Top 10 Marketing Problems Small Businesses Face Every Day

With all the online resources available in the digital age, marketing your business can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re unsure which marketing tools to purchase and which ones to pass on.

Fortunately, some of the best applications are free to use and easy to set up.

After all, employing the right programs gives your company the ability to reach a wider audience with less hassle.

Moreover, you can gain insights into increasing efficiency and interactivity.

Below we go over 10 marketing problems small businesses face every day and the marketing tools you can use to get the job done.

Problem 1: Spending too much time posting on social media

Social media is absolutely necessary for businesses to expand, promote, and engage with their customer base. But feeling like you’re spending too much or even too little time on posting to your social channels is a common problem.

Luckily, there are marketing tools that can help you schedule your posts.

Social media schedulers simplify your life in a chaotic world.

They allow you to schedule various posts in advance and have them published in the future at any time of your choosing.

What’s great is you can take advantage of the best times to post during the day to drive more traffic and clicks to your website.

In general, you can make your marketing more efficient with scheduling apps, since instead of trying to remember what or when to post, you can curate your content all at once and then schedule the software to post things for you.

You can read this article that demonstrates the ease of using social media scheduling programs.

• TweetDeck works well if you have multiple Twitter accounts that you want to manage at once.

What’s more, you can add columns of all the timelines you want to see in one convenient place.

• Hootsuite fosters the ability to connect with your customers across various social media platforms.

You’re able to schedule your posts in advance. You can add up to three social media profiles without charge.

• Buffer is a social media marketing tool to help you share content whenever you want across Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It is free to use if you only want to connect one profile from each social media platform and schedule ten posts ahead of time.

Problem 2: Setting up a landing page

Landing pages are the way to go when paired with a new marketing campaign. Sometimes called a lead capture page, it contains a copy for an advertisement, discount, or offer and enables you to grow your brand’s identity among visitors.

Here are some of the best marketing tools when it comes to creating landing pages that lead to conversions:

• Instapage helps you build a landing page that converts clicks into conversions.

You can even have team members collaborate on the platform and offer feedback about what works and what doesn’t.

Regardless of what industry your business pertains to, they have a variety of templates to help you generate leads.

• Optimizely gives you a space to experiment with just about everything.

You can play around with the look and feel of the page before you launch it live.

• WordPress allows companies to create and customize a website that aligns with their brand.

You can make a free website or pay a little to have your own custom domain.

This e-book provides a more in-depth guide on how to use the blogging platform to your advantage.

Problem 3: Marketing Tools for Keeping track of analytics

Online analytics provides data about user traffic on your landing pages. With the analytics on content popularity and bounce rates, you can make informed decisions about how to proceed with your marketing campaign. Make sure to keep track of the data that is relevant to your business goals.

Here are two tools to start you off:

• Google Analytics provides detailed information regarding your website’s performance.

You can even use the data to see how well your landing page is doing.

You’re able to track your website’s traffic and view different networks.

Moreover, you’ll see stats of who looked at your page and for how long.

To gain a better understanding of how to use the software, check out this PDF.

• Woopra offers real-time tracking for your analytics, so you don’t have to wait for updates.

Many sales and marketing teams use the platform to study individual website visitors and their actions on your page.

That way you can better engage with your target audience.

Problem 4: Marketing Tools for Designing graphics

Good quality photos add a lot to your company’s brand. If your company doesn’t have an in-house designer, it can be tricky to come up with a uniform brand image. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a professional graphic designer to make images, especially with some of the easy to use design programs out there.

• Canva offers the ability to edit pictures and add text to photos. Many bloggers use it to create graphics to go along with their media posts.

There are built-in templates for many social media platforms, so you do not have to worry about setting the right dimensions for Twitter or Instagram. In addition, you can even set your own custom dimensions.

Read more about the application and how to get the most out of it.

• Stencil is another image creation application for businesses. You have the option to create 10 free images each month. If you want unlimited graphics, you’ll have to pay a fee.

They have tons of photos, icons, and templates you can use to bring your creative vision to life.

Problem 5: Optimizing your website

Your website should enable users to quickly know what your company is offering and how they can access your service. Website optimization helps them on their journey from being a visitor to a customer. In order to optimize your website, you first have to see how people are using it.

