Best Online Small Business Marketing Tools Marketers Swear By

In the beginning, marketing was expensive. If you wanted to look like a real business you had to throw money at designers, writers and technical people to do even the simplest things. The problem was, small business owners and entrepreneurs didn’t know about them. That’s why I created DIYMarketers — to show you how to do BIG marketing on a small budget using the best low cost marketing tools.

But over the last decade or so, there has been such a proliferation of wonderful tools and resources for small business owners that the pendulum has swung the other way and folks are having a heck of a time deciding on what tools to use, how much to spend and how to use them.

On this page, I’m sharing the best small business marketing tools that I’ve found, along with recommendations from our community of DIY Marketers.

Website Hosting

Bet you didn’t think your website hosting would be a marketing tool — but It is. A healthy site is a profitable site. And the best way to keep your site healthy is to have it hosted with a company that is large enough to support you if and when your site goes down (which somehow always happens on a holiday or in the middle of the night).

WordPress Themes

Email Marketing Tools

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a giant in the marketing automation space. It can handle everything from email newsletters to customer behavior tracking.

This all-in-one tool can be used to manage workflows that are personalized to each customer. You’ll have access to important KPIs and customer data that you can use to inform your campaigns. It has a built-in automation library where you can choose from dozens of features. These include a CRM, landing page builder, SMS marketing, and even social media ads. You can use these to control customer touchpoints from one place–saving you time and money. 

The interface is sleek, well-designed, and incredibly user-friendly. Even someone without a great deal of technical knowledge will have no trouble learning how to use it. There’s something for every budget.

They have four subscription plans, ranging from $9/month to $229/month. This makes it a great option for freelancers and enterprises alike.

Dustin Ray, IncFile

Send X

Save time and money by automating your campaigns with Send X as a marketing tool. This way, you will ensure your audience engages with the right content at the right time to generate the most conversions. With segmentation, such as separate lists or drip campaigns, the campaigns can be linked seamlessly. It is also fully customizable, easy to use, and you can import your contacts from a CSV file directly.

Haley Wood, The Look

Raven

Part of the challenge of our marketing research was we needed a separate tool for every facet of our campaign analysis, but one tool that made our lives a lot easier was Raven. 

There are many software programs out there that can provide you with information on every aspect of marketing, but they are usually done in spreadsheet formats that are difficult to read and even more difficult to compare with other types of information. 

Raven does a great job of putting everything in a user-friendly format, from actions like scheduling marketing reports to providing vital SEO information to managing our social media channels, and does so in a single data page that eliminates the need for cross-referencing and spreadsheets. Since implementing the use of Raven, we have saved countless hours and undoubtedly a great deal of money and other resources.

Adelle Archer, Eterneva

SendPulse

Use SendPulse and you’ll grow your customer base almost overnight.

SendPulse is the best marketing tool that will make your life so much easier, your campaign so much stronger, and your customer base so much bigger.

For instance, you can customize your emails with user-friendly and professional-looking templates.

You can send these emails out automatically at strategic times based on user behavior and event triggers so that you ensure your email is landing in their inbox at the perfect time, which helps increase your click and open rates.

And finally, you can analyze these click and open rates so you can assess the successes and failures of your subject lines and adjust accordingly, along with seeing who your valuable and dedicated subscribers are. SendPlus grows your customer base by letting your email marketing campaign be easy, personalized, and streamlined.

Karim Hachem, Sunshine79

Sales and CRM Tools

Nimble

Nimble has played a significant role in managing new leads. The generation of new leads is important, but managing these leads is even more important. Nimble is a CRM or customer relationship management tool that can manage contacts, track emails, and keep track of your sales progress. As a result, you won’t need to wonder about a particular customer’s comments again because you will be aware of exactly where they go into your sales funnel.

This will assist you in keeping track of the most recent leads who are truly interested in your company as well as organizing your inbox. It takes charge of a number of tasks and integrates itself well with marketing platforms.

Alexander Reid, TriviaWhizz

Here are some more:

Search Engine Optimization Tools

Crazy Egg

If you’re looking for a way to take your web traffic analysis to the next level, you need to check out Crazy Egg.

This powerful marketing tool provides detailed information about where your visitors are coming from, what they’re doing on your site, and how you can convert more of them into leads and customers.

Crazy Egg makes it easy to see what’s working and what’s not on your website. With its visual reports, you can quickly identify which pages are performing well and which ones need improvement.

Plus, Crazy Egg’s A/B testing capabilities let you test different versions of your web pages to see which one performs better. If you want to take your website to the next level, Crazy Egg is my go-to tool!

Daniel Close, We Buy Houses in Kentucky

InLinks

InLinks is a tool that saves me a lot of time during SEO campaign delivery is InLinks.org

It may not be the most famous tool yet, but it is worth mentioning. I am using this platform to generate AI-driven internal links no matter the client’s CMS. Internal links these days still have a lot of impact on organic performance and whole SEO.

Using InLinks, I am independent of client resources, clients’ in-house team and their CMS. I can deliver growth with minimal interaction, which many clients appreciate as an added value – they can focus on their things when I deliver growth independently.

