There is little to no time to do extra for the competitive edge in the initial stage of any small business. In the absence of the right tools, the marketing team takes more time organizing rather than strategizing, hence increasing the marketing tools in the past decade. Marketing tools are helping businesses of all sizes to get the best out of their marketing teams.

It gets confusing with so many options available, which one to pick because every tool has its strengths. Its best to do an internal audit to determine which area your marketing team needs the most help.

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The best example of a small business can be a newly started limousine company, their operations are usually not very complicated and the teams are not large. Things start to get involved when they dive into spreading their brand through social media; it can end up being messy. For such a business it is best to start with a marketing tool that guides them along the way, eventually building a habit of using the tools at their fullest to make a habit of saving time. If your team creates a working pattern without efficient marketing tools, you will waste precious time without noticing its cons due to the busy schedule, ending up being a part of your process.

Let’s analyze some tools that suit solopreneurs and small businesses like limousine services.

HubSpot

HubSpot is the most user-friendly marketing tool in business. Although it offers sales and customer relationship tools, the marketing tool is inarguably the most effective by far. Shifting to an inbound marketing strategy is a move that is being anticipated by all types of businesses. It has primarily worked wonders for the companies that are least expected to adopt this method.

Just take full advantage from the built-in landing page tool to attract corporate clients. A limousine company can create actionable landing pages suitable to introduce new offers, special deals, and service information in return for leading contact information that can have a consistent impact. An increase in the digital presence is necessary for such transportation businesses; just having a website won’t cut out; you need a combination of blogs, social media posting and live chat with the audience you are targeting. It can only be possible if one is willing to explore a HubSpot tool that gives the business an overhaul to its marketing efforts.

Furthermore, HubSpot offers blogs, SEO, Social Media Management, Video, Live Chat, and Ad Tracking.

Blogging increases SEO optimization and gives you a much-needed boost to keep a consistent flow of fresh ideas and content. HubSpot blogging is a comprehensive tool that prompts a non-specialist when the meta description, images, featured image, OR relevant tags are missing. It takes complete control of your blog and guides you to deliver an expert blog appreciated in the industry.

Live chat enables you to interact with the target audience efficiently. It has the chatbot option that allows you to build automated messages for your customers’ most common questions, along with the ability to qualify leads and book appointments without having human intervention.

HubSpot’s social media management allows you to create posts through HubSpot. It creates an ideal environment for your marketing team to interact with the customers through HubSpot without switching between the platforms to check your comments and inbox.

HubSpot has a lot to offer for small businesses like limousine services and shuttle companies. Starting from the free service and working your way up to its most effective tools should not take time. The faster you implement, the quicker it will get for you to learn.

Insightly

Insightly best work when its sales management and contact synced together to reduce friction and its project management tool. Insightly is known for its custom fields, dashboard, and reports; it enables any business to create and produce any blend of data from projects to sales. “With Insightly’s advanced analytics and reporting engine, which is at the heart of our CRM platform, you can easily analyze, visualize, and share all insights about your customers—from the first time they interact with you. Quickly create comprehensive reports and dashboards that show the performance of campaigns and reveal what’s working and what’s not, so you can focus on doing everything possible to grow your business.”

Insightly is ideal for small businesses looking for better communication between the marketing and sales team, a benefit that HubSpot offers. Insightly has a clean, user-friendly interface built on the same platform as its CRM, enabling a gentle flow of data in real-time. It is easy to create a buyer’s journey, marketing emails template, and a custom dashboard that is shareable between them. It provides a decent ability to develop effective marketing campaigns and track the campaign results as it runs to generate your desired results.

Insightly offers reasonable automation for marketing from advanced prospect tracking to event-based segmentation. Insightly provides ample options to perform effective prospecting and segregation of events-based campaigns to separate each movement to follow them individually.

So, there are no more cluttered and messy marketing campaigns; small businesses need different campaigns like awareness, consideration, and decision. These campaigns differ from each other in terms of content. One needs a good to separate all these to have a hands-on approach towards new leads.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most sophisticated and seasoned tools globally; it is mostly perfect for businesses that majorly depend on their marketing activities through emails. Their free to use tool for emails allows a small business to send 10,000 emails per month, giving them a competitive edge. Also, the free account offers almost all the features available in MailChimp along with the free CRM. They also have a unique option.

“The Pay As You Go plan uses email credits that you purchase to cover your sending needs. Each email sent to an individual contact costs one credit. Credits expire after 12 months. This plan works best for infrequent or inconsistent senders, such as users who send quarterly newsletters or promote seasonal events. Credits are used for any attempted email send, including test emails, automation, and emails that bounced or were stopped due to compliance review. Credits are not deducted for signup form response emails. The number of available credits in your account must be equal to or greater than the number of planned recipients to send an email.

If you upgrade from a Pay As You Go Plan, any remaining credits will be converted to Referral Credits and applied to your monthly bill.

We do not provide refunds for unused Pay As You Go credits unless a system malfunction caused a problem.“ www.mailchimp.com MailChimp’s prominent disadvantages are the expensive subscription cost once there is a need for a business to go beyond the free cap of emails; the same goes for their subscriber and numbers.

MailChimp also provides a landing page creator, where small businesses can run offers, information, and promotional campaigns to generate leads, the catch is the extra cost of $100/year.

Integrations are an essential part of every business to look into before investing in software. MailChimp gives you a generous integration option with 800 applications/software covering the industry’s major players.

It is safe to say all the 3 tools are brilliant and provide for their niche. A business should conduct a thorough marketing audit to shed light on the painful areas to choose a tool that serves the purpose rather than making recommendations. What suites many might not come in handy for your business’s particular marketing needs.