There are many online tools that can help you grow your small business, from social media management, email productivity, market research, SEO, filing and storage and so much more. Check out the following online marketing tools:
Blogger outreach
Ninja Outreach: makes it easier to contact and track interactions with social media influencers on platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
Buzzstream: run your email campaigns from the platform; it also tracks your social correspondence so you don’t forget or miss a conversation.
Email productivity
Unroll.me: one place where you can see a list of all of your subscription emails, unsubscribe instantly from whatever you don’t want, and receive a summary of your remaining subscriptions.
FollowUpThen: send an email to [anytime]@followupthen.com and you’ll be reminded when you need to follow up with a contact at the time that you specify.
Boomerang: an email tool that lets you schedule when your messages are sent and set follow-up reminders.
Vocus.io: a Chrome Extension that serves as an all-in-one solution for Gmail outreach.
Social media management
Buffer and Hootsuite: create posts for social media then use either of these scheduling tools to distribute content onto the social platforms on which your company participates.
Commun.it: a dashboard that displays valuable connections, new followers, suggestions for people to unfollow, missed conversations, interaction and most important keywords.
Agorapulse: manage all social media messages, schedule and publish content while getting relevant reports on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in one place.
PromoRepublic: has a content library of templates for social media posts, offers and promotions; optimizes social media marketing.
Iconosquare: for optimizing Instagram efforts; learn what images have the most engagement, easily promote your account elsewhere (on your site, Facebook, etc.), and run contests and surveys.
ScheduGram: tool for scheduling Instagram posts.
File storage and sharing
Google Drive: a cloud sharing platform that saves every file you need, including documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms.
Dropbox: cloud storage tool for your business documents so you can work more seamlessly from anywhere on any device.
Project/task management
TeamWork: a simple and intuitive platform that enables simple communication and sharing between teams.
Trello: collaboration, workflow planning, to-do list managing tool; share ideas, schedule and assign tasks, create workflows.
Slack: make your work-related conversations simpler; instead of back and forth emails, use this platform to compartmentalize your chats; it also integrates with many other tools so all of your information can be stored in a centralized place.
Social and competitor monitoring
Similar Web: reveals where your competitors get their traffic from, which social channels are most effective for them, etc.
Mention: get instant notifications whenever your keywords are mentioned online.
Alexa: reveals search analytics that will display the top keywords driving traffic to your site, as well as show you “before and after” shots of a site then and now.
MOZ Toolbar: a simple and effective plug-in for analyzing competitors’ websites. Some of the results shown include page rank, domain rank and inbound links.
Market research
Quora and Reddit: platforms for asking your market research questions to get more information on what people are looking for.
Survey Monkey: comes with a variety of pre-made surveys that you can use to find out what your customers think of your business, your ideas, and general thoughts.
Image optimization and editing
Pixelz: upload product images for ecommerce optimization.
BeFunky: an easy-to-use image editing tool sans Photoshop.
Compressor.io and Tiny PNG/JPG: sizing tools for modifying the appearance of images without affecting the integrity.
Colorcinch: an intuitive, one-click approach to design with AI-powered photo enhancers and manipulation that help you achieve stunning results in less time with no experience necessary.
Stock Video and Images
Coverr, Videvo, and Mazwai: create engaging video clips for your brand.
Pexels and Pixabay: download free and attention-grabbing stock photos.
Forms
Best Contact Form: enables you to add a contact form to your site as a lead generation tool.
Google Forms: enables you to create a form for every purpose, for free.
123 Contact Forms: another form creator that allows you to generate five forms and collect 100 submissions per month.
Wufoo: easy to use HTML form builder that helps you create online contact forms, online surveys, event registration, and more.
Business operations
QuickBooks: a useful accounting solution for ecommerce businesses with complete integration of several different platforms.
FreshBooks: cloud based platform for online accounting; plans start at $7.50 per month.
Wave: features include an accounting tool, invoice services, receipt management and a general financial tracker.
Slimvoice: enables you to create, manage, export and send unlimited invoices for free.
ShipStation: simplify your logistics processes with this shipping system that connects you to more customers and channels. Import orders, track orders, track inventory, do shipping returns and rate your favorite carriers with one tool.
Customer support
Zendesk: a live chat app that lets your business interact with customers in a more active manner with automatic triggers that you can set to notify you when a customer does or doesn’t take action.
Appointlet: enables you to accept appointments from your website 24/7 by setting your working hours and it will display the available times to your customers; it also syncs with your Google Calendar.
Groove: allows your business to provide integrated customer support with live chat, social media, email and more.
SEO
SEMrush: helps you find which keywords your competitors are using to get traffic, which keywords they’re targeting for their PPC ads, and how their traffic has grown over time.
Google Trends: ensures that the keywords you’re targeting aren’t losing momentum; you’ll also be able to get suggestions for other valuable keywords.
Google Keyword Planner: assists in finding popular keywords and new, relevant ones. You’ll also be able to find keywords that have a high search volume, but a low amount of competition.
SEO Site Checkup and WooRank: these sites help you analyze SEO issues, offer professional SEO monitoring and better interpret the profiles of your competitors.
Google Webmaster: SEO support help desk where you’ll find data and information regarding your site. It includes the “Search Queries” feature, which shows you which keywords are working for you.
Spyfu: reveals keywords used by your competitors.
Content
Buzzsumo: helps you learn what’s trending and being shared and gain insights on who is sharing what.
Feedly: assists in creating a personal feed of all of your favorite and go-to content providers in one place.
Pocket: lets you save content such as articles, videos, and stories from anywhere so you can come back to them later. Think of it as Pinterest for content.
Hemingway: it’s the grammar guru’s secret weapon. It helps make your writing more concise with its readability editor that identifies an overused amount of adverbs, instances of passive voice, sentences that are hard to read, etc.
Design
Power Banner: helps you create clickable web banners for your site in minutes.
Canva: a site where you can create and edit graphics for your landing pages and social media posts.
Pixlr: offers different editing options: Editor and Express. These are based on your needs and skills.
Type Genius: makes typography a snap by helping you find a font that complements your design. Simply select a starter font and go from there.
Snappa: enables you to create beautiful graphics without having to hire a designer.
PosterMyWall: assists in customizing business templates for videos, flyers and social media graphics that can be shared on your website or printed.
Marketing automation
IFTTT and Zapier: these tools help you automate social sharing, stay on top of your to-do lists, make sure your team doesn’t forget deadlines, etc. All of it is done via automation so it’s a set it and forget it situation.
Keap Grow: helps you stay organized, automate daily tasks and close more leads with its all-in-one CRM, designed for small business owners.
Analytics
Google Analytics: helps you gain a deeper understanding of your customers’ behavior throughout your website. It also offers you free tools to analyze data and get insights for your business.
Kissmetrics: it’s an analytics service that tracks individual and group visitor behavior from their first anonymous visit as a prospect through each conversion, and reveals information about the customer lifetime value and several other key financial data sets.