Regardless of the industry you’re in, digital technology has made running a business a lot more efficient. Getting the right tools not only helps save you valuable time but also help you better interact with customers, clients, partners, or anyone else you might communicate with on a regular basis. The question from the marketing side involves what tools you need. Some of it will certainly depend on what your business is (B2B, B2C, Sales, or E-Commerce based), but many of the ones we recommend below are ones that most small businesses can and should take advantage of.

In terms of marketing, there are a TON of different tools. All in all, there are roughly 30 categories of different tools that we would classify for marketing purposes. Among them:

• • AD MANAGEMENT (Ad Espresso, etc.)
  • AD PLATFORMS (Google Ads, Programmatic Platforms, ConnectedTV/OTT)
  • AFFILIATE MANAGEMENT (LeadDyno)
  • ANALYTICS, CONVERSION TRAKCING, ATTRIBUTION (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Google Attribution 360, etc.)
  • BACKLINK ANALYSIS (Screaming Frog)
  • CONTENT DEVELOPMENT & COPYWRITING (Grammarly, BuzzSumo)
  • CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (WordPress, Drupal, Squarespace, Sitecore, etc.)
  • CONVERSION TRACKING (LinkTrackr, Thrive)
  • CRM (Salesforce, Hubspot)
  • DATA VISUALIZATION (Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Google Data Studio)
  • DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (Adobe Experience Manager, Bynder, Canto)
  • ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS (Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy)
  • EMAIL MARKETING AUTOMATION (Hubspot, Mailchimp, etc.)
  • FUNNEL BUILDERS (ClickFunnels, Unbounce)
  • GRAPHIC DESIGN (Adobe Creative Suite/Photoshop, Canva)
  • HEATMAP VISITOR TRACKING (HotJar)
  • LEAD GENERATION (OptinMonster, Omniconvert, Outreach.io)
  • PROJECT MANAGEMENT (Asana, Basecamp etc.)
  • SEO / SEARCH ADVERTISING / KEYWORD / COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE (SEMRush, Spyfu)
  • SOCIAL LISTENING (Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Falcon.io)
  • SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT & SCHEDULING (Hootsuite, Tweetdeck etc.)
  • SOCIAL VIDEO APPS (Lightricks suite)
  • SOFTWARE CONNECTIONS (Zapier)
  • STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY (Shutterstock, Getty, iStock)
  • SUBSCRIPTIONS (Content Management Institute, Wordstream, etc.)
  • SURVEY AND FORM BUILDERS (Survey Monkey)
  • VIDEO RECORDING & EDITING (Adobe Premiere Pro, Camtasia, Screenflow)
  • WEBINAR HOSTING (Zoom, GoToWebinar)
  • WEBSITE INTEGRATION / AI / LIVE CHAT (LivePerson, Elev.io, OptinMonster, Crisp, etc.)

The point of providing a full list of categories is that, hopefully, it can spark some additional thought or potential investment in tools that may help save you time, work more efficiently, provide more insight, earn more revenue, or save you money in the end. That said, some of these above categories are much more suitable for larger businesses, and others aren’t really needed unless you plan on getting super sophisticated in a particular area. Let’s dive into several categories we would break out as must-haves or nice-to-haves for the majority of small businesses.

The Must-Have Marketing Tool Categories for Smaller Businesses

• • Category No. 1: Content Management Systems. One thing we often stress to small businesses is that they own and can control their own website. For some, that might seem to be an obvious recommendation. But what happens to certain small businesses is that they hire a developer to basically build their own custom website. And then when they want to make changes, say a simple text adjustment, they can’t – without the developer’s help. That’s why building a website with a standard, out-of-the-box content management system makes the most sense. For the average small business, we would generally recommend platforms such as WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix as they are all either free or generally inexpensive solutions. The great thing about these CMS solutions that they will allow an average small business owner to create new pages and update existing ones relatively easily without needing outside help. In the beginning, it’s probably a good idea to have an agency help set up the design templates you need as well as make sure the copy is search optimized, but once you do that, you should be off and ready to update the site on your own.
    • One caveat: E-Commerce. If your business is strictly e-commerce, it probably makes more sense to go with solutions such as Shopify or WooCommerce (WordPress plugin), as you’ll want to have out-of-the-box best practices when it comes to store-focused home pages, product pages, search filtering, and cart and checkout etc.

• • Category No. 2: Email Marketing Automation. For many years, email has been ranked by marketers as the top ROI driver of all marketing channels.[1] That’s because those are audiences you’ve acquired to your list who a.) Already know you and your brand; and b.) Are often your best prospects. Yet, we know a number of small businesses that don’t take advantage of email marketing to stay top-of-mind with current or potential customers. Mailchimp, a basic email platform, costs as little as $11 / mo. for 500 contacts or less and $23/mo. for 1,500 contacts or less. Most platforms are easy for small businesses to use, too, and include tools to create easy branded email templates with the ability to add images, buttons and other customizable elements. You can also automate email journeys for specific actions such as downloads or other registrations. Regardless of the industry you’re in or whether your B2B or B2C, email should be a big part of your marketing efforts. Need more tips? See our 5 Little Things that matter for a Successful Email
    • One corollary: CRM. If you have a sales team, and you want to track and store data about your prospects, many small businesses consider a separate CRM (such as a Salesforce) that connects to their marketing automation platform. Or they buy a hybrid email marketing automation / CRM such as Hubspot. Either way you go, you’ll want to make sure any CRM stores basic website activity as well as email activity for the prospects you’re keeping the data on.   

