Using the right marketing tools can make a huge difference in reaching your audience and growing your brand. To stay competitive and efficiently manage your marketing efforts, it’s important to invest in tools that suit your business needs.
These are the types of marketing tools a small business needs:
- Social media marketing tools
- Website and e-commerce tools
- Email marketing tools
- SEO tools
- Design tools
1. Social media marketing tools
For small businesses, managing social media effectively is essential to reaching new customers and staying connected with existing ones.
Digital marketing tools like SocialBee make it easier to plan, schedule, and publish social media posts. These tools help small businesses save time by automating the process of posting across multiple platforms, ensuring consistency without the need to log in to each account separately.
In addition to scheduling, social media management tools also streamline team collaboration. They allow team members to work together efficiently, providing features for assigning tasks, sharing feedback, and keeping track of campaigns. These tools also make it easier to monitor and reply to comments, mentions, and direct messages across platforms, helping businesses engage with their audience in real-time.
Social media marketing tools also provide useful data about your posts. You can see which content resonates best with your audience, what times are optimal for posting, and how to adjust your strategy to improve engagement.
This helps small businesses make the most of their digital marketing efforts without needing to dedicate a lot of time to it every day.
2. Website and e-commerce tools
A well-optimized website is essential for small businesses, as it acts as the central hub for all your marketing channels, guiding potential customers through their journey with your brand. Whether traffic comes from social media, email campaigns, or search engines, your website needs to provide a smooth, engaging experience to convert visitors into buyers.
These tools also offer insights into user behavior, helping you understand how visitors interact with your site, which pages perform best, and what areas need improvement. This data allows you to make informed decisions and optimize your site for better conversion rates.
Additionally, these e-commerce tools integrate with various marketing channels, making it easier to track the customer journey from the first click to final purchase. With the right setup, small businesses can ensure that potential customers have a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience.
3. Email marketing tools
Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways for small businesses to engage with their customers and drive sales. Choosing the right email marketing platform can make all the difference when it comes to creating, managing, and tracking your campaigns.
A good email marketing software will allow you to:
- Design and customize professional-looking emails
- Segment your audience based on demographics or behavior
- Automate email sequences (e.g., welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders)
- Track performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions
- A/B test different subject lines, content, and CTAs to optimize campaigns
- Manage contact lists and ensure GDPR compliance
4. SEO tools
For small businesses, ranking higher on Google is a must for driving organic traffic. To do that, your marketing team needs reliable SEO tools to get the job done.
One of the first steps is keyword research—figuring out what your potential customers are typing into search engines. By targeting the right keywords, you can create content that attracts the right audience.
But SEO tools go beyond just finding keywords. They help you track how your website is performing, spot technical issues, and see where you’re ranking for important search terms.
When you pair these tools with Google Analytics, you can dive deeper into how visitors behave on your site, where your traffic is coming from, and how well your pages are converting visitors into customers.
With the right SEO tools, your marketing team can boost your visibility, attract more traffic, and ultimately grow your business.
5. Design tools
Good design is key to helping your small business grab attention and connect with customers. From creating social media posts to website banners, design tools make these important marketing tasks easier and faster.
For many small businesses, design is a big part of content marketing. Whether it’s visuals for social media, email campaigns, or blog posts, having easy-to-use tools can help you create high-quality images without needing a graphic designer. This makes it simpler to keep your marketing strategies running smoothly.
The best design tools also work well with other online marketing tools you’re using, so you can easily share and repurpose content across different platforms. Having the right design tools in place ensures that your brand looks professional and helps drive more engagement with your audience.
Here are the best marketing tools for small business owners:
- SocialBee: social media management tool
- UENI: website and e-commerce tool
- Moonsend: email marketing tool
- Ahrefs: SEO tool
- Canva: design tool
1. SocialBee: social media management tool
SocialBee is a social media management tool designed to help small businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers create, publish, and analyze their content performance.
