Best Marketing Software for Small Business in 2025

There are many great marketing tools out there. They come in different types. Some are quite general while others are specialist applications. Given the number of marketing software out there, it is highly likely that you will find platforms that fit your small business needs. Here is our buyer’s guide to help you find the right marketing software for small business for you. Also, you can check out our article about the top 10 marketing software platforms for comparisons of the best solutions on the market.

Create a shortlist of the top vendors and try out their solutions by subscribing to a free trial or demo. To do this, we suggest that you select a list of apps that rank the highest in our SmartScore rankings and customer satisfaction rating. Also, try to get feedback from your company’s potential users to help you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. objectively. In this way, you can zero in on the right app for your needs. Here is our list of marketing software for small business products that have the highest SmartScore and customer satisfaction rating: HubSpot Marketing, monday.com,  Maropost Marketing Cloud, MailerLite, Mayple, Marketing Creatio, Omnisend, Unbounce, and AddSearch.

When deciding on your next online marketing system, first understand what your marketing needs are, and check whether you fall within some of the following categories:

• Freelancers and Profesional Practice. There are marketing products or free versions of them that can help freelancers and professional practices like consultancies and home services grow their reach and nurture their clientele. Many products out there have useful features for these types of businesses. These include email marketing, newsletter marketing, marketing CRM, and social media marketing management.
• Small Businesses Going Digital. Today, small companies need to be more visible online. And, it is already hard to compete with the bigger competition with marketing software tools in tow. So, to have a competitive edge in your target niche, it is best to use marketing software that will help you make data-driven decisions in marketing efforts across different channels. Marketing platforms with their analytics dashboard can help you do exactly that.
• Growing Small Companies. To grow your company, you must really focus on business and development and not the clerical facets of marketing or any other function. So, choose marketing software solutions that have useful automation so you can concentrate better on mission-critical functions. Also, if your company is poised for growth, it is best to have a marketing software solution that can not only help you grow but can grow with you. Meaning, choose a product with an expandable set of features and capabilities. In this way, you won’t have to migrate to another solution when your current one outgrows your current needs.

HubSpot Marketing: This leading marketing platform for small business offers a wide range of omnichannel marketing solutions with great automation tools. It is also known for its great leads management module and its robust analytics features.

monday.com: A very flexible business solution with great marketing integrations and automation tools. It is also a go-to marketing platform for its easy-to-use collaborative interface.

Maropost Marketing Cloud: This web-based digital marketing platform provides multi-channel marketing tools. The platform even has features for SMS campaigns,  mobile app engagement, and in-app messages.

MailerLite: This email marketing platform helps businesses engage their target market using interactive emails and newsletters. Aside from its easy-to-use subscriber management module, users also enjoy its built-in photo editing feature for quick and easy designs.

Read about other widely used applications in this article on the top 15 marketing software systems for small business.

There are many types of marketing software solutions out there. Popular ones include omnichannel marketing solutions, email marketing tools, content marketing platforms, marketing automation software, marketing management software, mobile marketing solutions, search marketing tools, event marketing platforms, and social media management software. There are also different deployment types. These are:

• On-premise – Usually, you only pay once for a full license for on-premise solutions. These are close to legacy programs that you have to install on your machine. Today, however, there are software providers that offer on-premise platforms while offering hosting services for your data and also provide software updates. This setup, typically, does not only have a one-time fee but also a maintenance fee after the first year or so. Also, you will have the usual expenses that come with having on-premise solutions. These include hardware requirements, company-based IT support, and other maintenance work.
• SaaS and Cloud-Hosted – Cloud-hosted or web-based marketing solutions are products that you can access through the internet. Your hardware investment will be minimal and your data is hosted by the software provider’s server. Also, these offer flexible payment schemes. There are usually monthly and annual subscription plans based on the number of users and features.
• Hybrid Solutions. These solutions can be deployed on-premise and accessed on the web. One good thing about this type of deployment is that you can have the best of both worlds as you can access it on your office machine or even on your laptop when you are away from the office. Hybrid solutions sync your company data whenever your machine has access to the internet. Some even have an offline mode so you can continue to work without an internet connection and can rest assured that your work will be saved and synced when your get your connection back.

A good quality marketing software solution should have these basic features. So, keep an eye for these essential components when choosing the most suitable system for you:

• Lead Generation – This module helps users identify and attract individuals clients or a demographic for a marketing campaign. Today, however, lead generation modules can be highly personalized. Meaning, users will be able to engage with potential buyers and nurture them at a personal level. Key features in this module would include campaign tracking, lead automation, lead reporting and analytics, and customer journey design.
• Marketing Performance Insight – Your marketing software should provide you with a central dashboard for all your campaigns and activities. With this, you can track performance and results. Getting a good range of real-time visibility will also allow you to make the necessary corrections as you go.
• Email and Newsletter Marketing – For small businesses, email and newsletter marketing campaigns are great ways to capture and nurture clientele. With these tools, you will be able to create engaging content that provides value to your clients. Also, current marketing solutions already have personalization tools so you address your customers by name and not with just a generic salutation. Also, this can be a great lead-generating tool using demographics, group preferences, and even individual behaviors. Also, there usually is an automated A/B testing tool to help you improve future campaign results. Moreover, look for a platform that provides in-depth reporting and analytics tools. This way, you will have a better grasp of your target market and also a clear sense of the impact and ROI of your campaigns.
• Social Media Marketing – A good marketing software solution is not complete without a social media management module. As markets today prefer digital engagement on social media, it would almost be a sin not to be online. This module will help you gauge customer behaviors using social media and help you engage them through posts, ad campaigns, comments, and direct messages. In fact, with these tools, you will have a social media marketing and social CRM tool rolled into one. Usually, these social media marketing tools allow you to create media, post them, and monitor their performance on just one control center.
• Integrations with other business tools– Another good thing to consider when choosing software is to see whether it can integrate with your current tools. This is because marketing doesn’t really exist in a vacuum. You need your new software to reflect that. Also, you need to have your marketing data available for further analysis using business intelligence solutions or make them available to be processed by accounting platforms. Also, by choosing a product that can integrate with your current architecture, you will save on expenses and time in migration and re-training.

