Small businesses are often hesitant to invest in digital marketing as they want to see immediate results, however, strengthening and expanding your digital presence will lead to significant improvements in the future.

Digital marketing helps small businesses learn more about customers’ needs, build lasting customer relationships and offers a multichannel approach to boost conversions whilst being more affordable than traditional marketing.

To help you get started, Mirfield-based digital marketing specialists Fishtank Agency has shared some of the best tools, sites and extensions businesses can use to grow their platform online and measure their success.

MOZ
Moz is an all-in-one SEO software that you can use for various marketing areas, such as link building, content marketing and domain management. The keyword research tool allows you to track your site’s rankings and your competitors, to help identify any missing areas and plan site content more efficiently.

The software is also perfect for anyone new to SEO as there is a complete beginners guide and Learning Centre on it’s website.

Business Suite
Launched by Facebook in September last year, Business Suite makes managing multiple Instagram and Facebook accounts very straightforward. You can draft and schedule social content in advance and view insights of the posts to see exactly how your business is performing on the platforms and what content works best for your audience.

Google Trends
Google Trends is a free-to-use tool created by Google, providing real-time information from search data. This site is helpful for any business looking to monitor trends and see when specific topics are performing well through the month or year.

The platform allows you to refine data for specific locations to get a more accurate insight into a target area as well as providing the most popular questions and search terms, which can be used to create advice-led content on your website or social platforms.

Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform, perfect for any small business wanting its content to stand out without hiring an external designer. With hundreds of templates for every business need, from social posts, business cards to presentations, there’s always something to help you get started. Canva Pro also provides a library of royalty-free images to use in your content and graphic designs course to help boost your creativity when creating graphics.

Vimeo
Vimeo is a video hosting and sharing platform, perfect for businesses that need to instantly share large volumes of video content with a large team of people. The site offers a range of tools such as video statistics, video review tools, embedding features and password protection so you can keep your private content safe. The site can be used for sharing videos and editing, and creating content using their range of templates.

Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a straightforward email marketing tool that allows you to create professional marketing campaigns to grow your business and stay connected to your audience. Its simple drag and drop setup enables you to add video and buttons to your emails in one step. The platform’s full analytics suite gives you an extensive view of the effectiveness of your campaigns, including geography, acquisition and engagement per campaign.

Dare Boost
Dare Boost is a website speed test and website analysis site that provides audits of the quality of your website and gives tips for optimisation. The site analyses your pages to detect quality and loading time issues and delivers weekly email reports to keep you up to date on your site’s performance.

Linktree
Linktree is a social media reference landing page that houses all the essential links you wish to share with your audience. It can be used on platforms like Instagram or Tik Tok that don’t allow direct links within posts. Your Linktree page doesn’t just have to link to other social platforms; it can also link to website pages such as new blogs or product pages.

Damien Fisher, managing director at Fishtank Agency said, “It is important to spend time experimenting with different marketing tools for your business, as what may work well for one company may not work the same for you. I would recommend using trials and demonstrations of sites to see what fits your way of working and provides you with the information you actually need.”

“As a small business, you don’t want to invest heavily into tools you are only partially using. Don’t be afraid to use a combination of different tools or software and communicate with members of your team to see what information or data would help them achieve better results.”