Four Platforms To Simplify Marketing For Small Business Owners

According to Forbes, small business owners are struggling to market their goods and services. Many small business owners report not having enough time for marketing with 56% spending only an hour a day on it.

If you’re a small business owner who wants to expand your marketing efforts but doesn’t have the capacity, here are some tools that can help you automate your email marketing, social media presence and more.  

From ad campaigns to email marketing to website analytics reporting, HubSpot can help you keep track of all of these and many more marketing tasks. While many large companies such as TripAdvisor use HubSpot, the platform offers tools such as a blog post idea generator and a customer persona builder that can be helpful for small business owners who are struggling to figure out the best way to understand and reach their customers.  

While business memberships cost at least $800 per month per user, individual memberships start free of cost and still allow you to access website data, create emails and reports for marketing campaigns. However, for a $15 a month upgrade, you can have in-app support and support with digital ads. 

Looking to manage your brand’s social media presence while also saving time? Want to figure out the best time to post to Instagram or TikTok? Hootsuite lets you schedule social media posts for up to five social media accounts.  You can also see how your posts are performing and find data such as the best time to post based on your goals and the platform you want to post to.

The standard plan, which is recommended for small business owners, costs $99 per user per month. This is cheaper than other similar platforms such as Sprout Social, which costs $199 per user per month for its basic plan and also allows you to manage up to five accounts.

Your website is your business’ digital storefront, so it’s important to understand how it’s performing. Many businesses use Google Analytics to answer important questions such as your most popular pages, how many users come to your website from a search engine vs. a social media post, what percentage of web visitors make a purchase, book an appointment and more. And the best part is, you can access all this data for free.

While GA4, the latest version of the platform is free of charge, you will have to invest time to fully learn the platform. 

Don’t have the first clue how to create a website? Mailchimp can help you create one with its preexisting templates. It also offers templates for email marketing as well as the tools to track the success of these emails and web pages. In addition, you can track real-time customer behavior and see how they’re responding to your email campaigns. 

While Mailchimp offers a free plan that allows you to reach 500 contacts, this plan does not give you access to features such as Generative AI help, customer support, or customer segment reports.  For access to all these features, you can purchase Mailchimp’s essentials plan for $13 a month or the standard plan for $20 per month.

To get the most use out of these platforms, it’s important to think about your marketing goals. Are you an experienced marketer looking to save time? Investing in a social media planner like Hootsuite might be the best plan for you.

Are you new to marketing and overwhelmed by all the different tasks. All-in-one platforms like Hootsuite and Mailchimp might be the best option for you. 

You may need to spend more than an hour a day on marketing to get real results but these platforms will save you time and help you promote your business.