Plus, it acts as a central hub where teams can work together to build an effective content strategy. It also makes community management easier for brands by allowing them to respond to all their social media comments, DMs, and messages from one convenient location.
SocialBee stands out because it makes content organization and resharing painless. You can create collections of evergreen content—like industry tips, inspirational quotes, or product highlights—and set them to reshare automatically. This means you’ll always have something ready to post, even if you’re not creating new content all the time.
You can also sort your content into folders like “Blog Posts,” “User Testimonials,” or “Promotions.” Then, you set a schedule for each one to keep things fresh, like sharing an article on Mondays, customer reviews on Wednesdays, and special offers on Fridays. It’s a simple way to keep your social media active and engaging without constantly scrambling for new ideas.
Our customers really appreciate this flexibility. For example, Emma Madison, owner of Skyline Insurance Agency, shares, “I love the content categories that I can switch on and off, and the fact that I can choose if posts are recycled. This meant I could create a whole bunch of evergreen content and have an endless supply of posts for my social media channels.”
Start your 14-day SocialBee free trial!
Key features of SocialBee:
- Supported platforms: SocialBee supports Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, TikTok, YouTube, and Bluesky.
- Universal posting: Plan and schedule content for any social platform, even if it’s not directly integrated with SocialBee, such as Facebook Groups, Reddit, WhatsApp, Telegram, Mastodon, and Quora.
- Design integrations: Create visually appealing posts with the Canva, Unsplash, and GIPHY integrations, all accessible within SocialBee.
- AI post generator: Automatically generate captions and images for your posts with SocialBee’s AI-powered tools.
- AI social media assistant: SocialBee’s Copilot can create a custom strategy just for you, offering platform recommendations, post ideas, and an optimized posting schedule tailored to your needs.
- Platform-specific customization: Tailor your posts for each platform’s unique format and audience. Use AI to customize your content automatically or tweak it manually.
- RSS feed integration: Automatically import content from your favorite blogs, keeping your feed fresh and relevant.
- Team collaboration: Work seamlessly with your team by assigning roles, providing feedback, and managing post approvals all in one place.
- In-depth analytics: Track your performance and generate detailed PDF reports for team and client presentations.
- Social inbox: Engage with your audience in real-time, managing comments, mentions, and DMs directly through SocialBee.
Best for:
SocialBee is perfect for small businesses and teams looking for an all-in-one AI social media scheduling and strategy tool that simplifies content planning, design, and analytics.
Unique feature:
SocialBee stands out with its Universal Posting feature, which allows you to plan content for platforms not directly integrated with the tool. This flexibility ensures that no platform is left out, making it a truly comprehensive solution.
Pros and cons:
- Pros:
- Affordable and flexible plans
- Great value for money – “Social Bee is a great all-in-one solution for social media management, especially for startups and agencies. I love that it offers competitive pricing while providing all the essential tools: analytics, automatic posting, AI features, and more. It streamlines the entire process of managing social media accounts, saving time and effort. The comprehensive nature of the platform, combined with its affordability, makes it a standout choice for efficiently handling social media presence.” says Tye, small business owner
- Responsive customer support
- New monthly product releases, updates and fixes
- Users can suggest and upvote new features
- Cons:
- A small learning curve at the beginning
- No hashtag analytics
- No link-in-bio tools
G2 rating:
4.8/5 stars (out of 429 reviews)
Pricing:
- Bootstrap: $29/month
- Accelerate: $49/month
- Pro: $99/month
Free trial:
Yes, SocialBee offers a 14-day free trial.
Essential feature checklist:
✅Integrations with multiple social media platforms
✅ Content creation and editing (for both text and visual content)
✅ AI content generation
✅ Content curation tools
✅ Visual content calendar
✅ Post scheduling and publishing
✅ Team collaboration and role management
✅ Social media inbox
✅ Social media listening
✅ Social media analytics and reporting
❌ Multi-language support