InLinks is not a silver bullet, but it is one of the tools I currently use on the enterprise tier. I can deliver fast growth and boost my position in the SEO industry. Clients are referring me to other potential clients where I can repeat my tactic.

Lukasz Zelezny, SEO Consultant London

Deep Crawl

Deep Crawl is a digital marketing tool that helps you analyze your website’s structure and performance and I can swear by its effectiveness.

It also provides insights into how search engines crawl and index your site. This tool can be used to improve your website’s SEO, performance, and overall user experience.

Deep Crawl is easy to use and provides detailed reports that can be customized to your needs. It is an essential tool for any website owner or digital marketer who wants to improve their site’s visibility and performance.

Robert Warner, Virtual Valley

Google Search Console

This search engine optimization tool has proven to be priceless in my life. It complements the use of google analytics to monitor my web activities. This marketing tool eases my campaign design print process and automates report generation. Google search console makes my digital marketing life easier, and best of all, it is a free tool, helping me save on purchases.

yongming Song, Imgkits- Photo Editor

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a powerful way to improve your website’s search engine optimization. By using, you can get more traffic to your site and increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines. It’s is easy to use and it’s affordable, so there’s no reason not to try it out. If you’re serious about improving your website’s SEO.

Andrew Priobrazhenskyi, Discount Reactor 

Graphic Design Tools

Canva

Canva is a design software that is used to create graphics for a variety of mediums, including social media posts, websites, and digital ads.

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Sometimes I have to whip up a quick marketing material, like a social media graphic, that I don’t have time to ask our designer to do.

Canva has saved me time multiple times. It’s quite a convenient marketing tool, especially for those who aren’t adept with tools like Photoshop. It has design templates that are easy to customize and personalize based on our brand, so even when you’re not a crafty person, you can still create an impressive design for your marketing.

Marina Vaamonde, HouseCashin

PicMonkey

I signed up for an online photo editing and design service (PicMonkey) last year that has been a total game changer for my business. Not only is it affordable, but it’s also easy and intuitive to use. It only took me about 10-15 minutes to figure out the platform. And the best part is that it serves multiple purposes for me as it relates to marketing. I use the service to design thumbnails, compress image sizes, create graphics for my website, draft email templates, and much more. It truly is a one-stop shop for anything graphic related. It has saved me hundreds of hours compared to hiring and communicating with graphic designers via Upwork or Fiver like I used to do.

Alaina Ross, Sleep Family

Video Marketing Tools

Content Marketing Tools

Grammarly

When I think of a marketing tool that has made my life easier, Grammarly is top of mind. Marketers – especially the do-it-yourself, roll-up-your-sleeves type marketers – write a lot of copy. One thing that’s hard about writing is that it can take a lot of time to do it well. Grammarly not only helps you highlight and correct all of your grammar mistakes but also recommends changes to improve clarity and engagement in your writing.

Joe Kevens, B2B SaaS Reviews (and PartnerStack)

Social Media Marketing Tools

Buffer

Social media marketing being automated relieves a lot of work for businesses. Buffer makes it simple to schedule posts ahead of time and get notifications when your accounts need to be updated. Additionally, Buffer allows you to build a “shared inbox” across many social media platforms. This inbox lessens the hassle of having to sign in and out of various accounts and overall clutter. Buffer also provides information about how you performed on different platforms, giving you a leg up in determining what can be effective and what needs to be adjusted. This tool looks after several social media marketing tasks and gives you a wholesome life-changing experience.

Kurt Uhlir, Keynote speaker on marketing and real estate

Mention

Mention is a life-changing and innovative marketing tool that gives you the ability to communicate with customers online and handle effective customer-company contact. As a result, you get more credibility and can provide more services to clients and leads. It helps you perform a wide range of tasks. You do not need to worry about logging in to and out of the accounts often because Mention makes it simple to manage a multitude of social media profiles from a single tool. From a single dashboard, you can also examine all of your mentions, including those from online communities, blogs, and review websites. It integrates social media marketing with its customer-centric interface that pulls a great job!

Ryan Knoll, Tidycasa

Hootsuite

One marketing tool that has made my life easier is a tool called “Hootsuite”. Hootsuite is a tool that allows me to manage all of my social media accounts in one place. This has been a huge time saver for me, as I used to have to log into each individual account every time I wanted to post something.

Another great thing about Hootsuite is that it allows me to schedule my posts in advance. This is great for those times when I know I won’t be able to post anything for a while (like on vacation), but I still want to keep my social media presence active. Overall, Hootsuite has been a great addition to my marketing arsenal and has definitely made my life easier.

Ian Wright, Business Financing

Instagram Reels

One of the tools that have strongly elevated our marketing and is a tool that has not only widened our reach, but gotten great engagement, is a great advertising tool to pitch to clients and the audience absolutely loves Instagram Reels.

Reels are a great way to use trending content and personalize it according to your content reaching a wider audience while staying relevant to your brand identity.

As a company that focuses on content marketing, it has completely changed the way we use content, allowed us to make it more creative, fun, interactive, and stay on top of trends with unique features such as trending audio, filters, trending reels and customizing it to display new places, events, restaurants and things happening On The Strip in Las Vegas.

Jenna Nye, On the Strip