The 10 Best Marketing Tools for Small Businesses in 2025

Key takeaways

Digital presence is key to the growth and competitive advantage of small businesses, even with limited budgets.
Main categories of marketing tools for small businesses are social media, SEO, email, and analytics, design, and CRM tools.
It’s important to have a clear process for choosing online marketing tools and start with those that can give results.

Effective marketing isn’t just about large budgets. Plenty of affordable digital marketing tools can support Search Engine Optimization (SEO), email, social media, and other marketing campaigns. For small businesses, the challenge is finding digital marketing tools that achieve the most with the least investment.

While the choice might seem overwhelming, finding the right marketing software is worth the hassle. A good search begins by defining your needs and focusing on accessible tools to get the first sales as soon as possible.

Why Small Businesses Need Marketing Tools

Small businesses often save at the expense of the marketing budget. This is a mistake. Presence in marketing channels is crucial for lead generation and brand awareness. A limited budget does not negate the need for marketing tools for small businesses, but requires a smarter approach.

You can often make do with less product features (as long as the product or service remains valuable to customers), but without marketing, you’ll struggle to make sales. And with struggling sales, continuing to improve the product will be challenging.

Large companies can buy marketing software that they won’t fully leverage as long as it gives at least a small gain in key metrics. For a new or small business, a few affordable marketing automation tools will achieve a much greater impact.

In essence, leveraging digital marketing channels early on simply makes a business more competitive. A small business website with at least some SEO practices, for example, will have a huge advantage over a similarly sized website without them.

Online marketing tools can help reach a bigger target audience, promote engagement, create conversions, and optimize processes rather quickly. The best part is that digital marketing tools for small businesses, such as Jimdo tools, come bundled with platforms you already use.

Small Business Marketing Tools Categories

A marketing tool can be anything that helps your business grow by promoting your products or services. With such a broad definition, there are as many marketing tools for small businesses as you can use effectively to attract new customers.

Since the boundaries aren’t rigid, we’ll focus on the immediate needs of small businesses. Operating on a limited budget means prioritizing strategies that align with your business model, industry, and marketing strategy.

Additionally, smaller tools (those that cover a single channel, for example) are often cheaper or even have free tiers. Those that cover many marketing channels are usually expensive and intended for enterprise-level companies.

Social media management. Tools in this category help to schedule, publish, and moderate various social media accounts easily. Often, they also function as analytics tools for tracking growth and calculating expenses.
SEO and content. These tools are all about optimizing websites and their content to reach target audiences on search engines and AI. It’s one of the largest categories, but many essential functions already come with website platforms.
Email and SMS marketing. While seen as old-school by some, email and SMS marketing campaigns are still going strong in many industries. Various online marketing tools help to manage and streamline these processes.
Analytics and reporting. No good marketing campaign can be done without accurate data from different channels. Insights on marketing performance are often essential for sticking to the budget for small businesses.
Customer relationship management (CRM). CRMs cover many other functions beyond just marketing, but it’s often an essential part for lead generation, audience segmentation, lead tracking, and other use cases.
Graphic design tools. Software used to create ads, social media posts, and other branding materials is often considered essential in your marketing toolbox. Learning to use these tools can save a lot of money for small businesses.

Our list of the best marketing tools for small business will not focus on any one of these categories to find the most advanced tools. Instead, we’ll recommend ten online marketing tools that can get you started right away.

Best Marketing Tools for Small Businesses

Jimdo tools

Jimdo is an all-in-one small-to-medium business solution for building a fully functioning website from scratch without any technical knowledge. The process of creating a website is streamlined into a short questionnaire that compiles everything from answers to questions about your business.

Various marketing and analytics tools are included within the Jimdo toolset. Most small businesses won’t even need to invest in anything else.

Social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, and X, can be easily connected to your website.
Built-in analytics will help you track user behavior and other data to track progress.
JIMDOFlows includes various automated marketing workflows for lead generation and CRM management.
Technical SEO basics are covered by enabling users to adjust meta titles and descriptions, create XML sitemaps, custom URLs, suggested keywords, and other solutions.

Jimdo is built to get small businesses up and running quickly, with advanced tools available as you grow. If additional marketing channels are needed, it seamlessly integrates with third-party providers like Mailchimp, CleverReach, or Google AdSense.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media management platform best known for scheduled posts publishing in most major sites – Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others. Their suite also includes many other advanced tools for managing your social media presence.

