We may earn an affiliate commission from partner links on the Entrepreneur Guide. These do not affect our editors’ opinions.
Today, there are countless ways to leverage digital marketing to help grow your small business. Knowing and choosing the right business marketing tools may seem overwhelming, so we have done the heavy lifting for you.
- What are the best small business marketing tools of 2022?
- 1. Business Marketing Tools: Google Workspace
- 2. Project Management Tools: Asana
- 3. Content (CMS)/SEO Management Tools: HubSpot
- 4. Email Marketing Tools: Hubspot
- 5. Social Media Tools: Canva
- 6. Editing and Grammar Tools: Grammarly
- What are some other small business marketing tools?
- What are marketing tools?
- Why does your small business need marketing tools?
- The bottom line
What are the best small business marketing tools of 2022?
These are our top choices for the essential small business marketing tools:
- Business Marketing Tools: Google Workspace
- Project Management Tools: Asana
- Content/SEO Management tools: HubSpot
- Email Marketing Tools: HubSpot
- Social Media Tools: Canva
- Editing and Grammar Tools: Grammarly
1. Business Marketing Tools: Google Workspace
One of the business marketing tools that you need to invest in first is Google Workspace. It is ideal for remote teams because it allows you to work from anywhere and on any device. It includes Google Docs, Gmail, Sheets, and Slides.
Google Workspace offers cloud computing, shared email and calendar capabilities, file sharing, online document editing, and more. It is excellent for storing all company documents and collaboration on team projects.
Here is a short breakdown of each of Google Workspace’s features:
- Google Docs can create copy for emails, content, and landing pages. You can add comments and suggestions and track changes made to each document and by whom.
- Google Sheets can plan, record information, and track stats. Google sheets enable you to monitor your performance in many aspects of your business.
- Google Slides can be used for staff training and creating presentations for monthly team meetings and events.
- Google forms can create surveys and questionnaires for clients and staff.
2. Project Management Tools: Asana
Asana is our top choice for a project management tool. Without one of these tools, you will be spending an astronomical amount of time emailing and checking in with your team to get updates on the status of a project. These are all functions that Asana can offer that will help consolidate your marketing strategy.
With Asana, you can:
- Map out project timelines
- Input company workflow into a calendar or list format
- Track what is in the pipeline
- Manage tasks daily, weekly, and monthly
- Designate tasks to different company departments
- Assign tasks to team members
- Document and file share
- Save conversations
- View reports
- Receive and send daily updates on completed or in-progress tasks
Project management tools are essential for keeping your team on the same page and key to your marketing team’s productivity. It is necessary to improve your team’s efficiency and crush business goals.
3. Content (CMS)/SEO Management Tools: HubSpot
Every small business needs a functional website to be successful. This is where the center of your marketing takes place. A small business website does not need to be anything elaborate but relatively simple to use and navigate.
Many tools on the market can handle website management like Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, Weebly, and more. These digital marketing tools will be the center of any content marketing campaigns and the core of your general marketing efforts.
Websites can link to several other marketing channels. One of these is social media — you can relate to social media posts and connect your website visitors to your social media marketing. Another is email lead generation, which is a part of your online presence.
Our top choice for CMS and SEO (search engine optimization) systems combined would be Hubspot. Hubspot is a one-stop shop for all business and marketing needs. Their systems are broken down into five different hubs that target other areas of marketing.
Their Content Management System (CMS) allows you to easily create your website without a developer and has built-in SEO recommendations and tools to optimize your website.
4. Email Marketing Tools: Hubspot
All small businesses should have a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system. Just like your business website, your email marketing is critical. The purpose of your CRM tool is to capture and record high-value leads and convert them for your email campaigns.
By automating your email marketing, you will not have to spend the time and energy to sift through emails and respond individually. A good email marketing tool will track and send out specific emails for you.
Another feature that email marketing platforms usually integrate into their system is monitoring. For example, it can track if someone on your email list put something into their cart and left it there. The system will pick that up and send a reminder email to that lead.
Our top pick for a CRM/email marketing tool is Hubspot. With Hubspot as your marketing software, you can do everything discussed above. You can manage your pipeline with a visual dashboard and sort deals by name, owner, and amount.
Hubspot will log your sales activity automatically and track customer interactions through email, social media, or phone calls. You can also sync your platforms like Gmail and Outlook and see all the Google analytics about a customer, such as the lead, emails, interactions, and sales, in one place.
5. Social Media Tools: Canva
Building your social media presence is essential to business growth. You can make yourself present by posting relevant and consistent content. You must ensure that your content is eye-catching if seen on Instagram or Pinterest.
Usually, your best line of action would be to hire a graphic designer, but each design can add up to a high cost, so using a social media management tool like Canva would be ideal.
Canva allows you to choose from thousands of templates catered to every post type. So whether you want to create business cards, event invitations, agendas, menus, or just jazzing up some plain photos, Canva can do it. To use these templates, you just need to use the drag and drop options and replace existing images with your uploaded ones.
With Canva, you can customize your company’s logo and save it. They also have a plethora of stock photos for all categories, which you can use for free or paid.
This free social media designing tool is easy to use to engage your audience, build your brand, and create digital content to share.
6. Editing and Grammar Tools: Grammarly
Another tool small-business owners should invest in is editing and grammar. Having the most aesthetically pleasing website is no use if significant spelling and grammar errors exist. This is where having an automated tool to edit your website, content, blogs, or landing pages is imperative.
Our top choice for this tool is Grammarly. Grammarly does more than just spell check. Some unique features that make Grammarly worthwhile are highlighting sentences that are difficult to read so you can review them and make changes before posting.
It also has a plagiarism feature where you can copy and paste right into the tool, telling you which parts need more paraphrasing.
You can also download Grammarly onto your desktop for easy access across platforms.
What are some other small business marketing tools?
There are a few more small business marketing automation tools worth checking out. They include social media and marketing tools, SEO tools, internal messaging tools, virtual conferencing tools, calendar tools, video marketing tools, and data reporting and monitoring tools.
What are marketing tools?
Marketing tools are systems that are put in place so your business can run smoothly, generate more potential customers, make conversions, and track essential metrics.
Why does your small business need marketing tools?
Every marketing tool targets something different, but generally, they are used for similar purposes. Those purposes are saving your business time and effort, performing business analysis that helps inform business decisions, and connecting with other tools.
Businesses need to have marketing tools because then marketing can be automated. These tools automate human tasks you do not want to do or simply do not have the time to do. Automation can include updating your social media status, sending blast emails, and emailing potential leads.
There are many different options of marketing tools. Since they all do something different, you must be savvy about your business needs before choosing which marketing tools are most necessary.
The bottom line
You must evaluate your business needs and growth areas to choose the right marketing tools for your small business. Once you do that, you will be savvy in choosing what marketing tools you need most and which ones can wait.
Most marketing tools are geared toward the same outcomes, driving business sales and success. These marketing tools are supposed to make your lives easier as business owners through automation and easy-to-use features.
If you would like to learn more about business marketing, we are here to help.
Information provided on Entrepreneur Guide is for educational purposes only. Your financial situation is unique and the products and services we review may not be right for your circumstances. We do not offer financial advice, advisory or brokerage services, we do not recommend or advise individuals to buy or sell particular stocks or securities. Performance information may have changed since the time of publication. Past performance is not indicative of future results