Jerry Casey

Many Entrepreneurs and small business owners do a good deal of their marketing on their own. Especially in the early days, before there is room to take on any team members.

Of course, the goal is to grow as a business and slowly take on team members in a methodical way, outsourcing the most expert or time-consuming roles first. But until it’s time to do that, there are other ways to maximise your marketing efforts while keeping your working hours under control.

These 6 tools are effective for small business marketing, and will help you to do more with less.

1. Convertkit

If you haven’t yet settled on an email marketing tool for your venture, then Convertkit is worth a look. For a very low subscription fee, it has the capacity to run multiple sequences from any number of opt-in forms or pages.

Convertkit integrates well with other tools, like Kajabi and Zapier, and makes automating much of your email marketing work easy.

Not forgetting the basics, the emails it sends are beautiful too. The templates are nice and clean, with customisable email signatures that you can change with each template.

2. CoSchedule Subject Line Tester

In order for your email marketing to do well, you want to write strong subject lines. This is an art form all of its own; finding the right way to inspire a little curiosity in a handful of words, without being too vague and seeming spammy.

CoSchedule has a free online tool that analyses your email subject lines, and suggests ways to improve your open rates.

Simply boosting your email open rate can make a positive difference to your bottom line. Email marketing is so important to any business that it’s really worth investing a little time into writing better emails.

3. Ink Pro

If you have ever felt that you put blog content online only for it to fall into a black hole and never be found, then we should talk about SEO.

Even if you work in a really competitive industry and will never rank on the first page of Google, it is still worth thinking about your SEO. Why? Because modern day SEO is about natural writing that appeals to readers for the right reasons.

So if you create content playing by the SEO rules, then share it on social, it will pick up more views naturally. No, not because SEO applies on social platforms. But simply because you are writing better material that has more appeal.

There are many writing tools to choose from, but Ink Pro is a good all-rounder. It includes grammar, spelling, tone and layout in its checks. It will also suggest SEO keywords for you to add.

4. Logo Creator

When we talk marketing it is easy to get swept up in the more technical side, like click through rates and ranking. But don’t forget your business’ aesthetic and overall vibe. Branding is important as it engages our emotions, and that makes us memorable.

If you don’t have the resources to outsource your brand creation, then that’s not a problem. Everything you need can be done with online tools, much of them free.

LogoCreator is one of those free tools. Once you have your logo, you can add it to all your online assets and start creating that visual and emotional connection with people.

5. ReStream

This is an amazing tool if you use live video as part of your marketing strategy.

Instead of going live on one platform at a time, ReStream allows you to stream across multiple platforms. Imagine the increased reach of going live on YouTube and Facebook at the same time, but only doing the broadcast once.

It’s a surprisingly low-priced tool for the potential reach it gives you. Of course, video continues to grow in popularity as it is so much more engaging than text and picture posts.

So if you aren’t a live streamer yet, do consider trying it for the sake of your marketing. Engaging your followers is so important for them taking action and clicking on one of your offers.

6. TubeBuddy

Speaking of video, and YouTube specifically, TubeBuddy is a great little tool.

It plugs in to your YouTube account and gives you pointers, like having a little marketing angel on your shoulder. It also helps you bypass an annoying restriction that comes with a new YouTube account.

As you may know, when you upload your first video to a new account, YouTube won’t allow you to add a custom thumbnail. As any marketer will also know, that thumbnail is a factor in how many views you get.

TubeBuddy has a thumbnail feature which allows you to bypass YouTube’s rule. So you are free to add an eye-catching, branded thumbnail that hopefully gets you many viewers.

But this tool is best known and liked for its ability to suggest good hashtags for your video, which are the key to being found on YouTube.

All this can be yours for around £5 ($7.20 US) per month, so do check it out.

If you are in need of some help with your marketing, but don’t yet have the budget to outsource, then making use of some tools is a good place to start.

Marketing is a huge area of business, and can easily consume much of your working week. But using tools like these can help you reclaim a few precious hours, and your sanity too.

Give them a try, and see how much more effective your marketing efforts become.