20 Marketing Tools for a Small Business & Their Best Feature
We’ll outline how to use the best feature of each tool so that you can get started on delivering some real marketing success today. Sounds good? Let’s get into it. Google Analytics is a free tool that provides a 360-degree...
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There are thousands of marketing tools, but only a few fit the bill for small businesses. Some you may already know; others you should consider using. We’ll outline how to use the best feature of each tool so that you can get started on delivering some real marketing success today. Sounds good? Let’s get into it. Google Analytics is a free tool that provides a 360-degree view of the performance of your website. It is suitable for tracking sales, conversions, the best source of visitor traffic, how people interact with your website, and insights into your audience. The mobile app provides these reports instantly in the palm of your hand. With Google sunsetting the old version of Google Analytics, here’s a beginner’s guide to setting up GA4. Follow these steps: This view ensures you compare all metrics with the previous time period. Intercom is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps businesses build, automate, and scale customer relationships. It includes email marketing, chatbots, social media management, and CRM features. Intercom is suitable if you’re looking to answer visitors’ questions via live chat, keep them interested in your products or services, and turn them into customers. ConvertFlow is an online marketing platform that helps you convert website visitors using CTAs, landing pages, forms, quizzes, surveys, and personalization. It is suitable for most websites, including e-commerce, service, and software businesses. According to Statista, e-commerce conversion rates vary between 0.6% and 5.5%—or expressed differently, around 94% of website visitors leave without taking any action. You can use visitor segmentation to help you identify who visits your site, ask them one or two questions to determine what they’re interested in, and provide them with a CTA to encourage them to enter your sales funnel. Before getting started, ensure the ConvertFlow script is added to your website’s <head> section. ConvertKit is an easy-to-use online marketing platform that helps small businesses and individuals grow their audiences using email marketing, forms, and landing pages. Its landing page feature works well for small creative businesses, such as those run by marketers, coaches, writers, etc. To use the landing page feature, follow these steps: Calendly is an online scheduling tool that allows business owners to create appointments, meetings, and events, send invitations, and manage bookings. Calendly is ideal for those who provide professional, IT, recruitment, beauty, and marketing services. Revue is an editorial newsletter service owned by Twitter itself. Connecting Twitter with Revue is suitable for any business that wants to encourage users or followers to subscribe to its additional content by clicking its profile and the “subscribe” button. 📣 We’ve got big news. (You’re really going to like this.) Starting today, your followers can subscribe to Revue newsletters directly from Tweets in their timeline. This is already enabled for all Revue writers on desktop and mobile web, with iOS and Android to follow soon. ✨ pic.twitter.com/6eBxvGWyxH TryInteract is an interactive marketing tool that helps you create online quizzes that generate new subscribers and leads, segment your audience, and drive website traffic. TryInteract is best suited for those building brand awareness or have pages with less commercial intent that don’t get any conversions. Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer identifies millions of keywords and topics, their ranking difficulty, and their traffic potential. It is suitable for small businesses that wish to find and target low-competition and easy-to-rank opportunities that drive more organic search traffic. This involves quite a few steps and requires an understanding of some concepts and metrics. Your best bet is to follow this step-by-step video tutorial: Calculoid lets you build and add calculators to your website with little technical know-how. Its calculator templates suit businesses that require custom quote forms. Ahrefs’ Content Explorer is a search engine containing billions of pages, all with SEO and social metrics. The Content Explorer feature is suitable for small businesses that wish to earn backlinks without investing in email outreach campaigns. Trello is a project management platform similar to Basecamp or Asana. It lets you create boards with lists, add cards to those lists, assign tasks to other users, track progress, and collaborate with others. It is suitable for anyone who manages or is involved in digital marketing or SEO campaigns. Canva is an online tool where you can create images without being a graphic designer. The Content Planner tool from Canva allows you to create and schedule posts ahead of time for your social channels from within its design platform. This is ideal for companies that want to repurpose their website content or simply grow their social media presence. Microsoft Clarity, similar to Crazy Egg and Hotjar, is a free online tool that helps you analyze, understand, and improve your site performance and user experience using heatmaps and user recordings. It helps website owners understand how users found their websites, what they did, what they did next, and why they left the website. Grammarly is an online grammar checker, spell checker, and plagiarism detector; it can also help with your writing style, sentence structure, and word choice. Grammarly is useful for people who want their website copy to be clear and well written. Wordable is a tool that allows you to export your content created in Google Docs to your WordPress or HubSpot website, which has saved Ahrefs a ton of time. - Do you write your content in Google Docs? - Does your blog run on WordPress? I hope you’re using @wordable_io 🔥 then, because if not - you’re sesiously missing out. Our content team at @ahrefs has been using this tool for at least 2 years now and it SAVED US TONS OF TIME! It is suitable for anyone who regularly produces and publishes blog posts and articles. ✅ Clean HTML, remove <span> & <font> tags Otter.ai records and transcribes audio conversations and meetings on your desktop or mobile device by using artificial intelligence. Interviewing and recording customer interviews have helped me write better copy for the customers’ service pages. Otter.ai provides better playback and editing features than “voice typing” with Google Docs; you can press the “play” button to listen back and edit any copy errors. Google Forms is a useful, free tool for creating survey questions and distributing and analyzing your survey results. You’ll need a good-sized audience, such as your email list or social media following. Let’s say you want to survey others about Google Ads. Here’s what to do: Canva has hundreds of predesigned checklist templates you can customize for your customers (without being a design expert). A large part of Ahrefs’ success has been attributed to our educational content. Our training academy features courses on using Ahrefs, how to grow your traffic, SEO training, and the best of our YouTube videos. In total, we have over 20 hours of educational content. BrightLocal provides a suite of online marketing tools for local businesses that help them rank high on local search results, deliver accurate business information, and generate and manage customer reviews. The reputation management feature is suitable for any business with a multi-channel presence that wants to generate more positive reviews of its products, services, and brand. We’ve chosen ways to help you improve your marketing game; pick the marketing tools that work for you and use our suggestions to implement their best features. Got any questions about using these tools? Ping me on Twitter.Pricing
