6 essential marketing tools for small businesses

Businesses use a wide variety of tools to reach their marketing goals. The types of tools that can provide the most value for small businesses in particular fall into the following 6 categories:

Websites are arguably the most important online tool for small businesses. Your website is where you provide important operational information and make sure potential customers can discover your business. Plus, if you offer online ordering (which is smart to consider, if you don't already), it also serves as a critical sales engine. Creating and managing a website for your small business is much easier if you've got the right tools. These can include:

• Content-management systems and website builders. You no longer need to know how to code to create or update a website. A content-management system or website builder makes web design much easier, regardless of your technical expertise.

  
  

• Landing page tools. These types of tools help you build landing pages that are designed to drive conversions. This could include a page to submit contact information, or a page to complete a purchase. A good small business landing page tool will provide optimised templates proven to encourage customers to take action. They also typically offer A/B testing features to help you evaluate which strategies work best. From there, you can gain data on what your visitors respond to, broken down by copy, layout, call to action (CTA) or something as granular as button colour.

  
  

• Website analytics. Website analytics tools provide important insights into the number of people visiting your website, how they find you, and ways they behave (for example, the amount of time they spend on certain pages and how quickly they leave your site after arriving). This level of insight can uncover important trends and areas where you might need to optimise your user experience.

SEO is the marketing tactic focused on improving your organic – or unpaid – discoverability on search engines. This is an important area to invest in, as many people turn to search engines when researching products or businesses. SEO tools provide features that help you create and execute a strategy to improve search engine rankings. SEO tools can:

• Suggest specific steps you can take to improve your website's on-page SEO. For example, these tools might point out places to add internal links on pages that point to other key pages on your site

• Provide keyword data so you know which terms to target in your SEO efforts. This information can inform the copy you use on landing pages, or even topics to explore in your content marketing efforts

• Help you track rankings for each keyword in one place

• Show who your main competitors are for each relevant keyword

• Share data on how many other websites link back to yours, which SEO experts call "backlinks"

• Provide backlink data on your top competitors, which can inspire you to build new relationships with bloggers, journalists and contacts at other publishing platforms

Word of mouth has always been important to the success of small businesses, and it has become increasingly easier to access as review platforms proliferate. Online reputation-management tools can simplify the process of monitoring your reviews and help you stay on top of what people are saying about your business. With these tools, you can:

• Monitor mentions of your brand across various review sites and social media platforms
• Track mentions of your top competitors
• Reply to reviews across different sites in one platform

Developing an active presence on multiple social platforms is time-consuming. And, for your time commitment to pay off, you need to reach the right people with messaging that appeals to them. Social media marketing tools can streamline the process, allowing you to manage your social presence across multiple channels in less time. Social media marketing tools for small businesses fall into 2 main categories:

• Social media platforms. For each social media channel you invest in, the platform itself will provide features to help you make the most of it. At the very least, you'll have access to analytics to understand how your posts are performing. And, if you've got the budget to support paid ads, you can tap into targeting options to make sure every pound is going towards reaching an audience you care about.

  
  

• Social media management tools. Social media management tools let you monitor and post on multiple social media networks from one place. Depending on the tool you choose, you might also have access to insights that can recommend optimal times of day for posting and highlight the types of creative that engage your audience most.

Email marketing is an effective method for staying in touch with consumers who have opted in to hearing from your brand. Email marketing platforms can take your communication to the next level with a wide range of valuable features. Some of these include:

• Design tools that help you easily create emails that look visually consistent and professional
• Audience list management and segmentation
• Automation features for longer-term marketing campaigns
• Analytics to help you understand how well your emails perform and identify areas for improvement

Third-party delivery platforms are a convenient way to add new delivery options for your business or expand those you offer now. Just by joining a third-party delivery platform, you can gain exposure to new potential customers through an online marketplace. In many cases, you can compound this exposure with in-app marketing tools that flex to meet your goals. These tools can include:

• Ad options to boost your visibility and encourage higher order values
• Review-management features that help you engage with customers
• Analytics to track your results on the platform and identify ways to improve