The 8 Best Marketing Software For Small Businesses
That doesn’t mean marketing a small business is easy. But it is possible — especially if you use the eight best marketing software for small businesses listed below.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the go-to website analytics tool for millions of organizations around the world. All small business owners have to do is add the Analytics code to their websites. Once they do, they’ll be able to receive in-depth information about their online visitors.
Want to know how many people visited your site on a specific day? Or the traffic source (search, social media, etc.) that drove them there? Or how many web pages they frequented before heading off to another corner of the web? Google Analytics will tell you.
The information you glean can then be used to craft more effective marketing strategies.
For example, if you determine that a large portion of your website traffic comes from Instagram, you may decide to invest more in Instagram ads. If you realize that most website visitors only view one web page before clicking the back button, you can work to write better copy that engages your audience and keeps them on your site for longer.
Want to know the best part about Google Analytics? It’s completely free to use! This combination of amazing functionality and rock bottom price is why it’s made our list of best marketing software for small businesses. We suggest adding it to your site ASAP.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing solution that includes customer relationship management (CRM) software; content creation tools for blogging, SEO, and social media; an intuitive landing page and forms builder; email marketing capabilities; and more.
It’s a great solution for small business owners and/or marketing professionals who want a single dashboard to control every aspect of their marketing efforts.
For example, with HubSpot’s suite of tools, you’ll be able to create SEO optimized blog posts that drive search traffic, design high-converting web forms to capture prospect information, and send eye-catching emails to nurture your leads into paying customers. Then you can automate many of your marketing processes to do all of this on autopilot!
To access the full power of HubSpot, you’ll have to spend a pretty penny. But for cash-strapped small businesses, HubSpot offers limited functionality for between $0 and $40 a month, which will allow you to easily see if the software is right for your company.
3. MailChimp
EVERY small business should invest in email marketing. It’s an incredibly effective way to engage your target audience and, when used correctly, can produce an ROI of up to 4,400%. There aren’t many other marketing activities that return $44 for every $1 spent!
But you can’t effectively invest in email marketing without a proper email marketing software.
MailChimp is a popular email marketing tool that’s used by thousands of small businesses in just about every industry imaginable. If you decide to use this email tool, too, you’ll get access to some pretty amazing features like:
- Easily customizable email templates
- Handy email automation tools
- A real-time analytics dashboard
- Audience segmentation capabilities
- Transactional emails like order confirmation messages
And that’s just on the email marketing side! MailChimp also offers small business owners access to a marketing CRM, website builder, social media content scheduler, and more.
Pricing for MailChimp depends on the functionality required. Small businesses on a tight budget can use the software for free (albeit with a limited feature set.) Companies that want to take advantage of all MailChimp has to offer should expect to pay $15 to $300+ a month.
4. Hootsuite
Social media is an important marketing channel for many companies. But managing multiple social channels is a pain. Fortunately, Hootsuite was created to make social media management easier and less time consuming for busy small business professionals.
Hootsuite will allow you to centralize your social media activities. For instance, you can schedule posts to more than 35 social networks including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Imagine how much time you’ll save when you can craft every post for the next week or month in advance, plug them into Hootsuite, and then sit back as the software automatically posts them to your social channels at the perfect times!
You can also monitor social conversations on every network, create and manage social media advertising campaigns, and view detailed social analytics with Hootsuite.
Hootsuite offers a free plan that will allow a single user to manage three social media channels and schedule 30 posts per month. For access to more users, channels, posts, and other features, prices start at $29 a month — a small price to pay for access to one of the best marketing software for small businesses.
5. SEMrush
SEMrush is best known as a SEO solution, though it does offer PPC and social media advertising, content marketing, and market research tools as well.
In regards to SEO, SEMrush will help you run a technical SEO audit on your website, monitor your daily rankings, analyze the competitions SEO strategy, research millions of keywords, build your site’s backlink portfolio, and much more.
In other words, SEMrush has everything you need to make sure your small business hits the top of Google search results and consistently drives organic traffic.
SEMrush plans range from $99.95 to $399.95 a month depending on the features required.
6. Canva
The written word will always have a place in your small business marketing strategy. But visual content has exploded in recent years and must be accounted for. Unfortunately, many of us aren’t gifted with exceptional design skills.
Enter Canva, an amazing tool that will help you quickly create top-notch visual content for your small business — even if you’re hopelessly design challenged.
Canva offers templates for a wide range of different content types including social media posts, website banners, business cards, infographics, and even Zoom backgrounds. Once you’ve chosen a template, you can customize it by adjusting colors, changing text, adding images (either your own or royalty free images inside canva), and more. Then you simply have to export the visual and use it for its intended purpose.
Canva is amazingly easy to use and will allow you to create fantastic visual content pieces for your small business. And it won’t cost you a dime to use! Canva’s free plan has more than enough functionality for most people.
If you decide you need access to more templates, images, etc., you can sign up for the Pro or Enterprise plan which range from $9.95 to $30 a month.
7. Asana
Asana is a project management tool that was created by former Facebook employees back in 2008. Since that time, the tool has become immensely popular and is used by large organizations like Google, PayPal, and AirBnB, as well as many smaller businesses.
Now, you may be wondering why a project management tool makes our list of best marketing software for small businesses. Simple: because Asana makes it easy to organize all of your marketing initiatives — especially if your marketing team consists of multiple people.
Inside Asana, marketing teams can plan and track campaigns, create content calendars, and communicate with each other via in-app chat features. Team leaders can also assign tasks to specific employees and send them important documents.
Organization is key to effective marketing. Asana will keep you and your team on track and working towards your goals for just $10.99+ a month after a free trial.
8. CleanPix
Finally, we have CleanPix, a digital asset management (DAM) solution that enables users to easily store, organize, and distribute their digital assets whenever necessary.
A digital asset is any digital file that your small business owns the rights to. This includes photos, videos, b-roll footage, logos, and other branded documents. If you’re like most modern companies, you have a huge library of digital assets.
These are valuable — but only if you can easily find and distribute them when required. This is where CleanPix excels! Our users enjoy features like:
- Automatic File Formatting: CleanPix will automatically convert uploaded files into a variety of formats and sizes. That way you always have the exact asset you need, right when you need it.
- A Robust Tagging System: Digital assets are easy to find in CleanPix because of its robust tagging system. Every asset you upload can be given an infinite number of tags. When you need to recall a specific file, simply type in its tag(s) and you’ll have your image, video, etc. ready for you immediately.
- Access to Brand Portals: A brand portal is a public-facing library of assets that you can give third parties access to. Let say, for example, that you regularly interface with media outlets. Rather than finding and sending images to journalists everytime they want to write a story about your business, you can simply send them a link to your brand portal. Then they can source their own visuals for their story from the digital assets you’ve already pre-approved.
Since most small businesses don’t organize their digital assets particularly well, a DAM solution like CleanPix can save marketing teams up to 15 hours a week! It will also make your company appear more professional and ensure your assets are secure at all times.
Try CleanPix for free for 14 days to see if it’s right for your marketing initiatives!
Give Your Marketing a Boost
Marketing your small business will be much easier if you use some of the tools listed above. They’ll enable you to better understand your target audience, reach them with more relevant content on a consistent basis, and greatly improve the ROI of your marketing efforts.
We encourage you to read back through our list of the eight best marketing software for small businesses and choose a tool or two to invest in. Good luck!
Did we miss one of your favorite marketing tools? Let us know in the comments!
– Jacob Thomas