One of the best things about digital marketing is that it levels the playing field for startups and small businesses. These are businesses that offer amazing products and services but are short on the budget and resources required to market them.
You don’t need a multimillion-dollar marketing budget to win more customers. Digital marketing offers high returns on your investment whether you’re bootstrapping or actually investing cash to outsource services from SEO companies.
Apart from offering great ROIs for smaller budgets, there are many marketing tools you can use to take some of the workload off your shoulders. These tools are valuable for small businesses that don’t have the budget to invest in big-time digital marketing efforts.
If you’re interested in starting your digital marketing journey, make sure you have the following tools:
Google Analytics
This free software offers valuable insight into the people who visit your website and what they do once they get there. It’s best used with Google Search Console, which is another free tool that identifies any problems for your website, as well as monitors site traffic.
Some of the data that Google Analytics make available to you include the following:
- The total number of visitors to your website by day, week, month or any timeline you choose
- Where these visitors are coming from — organic search, referrals from other websites, social media, paid ads or direct
- The interest and demographics of your users
- The keywords people are using to find your website
- How much time each user spends on your website and the pages that they visit
All of this information can help you optimize your website and marketing campaigns.
Buzzsumo
An effective content strategy does not take wild stabs in the dark. For example, if your service is earrings and ear piercing, do you think simply posting a 1000-word article about ear piercing and ear piercing aftercare would be enough to attract customers?
Learn more about the content you should post. Use Buzzsumo to see which content is trending across social media based on searched topics. After your search, analyze the results to see which topics are appealing to your target audience and how you can write about them.
You can also use Buzzsumo to search your domain and see which of your content is performing best, as well as see which websites are sharing and linking to it.
Ahrefs
Modern SEO focuses on building organic and relevant backlinks. Based on the number of quality links directed to your content, search engines will know how trustworthy and authoritative your website is. Because of this, you’ll need an off-page backlinking strategy.
Ahrefs supports your strategy by offering a competitive analysis on how similar businesses are using backlinking to their advantage. The platform will then tell you how much backlinks you’ll need to compete and push your ranking on the SERPs.
It also lists down keywords your competitors are ranking for in the search results, as well as give you more keyword ideas to help propel your content to the top of the rankings.
HubSpot
If you are running multiple marketing campaigns across different channels, managing them all poses a challenge. Plus, figuring out what works or not can add to your stress levels.
Reduce your stress by using HubSpot, an all-in-one marketing software solution that brings all your marketing channels together and optimizes them for more traffic, better ROI and a higher conversion rate.
HubSpot includes optimized templates that are ideal for creating landing pages. It also comes with features like user action events and live chat, which improves your engagement and converts more visitors into customers.
Other HubSpot features include:
- Optimized landing pages
- Content optimization tools
- Marketing automation
- Email templates
- Social media management
- Analytics
HubSpot’s full version can be expensive but small businesses with lower budgets can get started with the basic package.
Canva
Creating high-quality and relevant content isn’t always the answer to grabbing your readers’ attention. You need powerful visuals to do the job. Quality and eye-catching photos keep your readers interested. These photos can be highly-engaging infographics, colorful graphs and motivational images.
You don’t have to be a Photoshop pro to produce all of these. Canva is here to save the day.
Canva offers multiple image options. You can use the photos and templates featured on the site or upload and publish your own. This tool comes with easy-to-use drag and drop features, as well as provides you with a variety of color palettes, photo editing options and custom image sizes, which are suitable for different types of social media platforms.
Digital marketing is easier when you’re working with the right tools. Give your small business a competitive edge by having these platforms in your toolbox .
