As you try to compete and overtake companies within your industry, you cannot just stand still and continue to do what you’re doing. The greatest companies always look for new ways to improve their operations, sales, marketing, and overall performance.
Although companies are beginning to see the importance of a digital marketing strategy, it is still a relatively new concept. Yet, if you feel as though you have a unique product or service that has a wow factor and solves a problem, you need to begin taking your online marketing seriously.
In today’s article, we want to provide you with some of the most popular and profound digital marketing tools that you can use daily within your SME business when building an online presence.
The best free and paid digital marketing tools for SMEs
There is a misconception that every tool that you need to improve your business's revenue has to be paid for. However, there are some excellent free tools that work nicely with options in paid plans to give you the best results overall as a small business.
As an SME in the current market, gaining a competitive advantage and working hard to implement it consistently at a high quality within your daily schedule will put you ahead of the rest. Let’s walk through the best free and paid digital marketing tools in 2023 that you can use:
- HubSpot
- Klaviyo
- SEMRush
- Slack
- Google Analytics
- Buffer
- Umbraco
- Canva
HubSpot (all-in-one digital marketing)
First on our list has to be HubSpot, as this all-in-one digital marketing software integrates its main capability—customer relationship management (CRM) with email marketing, social media, analytics, and more, into a single centralised platform.
This helps you streamline your marketing efforts, as you or other team members won’t have to click from one digital marketing tool to another. Their user-friendly interface provides marketers of all levels with tools for content creation, search engine optimisation (SEO), lead generation, and reporting/analytics, making it a powerful tool to associate with as an SME.
Klaviyo (email marketing tool)
Klaviyo shines as an excellent digital marketing tool due to its wide range of email marketing features. It gives your marketing team everything it needs to create highly targeted and personalised emails based on your customers' behaviour.
Although it thrives with e-commerce platforms, service-based companies can see noticeable improvements in their backend strategy too. Klaviyo not only offers insightful analytics for tracking campaign performance and optimising strategies, but it also hosts a vast library of designs, templates, resources, etc. that you can use to attract and convert potential customers.
SEMRush (SEO tool)
SEMrush is marketed as an all-in-one marketing tool, but its SEO benefits shine through as the most impactful feature. Its ability to pull data from Google allows you to see what will and won’t work in your industry when trying to promote your products or services.
If you want to conduct keyword research, find relevant keywords that will help you rank your blog posts or landing pages, assess competitor performance, and do many other insightful SEO tactics, SEMRush is the SEO digital marketing tool that you need.
Slack (communication/customer service)
As an SME getting off the ground, if you’re not staying in touch with your team, important tasks get lost in translation. Slack offers you a platform where you can easily share ideas, files, and updates in real-time with individual channels for each topic. For example, you could create a social media channel and put everything related to social media in there, and the list goes on.
Google Analytics (reporting and analytics)
Google Analytics is a practical digital marketing tool because of its ability to provide you with extensive analytics on your website's performance. It tracks user behaviour on your website, showing which marketing strategies are effective and where improvements are needed.
You can look at in-depth analytics such as conversion rate, bounce rate, etc. to see where you are losing your viewers along the customer journey. This way, you can go into your website and optimise it to see better future performance.
Buffer (social media)
If you decide to use this within your digital marketing tech stack, it will completely simplify social media management for you. It allows you to schedule posts across various platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and more, ultimately saving you time and ensuring consistent content delivery.
Umbraco (CMS)
To thrive in the online space, you need a flexible CMS to aid you in your efforts to bring eyes to your business. Umbraco CMS is a versatile CMS platform that is held in high regard for both product and service-based businesses.
Having a responsive, aesthetically pleasing, and easy-to-use website that your potential customers can view is vital. Whether they find you through social media, Google rankings, paid media advertising, etc., this will be the cornerstone of how they view the authority and trustworthiness of your brand.
Canva (creative design tool)
Canva provides an extensive stock image library and tools for photo editing, allowing you to showcase creativity and brand image.
No matter if this is for social media posts, email newsletters, or even thumbnails for videos, Canva gives you everything you need to create professional-looking visuals without the need for graphic design skills, enhancing brand presentation and engagement.
Due to all the help you receive and the fact that they provide you with so many beginner-friendly templates, this is a must in your digital marketing tool stack if you want to create meaningful and quality designs.
Pricing for each of the digital marketing tools
To see what is in or out of your budget, we’re going to give you the price points of each of the best digital marketing tools below so you can make an informed decision about what to implement:
- HubSpot: Enterprise (£0), starter (£41/ month), Professional (£396/ month)
- Klaviyo: Free plan available, email (around £36/ month), email and SMS (around £48/ month)
- SEMRush: Pro (around £105/ month), guru (around £200/ month), business (around £400/ month)
- Slack: Free plan available, pro (£5.75/ month), business+ (£9.75/ month)
- Google Analytics: Free
- Buffer: Free plan available, essentials (around £5/ month), team (around £10/ month), agency (around £100/ month)
- Umbraco: Umbraco Cloud (£32/ month), Umbraco Heartcore (£35/ month)
- Canva: Free plan available, pro (£100/ year), teams (£260/ year)
We believe that implementing as many of these in your business, moving forward as an SME, is going to boost your chances of overtaking your competition for years to come. Without the correct inbound marketing and digital marketing tools, you will find yourself left behind, so ensure to begin as soon as possible.