Our research on marketing platforms show that these are the general benefits that companies receive when using a robust business marketing software:

• Focus on mission-critical functions. Unlike large enterprises, smaller businesses don’t have a lot of resources to allot to marketing efforts. This is why marketing automation tools are getting popular. In fact, all of the best marketing software for small business have automation functions for just this reason. Powered by AI and machine learning, users will not only be able to automate clerical tasks but also rest assured that everything is accurate in their records.
• Visibility and actionable insights. Eliminate the risk of human error when producing reports and scaffold human analysis using data-driven action recommendations. With reporting and analytics tools, users will not be stuck crunching numbers for hours. Companies can get valuable and actionable insights in a matter of seconds.
• Nurture leads. Because marketing today is highly personalized, marketing solutions provide users with tools to nurture leads and guide them through their customer journeys. This is a perfect addition to omnichannel lead generation tools as it allows marketing and sales teams to follow up on a potential sale. And, let’s face it, most of the time marketing and sales teams are essentially a function of one team in small businesses or even just a number of people, including the owner.
• Multi-channel consistency. Marketing solutions don’t only allow you to manage marketing communications in one central hub. It also helps you become more consistent when it comes to your branding. Also, with omnichannel solutions, marketers and customer-facing employees will be kept in the loop in any client conversation that jumps from one channel to another. Using prompts and notes, conversations will get easily picked up in the right context.
• Optimize marketing practices. With reporting and analytics tools, companies are able to optimize their marketing practices using historical data and even projections. The best marketing software for small business products is fitted with robust analytic modules that can help drill down into specific campaign actions to see how they affected the overall result. With this, users can improve their techniques and strategies over time.

Marketing platforms evolve every so often. New features get added and even interface improvements happen every year or so. This, of course, is one great benefit to subscribing to web-based solutions. So far, here are the four most important trends in marketing software development.  Here are three important trends in the continuing development of marketing software:

• Improved Usability – Marketing platforms have become easier to use over the years. The era of complicated user interfaces is gone. In fact, the best marketing business marketing software tools are as easy and intuitive to use as popular social media platforms. They come with high out-of-the-box usability and can be deployed easily with minimal training. Moreover, thanks to marketing automation features, they have become easier to use.
• Mobile Ready – The best marketing solutions are not only available on web portals. They are also accessible through native applications or are highly mobile optimized. In this way, users will be able to access their work wherever and whenever they need to.
• Social Media Intelligence – As markets are increasingly becoming more social, marketing platforms have integrated with social media channels to allow users to listen to customer sentiments and be up-to-date with current trends and talking points. This enables companies to align their marketing messages and campaigns even for short-term ones.

There are also potential issues when using web-based and hybrid marketing platforms. So, you need to watch out for these and research how these are being dealt with by software providers These are:

• Security – Make sure that the data you entrust to your software provider is taken care of. The best providers out there offer enterprise-level and even bank-level security. Also, look for applications that have role-based permissions. This is because when not set up properly, anyone in your company can access any data within the system. This is also the case when offboarding employees. Make sure that their accounts are deleted or migrated to a new user.
• Power and Internet Interruptions – When you go digital, you also are susceptible to power and internet interruptions. Lengthy spells of outages can, thus, have an impact on your marketing performance. So, make sure that your provider’s SLA (Service Level Agreement) has no glaring historical issues. The best ones guarantee a 99.9% uptime.
• Compliance – Make sure that your provider complies with government data protection policies. Do your own research and see which ones apply to your business. Moreover, you can easily reach out to your vendor and ask questions regarding how you can meet important requirements.
• Data Ownership – For many reasons, you should have ownership of your data. Make sure that you can export your data and easily migrate it to some other system. This is especially when you choose to switch to another vendor or the vendor you have selected may go out of business. Always have an exit strategy for when everything goes sideways.

Marketing software solutions are getting fitted with the latest AI and machine learning (ML) technology. This is even true when it comes to those that specialize in small business marketing. AI and ML provide users with actionable insights based on historical data. Also, these engines help users create better-personalized marketing messages and customer experiences.

These tools are also used to scour social media channels and look for trends and sentiments that businesses can capitalize on. Moreover, the best products also offer recommendations for tailored content. This functions, more or less, like the recommendation engines of social media channels themselves. They provide possible content of interest based on past content consumption behaviors and preferences.

Moreover, marketing solutions, especially those with SEO and website marketing modules, are implementing AI chatbots. These products are useful in answering FAQs and not-so-complicated concerns. This automation tool helps users provide a conversational aspect to providing support and answering inquiries. The technology for this is being heavily improved as we speak. So, in the future, expect chatbots to provide a more human-like experience.

With the rise of video hosting and streaming services, marketers should at least look at ways to capitalize on this trend. The biggest brands are into video marketing. Small businesses, given the right digital tools, can do so as well. So, small business marketers should look into marketing platforms and adjunct tools to seamlessly add a video marketing dimension to their campaigns.

Short videos (15 to 30-second clips or more) can easily be created using free web-based tools and can be disseminated to engage potential audiences across social media channels and even on in-app advertising. Moreover, there are even platforms that allow you to make interactive videos. As a study by Magna found, interactive ones are 32% more easily memorable than non-interactive ads. Even though a user might not click on the videos themselves, their interactive nature may help drive up intent to purchase.