An Ultimate List of the Best Marketing Tools for Small Businesses
Good marketing takes good marketing tools. I’ll even say that good marketing tools are essential for the success of your marketing strategy. Every business is unique, so there is no one answer for the “ultimate best” marketing tool for any purpose. But if you were to ask me for the best marketing tools for small…
Good marketing takes good marketing tools. I’ll even say that good marketing tools are essential for the success of your marketing strategy. Every business is unique, so there is no one answer for the “ultimate best” marketing tool for any purpose.
But if you were to ask me for the best marketing tools for small businesses, the ones on this list would be my top picks, based on my experience with (quite literally) dozens of marketing tools across my career.
I included tools for some of the most important aspects of marketing, such as website building and social media, and the role they play in your overall marketing ecosystem, from building credibility to driving sales.
Without further ado, review my list of the best small business marketing tools.
Best tools for building an online brand presence and reputation
Building an online presence and reputation is the first step in digital marketing. You need to put your brand out there and make your business known before audiences can be interested in you. The tools in this section can help do just that, from helping build websites to managing your online reviews and local listings.
WordPress: Best website builder for blogging
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Squarespace: Best for visually branded websites
BrightLocal: Best for managing local listings
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NiceJob: Best review management platform
How I evaluated the best tools for building brand presence and reputation
Pricing: 30%. Platforms with free plans and money-back guarantees have higher scores, as well as plans that start at $15 or less per month.
Brand presence features: 20%. These include website-building and blogging features, SEO tools, brand customization tools, and the ability to set a custom domain.
Brand credibility features: 20%. These include tools for collecting, managing, and displaying reviews, setting up local SEO keywords, and managing local listings.
Customer support: 10%. This includes customer service hours and the available customer support avenues (live chat, email, and phone).
Expert score: 20%. I evaluated each platform’s features, ease of use, value for money, and overall marketing usefulness based on my experience.
Best tools for audience engagement
Marketing is all about engaging audiences — keeping in touch with them and staying on their radar, beyond just making your brand known. As a customer, you may have already experienced this firsthand when interacting with brands on social media or receiving email campaigns from them. This section covers the best tools I’ve used for audience engagement.
Mailchimp: Best email marketing tool
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Later Social: Best tool for planning and managing social media content
SproutSocial: Best for monitoring social media comments and mentions
How I evaluated the best tools for audience engagement
Pricing: 30%. Platforms with free plans and starting costs of less than $15 were scored higher, as were platforms with money-back guarantees and no cost increases.
Content features: 20%. These include social media scheduling and email marketing tools, a content calendar, content templates, and AI content creation tools.
Research and engagement features: 20%. These include audience and competitor insights, content analytics like impressions and engagement rates, keyword trackers, and a content management platform.
Customer support: 10%. This includes customer service hours and the available customer support avenues (live chat, email, and phone).
Expert score: 20%. I evaluated each platform’s features, ease of use, value for money, and overall marketing usefulness based on my experience.
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Best tools for collecting leads and driving sales
Building a brand and keeping audiences engaged is all well and good, but when it comes to making a sale, you’ll need good tools for that too. I evaluated the best marketing tools for small businesses, specifically to generate those leads and help secure sales through effective ad targeting, lead capture, and lead nurturing.
Klaviyo: Best for personalized product recommendations and encouraging repeat purchases
Hubspot: Best for nurturing leads into customers
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Zoho Landing Page: Best for collecting leads through website popups
Plai: Best ad management software
How I evaluated the best tools for collecting leads and driving sales
Pricing: 30%. Platforms with free plans, money-back guarantees, and starting costs of less than $50 get higher scores.
General features: 20%. General features for driving sales include forms for capturing leads, audience targeting by demographic and interest, personalized marketing messages, and lead pipelines and workflows.
Niche features: 20%. These are beyond-the-basic features like a CRM platform, automated workflows, and a revenue or ROI tracker.
Customer support: 10%. This includes customer service hours and the available customer support avenues (live chat, email, and phone).
Expert score: 20%. I evaluated each platform’s features, ease of use, value for money, and overall marketing usefulness based on my experience.
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Best tools for customer loyalty and lifetime value
Any good marketer will tell you that marketing doesn’t end after generating a sale. With so many brands competing for the same audience, building loyalty and lifetime value among your customers is just as essential — if not even more so. These involve offering programs and rewards to customers, as well as responding to their reviews. Below are the best tools I’ve found to help with those.
Loopy Loyalty: Best for building loyalty programs
TrueReview: Best for automatically requesting reviews
How I evaluated the best tools for collecting leads and driving sales
Pricing: 30%. Platforms with free plans, money-back guarantees, and a less than $50 starting cost get higher scores.
Loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV) features: 20%. These include tools for building loyalty programs, offering rewards, and requesting reviews. I also gave higher scores for customer insights and built-in automation.
Personalization and customization features: 20%. I gave extra points to tools that can be location-specific and allow customized designs and personalized messages.
Customer support: 10%. This includes customer service hours and the available customer support avenues (live chat, email, and phone).
Expert score: 20%. I evaluated each platform’s features, ease of use, value for money, and overall marketing usefulness based on my experience.
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Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
The best marketing strategy for small businesses will depend on your unique needs, objectives, and brand identity. For instance, if your primary objective is to build brand awareness and a good reputation, a good marketing strategy would include investing in SEO by building a website and publishing blogs to increase your visibility on search engines.
If it’s to nurture existing leads into customers, email and social media campaigns would be helpful. Meanwhile, location-specific marketing like local listings and out-of-home (OOH) advertising can help increase foot traffic to a physical store.
Some of the most popular marketing tools are WordPress and Squarespace for building websites, BrightLocal for managing local listings, Later Social and Sprout Social for social media management, Mailchimp for email marketing, Klaviyo for building automation workflows, and HubSpot for general lead management and nurturing.
But these are just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the other best marketing tools for small businesses (in my opinion) are NiceJob for managing an online reputation, Plai for managing digital ads, and Loopy Loyalty for building loyalty programs.
The best advertising method will depend on the nature of your small business and your main advertising goals. For instance, Google and social media ads will be effective for e-commerce businesses, while traditional advertising methods, such as posters and billboards, will fare better for businesses with a physical location.
It’ll also depend on your objectives. For instance, if you want to build brand awareness, broadcast ads like TV and billboards can get the word out. Meanwhile, more time-specific goals like collecting leads for a holiday campaign will be a better fit for digital ads, which have specific campaign lengths.
Bottom line
Every business is unique, but the 13 tools above are my personal “best of the best” picks and the ones I’ll always recommend to any small business owner or beginner to marketing.
They’ve all been tested and thoroughly researched based on the Fit Small Business methodology, reviews from other users, and my experience using them as a digital marketer, and grouped according to their general function. Aside from their effectiveness, I also specifically chose the most cost-effective and easy-to-navigate ones, specifically for small businesses.
Audrey has over six years of marketing experience for startups and small businesses, handling roles from website building to social media management. She also worked in agencies growing online brand presence and holds a BA in Broadcasting from Mapua Malayan Colleges Laguna (summa cum laude). Audrey has been writing about marketing for Fit Small Business for nearly three years and has also contributed to Marketing Interactive, Noissue, and SnippetMedia, focusing on small business, marketing, and lifestyle news.
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