These marketing tools provide insights into what your audience is doing on your site as well as which pages they are visiting.

• Hotjar presents information to optimize your website and your audience’s viewing experience.

You can track what your visitors do when they’re on your website. You have click-maps and scroll-maps to analyze what individuals click along with how far they scroll.

You can learn more about Hotjar and its features here.

• GTmetrix tells you all about your site’s performance. You can analyze the speed of your site, and they will offer recommendations to make it better.

After all, a faster loading web page attracts more visitors to your site. You can even monitor different pages, set up alerts, and test the loading speed of your website from various regions.

Problem 6: Optimizing for search engines (SEO)

Users trust search engines, but how do you get search engines to trust your site? Continuing to work towards enhancing your SEO will pay dividends for your business in the long run. It can lead to a greater number of individuals becoming aware of your company because they found your site via a search engine, ultimately resulting in more sales.

• Open Site Explorer (OSE) is a great resource to assist you with anything related to your business’s links.

For example, it can provide you with ideas to build your links’ popularity. You get up to three reports each day with the free version. You can see which of your pages are doing well based on how many links you get and which websites they come from.

To learn how to use OSE, here is an ebook explaining it further.

• Keyword Tool enables you to figure out what phrases potential customers are putting into search engines.

You’re able to search keywords across sites such as Google, YouTube, Bing, etc. With the results, you can make sure you add words people are searching for, so they stumble across your content.

Best of all, it is free, and you don’t even have to make an account or log in.

Problem 7: Managing customer relationships (CRM)

As a business owner, you’re constantly putting out new content or updating your product or service, and it can be hard to take time to see what customers are saying about your brand. Improving your Customer Relation Management or CRM is beneficial to any business because you learn more about your paying customers. Building brand loyalty among your clients will help your business in the short and long term.

• • Salesforce monitors your website from any device. To learn more, click here.

 

• Charlie sends you information on people before you even meet, so you know how to connect with the best when you finally have a conversation.

Problem 8: Linking your social media accounts

Setting up your social media channels is only half the work. Make sure to connect your profiles to your website so users know you’re social and they can follow your brand across multiple channels. Share buttons are one of many ways to increase content circulation. With the implementation of buttons, you allow your consumers to share your content with friends and family, ultimately expanding your audience.

• SumoMe will implement share buttons on your blog, so your content can be exposed to many individuals on other platforms.

It won’t cost you anything to add the buttons to your web pages. You have control over how they look and where they appear. Better yet the buttons also show up when people are viewing your site on a mobile device.

Learn about share buttons here.

• AddThis activates social buttons for a seamless sharing experience across the web.

Furthermore, you can integrate the widget on your website so that people can bookmark your page.

Problem 9: Creating timely content

Your brand benefits from producing content that is relevant to a customer’s current problem, but it can be difficult to know their exact struggle. Delivering content based on consumer demand will grow your audience. Your customers will stay loyal to your brand when you continue to provide quality content. These marketing tools will let you know what users are searching for at the moment so you can stay on top of trends.

• BuzzSumo lets you know what content would work best for your business.

You can enter keywords or backlinks to see how the subject is performing already. That way you can make sure you spend your time crafting the best content for your audience.

This e-book highlights its features.

• Social Mention is a real-time search engine that can find results from blogs, comments, news, and much more.

They offer a social media search and an analysis service along with daily alerts.

You’re also able to track what people say about your business along with what is said about another company like your biggest competition.

Problem 10: Tracking your competition

Knowing your competition is an easy way to make sure you’re offering something different than what’s already available. Since you can’t exactly go to a competitor’s marketing department and ask how they run their business, here are some marketing tools that will let you keep track of your competition and see how they rank on search engines:

• SEO Spyglass reveals your competitors’ link strategies that help them rank high in search engines.

It is a link popularity checker. The marketing tool helps you figure out how to outrank your competition when it comes to search engines.

• Google Alerts sends reports about whatever you want straight to your inbox.

You can track every instance someone mentions a competitor or a keyword related to their company.

It aids you in monitoring the web about what’s going on in the world.

Create an alert about anything from individual companies to your competitors.

We love learning about new marketing tools and their capabilities. Feel free to share the tools you use on a daily basis in the comments below.

Check out our hashtag #MarkovateTooloftheWeek to see the tools we’re obsessed with each week.