Price: $0How to view monthly comparison reports with Google Analytics
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Price range: from $74 per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Select OperatorSelect QualificationChoose data fieldsAdd response ruleshttps://youtu.be/a3x3uEHdGbEPricing
Price range: $0–$300 per monthFree tier: yesHow to use visitor segmentation and a CTA
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Price range: $15–$2,599 per month, depending on the number of subscribersFree tier: yesHow to use it
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Price range: $0–$20 per user, per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Log inCreate > Event TypeCreate a one-on-one or group eventProvide event name, location, and instructionsSet the event date, time, and scheduleSet additional options such as invitee questions, workflows, notifications, and confirmation pageTurn the event onSelect Account > Share your links > Choose the option to email or embed on your websitehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8qzy0UUXcPricing
Price: $0How to use it
Sign in to Revue with your Twitter loginSelect Account Settings > Integrations > Connect Now (under the Twitter logo)Click Create and write out a subject line for your first newsletterCopy/paste or write the body copy of your email newsletterPreview itSchedule itShare itRepeat steps #4 to #8Pricing
Price range: $29–$209 per monthFree tier: noHow to use it
Create New QuizSelect a category from the filterHover over template > Preview > Use TemplateCustomize the quiz colorChange the quiz questions and answersClick the Lead Generation option to connect quiz respondents and answers with your CRM or marketing platformChoose PublishYou can share the quiz link in an email campaign, in a social post, or as a website post or announcement barhttps://youtu.be/5d_QYhloWLgPricing
Price range: $99–$999 per monthFree tier: noHow to use it
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Price range: $0–$99 per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Open Keywords ExplorerSearch for “calculator”Go to the Matching terms report and apply filters (words related to your business, KD, etc)
Get relevant ideas for calculatorsSign in to CalculoidCreate a new calculatorChoose a relevant templateCustomize the fields and calculationsAdd submission form (if you wish to capture leads)Publish to your webpage using the embed code or WordPress pluginhttps://youtu.be/C3_iYuUh5HMPricing
Price range: $99–$999 per monthFree tier: noHow to use it
Use this report link or go to Content Explorer, enter keyword AND (“statistics” OR “checklist”), and select “In title”; remember to replace “keyword” with a seed keywordSort by Referring DomainsSelect Exclude HomepagesUse any other filters, e.g., I filtered by DR 20–30 and found 111 referring domains to an “SEO checklist for lawyers”Identify a common theme among pagesCreate page content containing the most frequent statistics or checklist items (refer to Canva checklist instructions below)
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Price range: $0–$17.50 per user, per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Register or log inCreate a new boardCustomize the boardAdd colleagues or clientsBuild a workflowAdd tasks and to-do itemsSet deadlinesRepeat for the next projecthttps://youtu.be/l3F3l3psqXYPricing
Price range: $0–$12.99 per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Go to Canva Content PlannerPress “+” next to a dateSelect a graphic you have already created or create a designChoose a destination, e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etcWrite a captionSchedule postRepeathttps://youtu.be/ebqqPnMEZwk?t=328Pricing
Price: $0How to use it
Sign up or log inGo to settings, copy the code, and add it to your website’s <head> sectionLeave for a few days until data has been collected and return to ClarityLook at the heatmaps of top pages and see how far users scroll down the page or compare different page versions and see how users scroll and clickShare with your web team or developers and ask them to implement solutions to any identified problems
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Price range: $0–$12.50 per user, per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Create a Grammarly account or log inSelect AppsClick the Chrome Store link and install the extensionClick the icon in your browser and change the settings to suitGo to the program where you have written your contentClick the icon and action the suggestions
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Price range: $49–$999 per monthFree tier: noHow to use it
Log in and connect to Google DocsConnect your websiteImport and export your documents
✅ Auto Table of Contents anchor ID links
✅ Resize, compress, and upload images
✅ Optimize image file names & alt text attributes
✅ Nofollow and/or open links in a new tab
✅ Bulk exports in 1-click
✅ https://t.co/rz0qsumZ4t pic.twitter.com/FqxDwtuyMuPricing
Price range: $12.99–$30 per monthFree tier: yesHow to use it
Log in or registerSelect RecordPress the “stop” button when you are finishedWhen the conversation is processed, press the “play” button to listen back and edit any copy errorshttps://youtu.be/mkF1cE7ARTEPricing
Price: $0How to use it
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Price range: $0–$12.99 per monthFree tier: yesHow to create a linkable asset with Canva
Visit Canva templates here or hereUse the filters to find a template and open it upAdd your checklist items and descriptionsChange the colors and fonts to match your brandDownload, share with customers, or add to your webpage
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Price: $0How to do it
Upload your video to your YouTube accountDesign and add your thumbnail to your video (use a Canva template)Press the “share” button underneath the videoCopy the link or the embed codeAdd to your webpage
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Price range: $8–$79 per monthFree tier: noHow to use the reputation management feature
Customize your templateSet up email and SMS that go to customers asking for reviewsAdd review sites, e.g., Google My Business, Facebook, BBB, TripAdvisor, OpenTable, Yelp, Trustpilot, etcImport customer details and send email/SMS to ask for a reviewCreate a list or carousel widget and add it to your website to display all reviewshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G9BLDVAXHg&t=1200sFinal thoughts