The dashboard provides a single place to track and respond to Facebook or Instagram comments, and organize them in terms of priority.
Create space gives a scratchpad to ideate, design, and organize content ideas.
Social listening tools allow you to monitor what your target audience is saying about your brand to anticipate or create trends.
Start page allows you to create and highly customize social bio pages with embedded videos, posts, products, and much more.

Buffer integrates most social media functions that a small business would expect from an online marketing tool.

AdRoll

Small businesses looking to run retargeting and display ad campaigns should not miss out on AdRoll. It’s a comprehensive advertising platform helping users to run multi-channel digital ad campaigns. Its AI-powered functionalities aid businesses of all sizes in running programmatic ads easily.

Retargeting ads is a feature that allows you to run various types of retargeting ad campaigns so that potential prospects can be converted more quickly.
Brand awareness ads use contextual, demographic, and other ad targeting methods to generate awareness of your brand.
Marketing automation builder helps to run a single marketing campaign through multiple channels affordably and easily.
Analytics tools included with AdRoll give comprehensive and consolidated data reports from multiple marketing channels.

AdRoll empowers small businesses with powerful multi-channel tools. In the right hands, this platform can achieve a large impact with a limited budget.

Canva

Canva is a free-to-use graphic design platform fit for creating marketing visuals on a budget. Its drag-and-drop interface offers professional-looking templates for social media posts, ads, infographics, and much more. Small businesses often use Canva as an alternative to paid graphic design tools.

Content planner and scheduling tools coordinate the publishing of your creations across popular social media platforms like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.
Collaboration features allow you to collaborate with your team or outside stakeholders on marketing designs easily in real-time.
The magic switch feature in Canva allows you to resize and translate designs from one marketing channel to fit almost any other.
Marketing templates in Canva give a variety of design ideas for email headers, social media posts, business cards, ads, and more.

While Canva is best for small businesses that can’t afford expensive designers, its advanced features are on par with paid design software. It’s one of the best starting points to keep your design brand consistent and professional.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO, content marketing, and AI optimization tool. Its main uses are competitor analysis, keyword research, site audits, and performance tracking. Various search optimization tools are included with Ahrefs, so it can save money for small businesses needing SEO.

Site explorer helps analyze websites for keywords and backlink profiles, which is essential for identifying strategies to drive traffic.
Site audit is an optimization tool that scans your website for technical SEO issues to help improve the site’s health.
Rank tracker measures the effectiveness of your SEO efforts by tracking keyword visibility over time in organic search.
Keywords explorer uncovers some of the most important metrics, such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and others.

SEO specialists will get the most use out of Ahrefs, as a good background in digital marketing is needed to use it. Small businesses that are just starting don’t yet need to go in-depth, and most main concepts are covered in their free tutorials.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM platform that includes a suite of tools for streamlining operations, sales, and marketing. It can help small businesses with complicated processes to connect everything under one platform for better lead generation and conversion. Various online marketing tools are included under their Marketing Hub.

Lookalike lists help to identify potential prospects, segment them, and target them with personalized campaigns.
Email marketing tools help to create and personalize professional emails in an easy-to-use editor.
Social media agent is a new beta feature that integrates AI for social media post generation, planning, and strategy.
Marketing Analytics tools aid in planning and executing marketing campaigns from one dashboard.

HubSpot’s suite combines essential marketing features in one place, while leaving plenty of room for scaling operations later. While the platform can get expensive, there’s a convenient free trial to see whether it will fit your business.

Google Analytics

Google offers a free web analytics tool to optimize your website for the most popular search engine on the internet. Google Analytics is one of the first tools small businesses should set up since it gives crucial data on website traffic, visitor behavior, and performance in search results.

Real-time overview allows monitoring customer data, such as page views, events, and conversions happening right now.
Advertising workspace gives detailed reports about your advertising campaigns and channels after linking it with your Google Ads account.
Acquisition overview report summarizes your acquisition data to help you understand whether your marketing efforts pay off.
Audience reports help to identify behavior, characteristics, such as demographics, and engagement of the visitors who find your site on Google.

Together with other Google tools, Analytics packs many other useful features essential for digital marketing. It’s free and, compared to other SEO tools, rather easy to use for improving the performance of a small business website.

Mailchimp

Originally created for email marketing campaigns, Mailchimp has expanded to offer a broad range of features for growing a small business. It helps streamline processes in social media, landing pages, and other areas that can attract visitors and convert them into sales.

