Rely on This Set of Marketing Tools to Grow Your Small Business

Whether you’re starting a Shopify store, becoming a freelancer, or running a health coaching business; you’re going to be starting out on a small budget.

Fortunately, most marketing tools are extremely simple to use. Better still, any big-name tool will have plenty of tutorials to help you out.

There are so many tools these days that it can be hard to sift through your options. Over the past 8 years, 4 jobs, and 3 internships, I’ve trialed tons of marketing tools. I’m here to give you my top picks to help you get the ball rolling!

Use Google Analytics to measure web performance.

Installing this simple tracking code on your website is free. It can help you:

• See how much of your traffic comes from search engines, campaigns, or people directly typing in your web address

• See which page paths people tend to follow

• Determine which pages bring in the most traffic

• Determine on which pages people don’t take action

• Track the number of forms completed on your website

• Measure the performance of advertising

Breaking down Organic, Referral, and Direct Traffic. I could also see campaign traffic if I was running ads or sending email newsletters!

See which pages people navigate through in a visual flow chart.

Google Analytics is a no brainer. It’s the most powerful free marketing tool available.

Use MailChimp for email communication.

Start out with a free plan and increase as you grow your customer base.

You can import your contacts and maintain your lists, build and send emails based on well-tested templates, build forms for your website, automatically send emails based on web behavior, and more.

Starting out, many small businesses simply use Mailchimp to house their newsletter lists and stay in touch.

Even if your newsletters aren’t generating sales, they’re a great starting point to test email templates and messaging on your audience. Plus, you’ll be able to quickly notify your contacts of coupons, sales, and business announcements.

Use Buffer for social media posts.

Social media is an important free platform to get the word out about your business. It can be exhausting to post frequently to many different channels.

Buffer saves you time by using a “queue” where you can set time slots for each platform. For instance, create a post slot for Facebook at 3:05 each day. Create posts slots for Twitter at 11:00am and 8:00pm each day. 

Next, create a post in one central place. Distribute it to each social channel’s queue in one click.

Buffer is free to hold a few posts in your queue at a time. As you post more or add more social media channels, the price increases. You also get additional analytic capabilities with certain tiers.

Use AHREFs to monitor SEO weaknesses and opportunities.

AHREFs comes at a price, but it’s a great tool to help you grow organic traffic. Set up automatic web scans to find issues, monitor backlinks, and keep track of keyword rankings.

My favorite part of AHREFs is the keyword tracker. In one chart, you can see the keyword, it’s search volume, competition, where you rank, which page is ranking, and its movement over time.

I use this chart to find keywords with mediocre rankings, low competition, and high search volume. Then, I will optimize the ranking page towards these keywords. AHREFs helps me work smarter not harder!

Use Canva to fill the design gaps.

Canva is a tool that empowers non-designers to design! Access tons of free icons and graphics, templates, and fonts. At $10/month, access even more icons, graphics, templates, and fonts.

Of course, you’ll need to rely on a designer for professional quality. I wouldn’t skimp on something like my logo. But Canva gives me the freedom to design ads and Instagram posts as a marketer who doesn’t know photoshop.

For example, I make my cover images in Canva so I can rapidly create ebooks. All I did was choose the color and fill in the text!

Check out my free Email Marketing Guide

$100/month for all of these tools!

While AHREFs starts at $100/month, all of the other tools have free plans. You can get a full marketing suite for pretty cheap. In fact, you might want to hold off on AHREFs until Google Analytics shows your organic traffic is picking up.

Feel free to shop around for industry-specific tools if you have unique needs. Overall, this toolset is versatile for any small business.

The good news about each of these tools is that they can scale with your business. As you need new features, simply move to a new tier. And once you graduate from these, you’ll be able to rely on partners for implementation.