• • Category No. 3: Graphic Design. If your small business is focused around graphic design, you’ll obviously use a number of specialty tools in this space, including Adobe Creative Suite/Photoshop, InDesign, or any number of other software platforms or subscriptions (Shutterstock, Getty etc.) that allow you to create beautiful visual imagery. For non-designers (everyone else), we would recommend you as a small business get Canva. At $12 per month, it may be the best investment you’ll make in anything related to visual design and marketing. Even without a designer, you can create professional-looking marketing collateral including:
    • Social media templates
    • Website and social media photography
    • Email headers and banners
    • Flyers and brochures
    • Professional Videos
    • Graphics and checklists

Because it has built-in templates, you don’t need a design, photography or video background. 

• • Category No. 4: Social Video Apps. This may seem to be a strange one to put as a must-have. But with video becoming more and more prevalent (more than 82 percent of all Internet traffic today is video[2]), it’s getting more and more crucial for small businesses to take advantage of this trend from a marketing perspective. In the past, in order to do a professional video, you probably needed to hire a crew or get someone with great post-production skills in Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro. But today, you can create great professional-looking video using a more template-driven social video apps. There are a bunch out there: Our favorite right now is Boosted by Lightricks, which at $69 per year is a steal. We typically combine the stock video we get from Canva with the templates in Boosted by Lightricks to create a bunch of different videos depending on the purpose. The app has hundreds of template options along with music so you can get the right mood. Need something else? Try other Lightricks options:
    • Videoleap
    • Photoleap
    • Motionleap

All are available in the Apple Store or the Google Play store.    

• • Category No. 5: Analytics, Conversion Tracking, Attribution. At the very least, we recommend installing Google Analytics on your website if you haven’t already. If you’re a small business, why pay for Adobe Analytics or more sophisticated analytics programs when Google Analytics comes free after all? GA4 (the latest version) is a very powerful tool that can connect to other systems easily, especially when it comes to data visualization. If you do any Google Ads, Google Analytics is generally a must, as you should implement conversion tracking (a.k.a. event or goal tracking) with it too. That way, you can understand what channels and behavior are driving your marketing performance. Google Analytics will help you measure the following key areas:
    • Acquisition:
      • What channels users came from (to get to your website)
      • What terms they used in search to find you (Search Console)
      • What geographies (countries, states etc.) your users came from
    • Behavior:
      • Unique visitors
      • Page views
      • Popular pages
      • Searches performed on your internal search appliance
    • Conversion
      • Leads generated
      • Purchases completed
      • Other website goals completed

One corollary: Attribution. If you can afford to invest in a marketing attribution platform, it’s worth it. Marketing attribution is basically a way to get a complete view of all touch points in a buyer journey that’s unique to every user who converts – either through a purchase (B2C e-commerce for example) or as a lead (B2B marketing primarily). Out of the box, Google’s GA4 will show “some” attribution but it’s not really as complete as other systems. The reason attribution matters is that you can see what the influential “touches” are. For example, consider the following scenario: You run an ad in, say, paid search, where someone who sees it, visits your website. Let’s say, they don’t convert right away (typical behavior). But they sign up for a newsletter. When you send them the newsletter, they click on it and go to your website, but again, don’t convert. Then, at a certain point when they’re ready to buy, they do a search for your company and make a purchase. If you just looked at analytics, you’ll see an individual who converted from organic search. But it won’t necessarily show you all the touches that brought the individual to that point. That’s what an attribution system will do. Indeed, in many cases, that first touch (the paid search ad) was the most important because it made that individual aware of your brand.     

The Nice-to-Have Marketing Tool Categories for Smaller Businesses

For these categories, we would also say the tools can apply broadly across a range of businesses.

• • Heatmap Visitor Tracking. Heatmaps are especially useful for websites that play a central role in driving your business, especially if you have an e-commerce component or drive a lot of leads through your site. A heatmap will tell you what areas on a specific page that individuals are clicking on a lot (showing that area as being “hot.”). Most of the tools here, such as the most popular one, HotJar, also provide mouse-tracking studies that look at how specific individuals scroll or click through different pages. The data is super-informative especially if you have a need to continuously optimize your website.

• • SEO, Keyword, and Competitive Intelligence. You can learn a lot about your competition and the search traffic they get by investing in a basic SEO software platform. The most common are tools such as:
    • Spyfu (which we use and love)
    • SEMRush (another tool we’ve used and liked)
    • Moz (which we haven’t used but have heard good things about)

All of them allow you the ability to see the searches bringing individuals to a competitor’s site, the volume of search traffic each gets, and competitive data on paid search as well.

• • Social Media Management & Scheduling. If your business doesn’t do a lot in social media, then you probably don’t need a tool here. But if you do use social to promote your business regularly, it pays to have a social media management and scheduling tool, which connects to your individual social accounts, and can basically allow you to create posts and schedule them at any time of day, manage incoming messages and respond to customer queries, all with the platform. There are a ton of options here. But we would go with Hootsuite, which we use.

Conclusion

We hope this has been helpful. As always, if you need help with any digital marketing, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re happy to schedule a free consultation with you to go over your needs and recommend the right solution for you.

[1] According to eMarketer (2018)

[2] From Cisco Systems