user’s eye to a spot on a page, how do we ever really know where their focus is so that we can improve that experience?
Featured CRO Resource:
Hotjar is a free and easy way to truly understand what your web and mobile site visitors are looking at when they interact with your site. With its visual heatmap tools, you can understand what users want, care about, and interact with on your site. Hotjar visually represents visitors’ clicks, taps and scrolling behaviour, giving you the ability to find hot areas for growth and conversion rate optimization.
Other CRO Tools:
Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing Tools
So, you’ve got people onto your website, they’ve given you their email address and now you need to convert them. Many of your website visitors may not be ready to buy, and that’s where lead nurturing comes in. Email marketing is a great way to nurture contacts toward a purchasing decision.
Featured Lead Nurturing Resource:
Mailchimp offers effective email marketing software. You’ll be able to create emails in a simple drag-and-drop interface, personalize emails for better experience and performance, and see who has opened their email, and who has clicked on a link. Mailchimp also offers automation solutions.
Other Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing Tools:
Marketing Automation Tools
Automation is nothing new to marketers. Whether you want to save time doing marketing tasks or simply cut time wasted doing those daily tasks like saving emails and files to spreadsheets, having a tool that makes your life easier and saves you time is ideal.
Featured Marketing Automation Resource:
As previously mentioned, HubSpot has a powerful automation tool included in its paid marketing tiers. It doesn’t just send drip sequences. You can also use it to trigger specific actions such as updating a contact record or adding a contact to a list when certain criteria is met.
Other Marketing Automation Tools:
Data Reporting and Analytics Tools
Most tools that automate some of your marketing strategy will also provide reports that allow you to see and monitor your campaigns’ performance. What if you want a more holistic look at the health of your marketing?
Featured Data Reporting and Analytics Resource:
Digital Marketing Tuner offers a helpful overview of all of your latest marketing activities.
Developed by OverGo Studio, Digital Marketing Tuner guides you through a brief survey where you can submit basic information about your company’s content volume, email open rates, website traffic, and more. The tool then sends you a detailed report in which you can better visualize your team’s strengths and weaknesses so you can make even better decisions for your company moving forward.
Other Data Reporting and Analytics Tools:
Digital Asset Management Tools
In any business, there’s a million files and pieces of content between everyone on your team without one place to keep it all. Organization on any team is essential. That’s why it’s important to have a collaborative organization tool to keep you sane.
Featured Digital Asset Management Tool:
Dropbox is the perfect tool to keep your team organized and your files under control. With cloud-based software to keep your files accessible anywhere at any time, Dropbox helps your team store all of its files in a central location. Dropbox makes it easy to collaborate, too. With tools like Dropbox Paper, which allows you to write and collaborate in real-time on the same doc — and sharing tools for shared folders and files, you’ll be organized and ready for any project that comes your way.
Other Digital Asset Management Tools:
- Google Drive operates in the same way as Dropbox – you just need to have a Google Account to access it.
- Box
- Shift
- Brandfolder
Team Communication and Collaboration Tools
Where would you be without accessibility and communication between you and your colleagues? Probably pretty frustrated, so having the right team communication tools is necessary every single day.
Featured Communication and Collaboration Resource:
I wouldn’t be given any slack if I didn’t make the world aware of this tool.
Slack is a powerful messaging app that allows you and your teammates to quickly message back and forth without the hassle of email. But it’s not just WhatsApp, Slack has powerful features and integrations that make it possible for you to integrate all of your other daily tools – like Trello, Gmail, Giphy, and so many more – right where you’re already communicating. You can start channels between different teams or just chat with specific colleagues. Slack makes remote and in-person work possible and easier than ever.
Other Communication and Collaboration Tools:
Project Management Tools
How do you manage all of the moving pieces of a marketing campaign or project? There are many different tools you can use for project management, but only one sticks out when it comes to the number of integrations and features it has – ad it is completely free!
Featured Project Management Resource:
Trello is a great project management tool for small teams and individuals. With its Kanban-style setup and fun user interface, Trello lets you set up to-do lists and tag individual cards with due dates, members, labels, and more. You can attach files, links, images, and more to your cards and easily get a full-view of any project that you’re working on. At Verve, we use Trello daily to manage our team campaigns, client activity and individual to-do lists
Other Project Management Tools:
You’ve got all the tools you need, but are you looking for a place to start putting them all together? Schedule a call with us now and we can help you decide what you should be doing first.