With limited resources and staff, small business owners need to find ways to work smarter to grow their customer base and revenue stream. One particularly attractive opportunity for becoming “smarter” is through tools that make a business’s marketing and communication effort more efficient and effective.

Fortunately, there are a number of great marketing tools to help small business owners to do just that.

Optimize Marketing with These Tools

Before a business undertakes any marketing initiatives, it should be prepared to measure and analyze the results and impact of those efforts. One (free) tool for accomplishing this is Google Analytics, which allows businesses to track website activity and engagement, determine ad click conversion rates, build a demographic picture of a website audience and measure bottom line results of digital marketing programs.

For businesses looking to connect with a professional audience, LinkedIn can be an effective platform for reaching targeted audiences, share content to establish a business’s expertise and create engagement with an audience.

Of course, LinkedIn is only one element of a comprehensive social media marketing program. Businesses will be best served by visibility on multiple platforms. Managing these multiple social media platforms, however, can become unwieldy and time consuming. That’s why a tool like Buffer can be so essential. Buffer can automate the task of posting content to multiple media sites, allowing users to add three social media channels and schedule up to 10 posts per week.

One of the best ways to earn credibility is by being viewed as an expert by reputable public media outlets. Business owners can connect with journalists through Help a Reporter Out (HARO)—a platform to help journalists identify qualified sources.

Businesses also want to make sure their marketing communications are professional, attention grabbing and effective. Two providers go a long way in helping small businesses look like the big guys. Typeform offers forms, surveys and quizzes for clients and website visitors to help owners learn ways to improve a business’s product and service offerings, while Canva offers a simple-to-use design platform that will bring high impact imagery to marketing materials.

Finally, don’t forget email marketing, which continues to have a higher ROI than organic search, content marketing and paid search.¹ A platform like Constant Contact can help a business put email outreach on autopilot, which means welcome emails to new customers, thank you emails, reminders, and timely communications can be easily managed and tracked.

As business owners search for the right tools for their needs, many service providers offer multiple capabilities, which can reduce the number of platforms required to execute on a comprehensive marketing and communication program.

Sources:

1. https://www.superoffice.com/blog/email-marketing-strategy/

Please reference disclosures: https://blog.americanportfolios.com/disclosures/