Growing small- or medium-sized businesses (SMBs) — those with a 1% increase in revenue or more in a six month period — are 59% more likely to use marketing automation. Growing SMBs are also 23% more likely to use email marketing software. These stats and other data from the Small and Medium Business Trends report make it clear: The right small business marketing tools can help your company move forward and grow.

1. Use Google Analytics to optimize your website

Website optimization is a priority for every marketer and a key marketing tool for any SMB, but especially for those that sell, advertise, and target online. Use Google Analytics to generate free data and performance reports, including:

• A conversions path report to identify tests. A path report shows you the route your visitors take on your website before they convert, including the path that yields the highest conversion rate. Is it “Homepage>product page>trial?” or “Homepage>pricing>trial?” Pay attention to the path and use this insight to design tests and experiments to boost conversion rate.
• A basic channel report to track conversion. Detail how each marketing channel is driving conversions. Are your social ads driving any revenue? How is SEM performing against SEO? You can adjust your investments/budget based on the returns from your best performing channels.
• A funnel report to identify bottlenecks. This shows you where conversions drop off. Is most of your traffic going from the homepage to your lead form, then exiting? Maybe your lead form has too many fields or the content doesn’t resonate. (If so, change up your form to make it more customer friendly.)
• A cohort report to track how segments perform over time. This report looks at which segment converts at the highest rate. In a cohort report you might learn that, say, if you retarget a user within 15 minutes of them leaving your site, they’re more likely to convert.

2. Lean on marketing automation to sync sales and marketing data

According to the Small and Medium Business Trends report, 45% of SMBs use marketing automation. To maximize your marketing, information and tracking must get to sales. This is why marketing automation is such a necessary small business online marketing tool. 

By automating data and sharing it, sales reps know where leads originated. What does that look like in real life? Just ask Jet It, a small aviation business who realized a 300% YoY increase in sales after aligning their marketing and sales efforts.

As a marketer, you need to know your customer — all that data is already in your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Access to it gives marketing and sales teams the information they need to create relevant and engaging campaigns. With integrated systems, you can put the customer’s needs first and provide relevant marketing messages to help nurture your leads. 

Eager for specifics? Here are some of the benefits outlined in our SMB Guide to Sales and Marketing Alignment:

• Increase the quality of leads available to sales reps, and prevent leads from slipping through the cracks.
• Ensure that sales reps can effectively engage prospects with the right content at the right time.
• Evolve prospecting from a solo act to a collaboration with marketers who have the expertise and reach to find more qualified prospects in half the time. 
• Create a steady stream of sales leads. 
• Close more sales in less time, build a more efficient sales funnel, enjoy shorter sales cycles, and ultimately, drive more revenue.

3. Use email marketing software to nurture customers and drive conversion

The State of Marketing report shared that 76% of marketers use email to communicate with their customers. But many of us communicate with customers via email only to have the customer delete it. 

How do you avoid that in the future? Use a combination of technology and technique:

• Build campaigns triggered by behavioral and intent actions. Are most people dropping off from a page on your website? Did someone get stuck in a trial? What triggered their first purchase?
• Talk to the sales and product teams about identifying high-converting actions. 
• Rebuild your nurture email to drive the conversions you want.

The anatomy of an effective marketing email is not just good copy. You need to couple that with data — someone’s search history, their trial experience, their titles, the size of the company they work for — to make your emails personalized. Would you rather receive an abandoned cart email offering you a discount? Or a generic email promoting a product you don’t care about? Relevance will improve your open rates, click rate, and ultimately, conversions.

4. Boost organic traffic with SEO tools for small business marketing

Using the right words is the key difference between gaining and losing organic website traffic. And traffic can make or break your small business online marketing.

For example, prospects might search for “customer service tools” versus the industry term “help desk solutions.” Your company’s internal language around a product or service is most likely not the same as the words and phrases millions of people use to search. With keyword research, you’ll be able to understand all the ways prospects search to get to your (or your competitor’s) website.

The best part? Determining the right search engine optimization (SEO) terms doesn’t have to be costly. Diagnostic tools like Moz and SEMrush can pay for themselves over time. Use these tips to see big changes in your traffic:

• Check your website authority (the “strength” of your domain). Jot down what your domain authority is before optimization. Use that as your baseline, and then check your domain authority again in three to six months. The score should go up and you should see your optimizations come to fruition. Benchmark this score against your competitors. 
• Boost your domain authority with on-page optimization. This includes a number of housekeeping things like adding keywords in title tags and meta descriptions, creating an intuitive site structure, having an easy navigation bar, and asking other sites to link back to yours whenever and wherever it’s relevant. 
• Test your site speed and load time. Google search tools honor sites that are mobile optimized and load quickly. You can test your site for this diagnostic, and then optimize your site for speed as necessary. 

Above all, content should be relevant, deliver high value, and resonate with your prospects and customers. Campaigns that move prospects through the funnel with personalized email nurture campaigns, digital content, and virtual events are a great way to engage.

Get your small business marketing tools up to par, and get the help you need to find new business and connect with customers.

Salesforce helps you find more customers, win their business, and keep them happy so you can succeed. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions by following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.