Audience management provides a centralized contact management system with tags, segments, and other tools.
Automation tools help create customer journeys that engage potential prospects and reach out to existing ones.
Mailchimp’s email campaign creator is one of the most popular tools for creating and running email campaigns.
Analytics tools provide accurate insights into campaign performance to refine your marketing strategy.

Running campaigns on Mailchimp might get expensive, but their free email marketing tools will enable you to start building your presence affordably. Using it also doesn’t require much technical knowledge, making it a great choice for small businesses.

BuzzSumo

Small business websites also need to create content for their visitors. With BuzzSumo, you can use cloud-based tools to find, analyze, and create content for social media channels. It also covers various public relations, influencer marketing, and other use cases.

Find influencers feature connects you with journalists and influencers who are most likely to share your content.
Content discovery provides you with topics and trends that are relevant to your business, so you can prepare your strategy better.
Content research tools use billions of articles and news feeds to show you what’s most popular in your niche.
Monitoring capabilities allow you to track social media mentions, competitors, and various products and topics

Large companies would hire expensive marketing agencies for the tasks you can achieve on BuzzSumo. If your business model relies on social media or influencers, this tool is definitely worth a look.

Zapier

Zapier is a workflow automation platform that connects web-based applications and automates tasks. It also incorporates AI features. Small businesses use it to automate various routine marketing tasks without hiring expensive programmers. This is possible because of various Zapier features.

Integrations with email, CRM, social media platforms, and other aspects of your business are easy to implement.
Workflows can be built manually or with the help of AI to create a unique approach for your business.
Data management features can collect business and customer data from different platforms for analysis.
Lead generation and management features enable you to capture leads from multiple marketing channels, score them, and lead to sales quickly.

If used correctly, Zapier can save a lot of money for small businesses where lots of work must be done by a few employees. Its integrations and versatility make it one of the most often recommended tools.

How to Choose the Right Marketing Tools

The choice of online marketing tools ultimately depends on your budget, marketing strategy, and other business-related factors. Small businesses do not have expensive agencies working for them at every step, aiding in such choices.

The best you can do is define a clear selection process that ensures the marketing software you pay a hefty subscription for is actually used. It’s a good idea to follow such a process with all the stakeholders for each purchase or new campaign.

Additionally, you can ask around in your professional network for recommendations. You can sometimes even get discounts for tools, if you know the right people.

Define your goals. Consider the key metrics of your marketing campaign, and will the tool help to reach them. In some cases, a marketing tool might add value indirectly, by optimizing existing processes, for example, but such inputs should also be defined.
Evaluate ease of use and features. An advanced marketing or analytics tool is of little use if no one in a team knows how to use it. The needed functionality must be balanced with the convenience of already existing systems and the team’s skills.
Consider budget constraints. List all the costs involved in adopting a new tool. The calculations include much more than subscriptions, but also employee training and additional infrastructure costs.
Research and select. Make a list of a couple of online marketing tools that fit the above criteria. Don’t commit to any of them yet. Instead, sign up for free trials and test the functionalities to see whether it can achieve what’s needed.
Prepare for implementation. Test the integration with your current marketing or analytics tools. Ensure that integrations are possible and make a last cost-benefit analysis to know whether the tool will bring the needed returns.

Lastly, refine and document the selection process to use for each additional online marketing tool your business intends to purchase. Keeping the same process will ensure that all tools are aligned for the same criteria and will make quarterly audits, which are recommended, easier.

Frequently Asked Questions

What type of marketing is best for small businesses?

Small businesses often focus on key digital marketing tools. A mix of email, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and social media marketing tools for small businesses is the most useful. These tools are most likely to show results early on, and some are quite affordable. For example, many free email marketing tools are available.

What is the best CRM for a small business?

Small businesses often focus on key digital marketing tools. A mix of email, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and social media marketing tools for small businesses is the most useful. These tools tend to deliver results quickly—and many are budget-friendly. For instance, several email marketing platforms offer free plans.

What are the best marketing automation tools?

Many repetitive marketing tasks can be automated from website builders already, such as with Jimdo tools. More specialized software might be needed for specific marketing channels, such as AdRoll for display ads or Mailchimp for email marketing. The automation of digital marketing tools depends on your current needs.

What are the best email marketing tools?

The best tools for email marketing campaigns for small businesses are those that have strong automation and segmentation features, while not costing too much. Mailchimp is often considered among the best email marketing tools, with Moosend, HubSpot, and MailerLite also being popular.