Being a small business owner means wearing a lot of hats - and marketing manager is often one of the roles that falls into your lap automatically (and happens to be one of the trickiest)! Thankfully, there’s a TON of amazing techy tools available to you that can make your life immensely easier, encouraging consistency and saving you lots of time so you can focus on what you most enjoy and do best. Today, I’d love to share 6 of the top tech tools for marketing your small business specifically in the digital landscape. I hope you fall in love with them just like I did!

6 Must-Use Tech Tools for Marketing Your Small Business Online

Later - Social Media Scheduling Made Simple

Later is *the best* social media scheduling platform around. Its visual calendar makes it easy to plan, preview, and schedule posts across multiple platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I use it to plan out content calendars in advance, ensuring that posts are always perfectly timed without the stress of manual posting.

I also personally love the drag-and-drop visual planner for Instagram - allowing me to triple-check the aesthetics of my feed ahead of time to avoid visual clutter and messiness.

The best part? When sharing a single post across multiple platforms, you can customize the same post for each unique platform without scheduling 3 or more times - just select all the platforms you want the post to go to and a single window will prompt you to customize for each individual platform! Seriously, it’s a life saver.

Later also provides in-depth analytics on your post performance, allowing you to make more informed content decisions in the future.

Canva - Design Like a Pro

It’s no secret that I’m not a professional graphic designer! While I may be a marketing expert, I don’t have the skills necessary to create intricate designs in Adobe programs like Illustrator or InDesign. However, visuals are key in the marketing world, especially social media, so it’s vital that I have a tool that makes this process easy.

Canva is a user-intuitive graphic design platform that makes creating professional, high-quality, and branded visuals easy, even for non-designers! I highly recommend the paid Canva Pro plans - they’re worth every single penny! Whether you’re creating social media graphics, new brochures/flyers, or client informational packets, Canva is a must-have for every business.

One of my favorite features is the Brand Kit - enter your brand colors, typefaces (fonts), and logo files once and they will always be there for you to return to, customizing any template to fit your unique business brand identity! Aside from unlocking a bazillion more templates with your Canva Pro subscription, you will also receive access to the Brand Kit feature.

I couldn’t live without my dear sweet Canva!

ChatGPT - Your AI Writing Assistant

While there are many valid mixed feelings on AI and ChatGPT in particular, it’s an undeniably powerful tool to help generate content ideas, brainstorm past what you initially came up with in your own head, and answer quick questions when you hit a roadblock (it’s literally helped me fix some broken custom code on a client’s web design before!).

I personally use AI programs to cut my video editing process in half, consult on the best way to word something in a tricky email, come up with new content topics and ideas, and think of even better creative and fun ways to say jokes for memes I’m looking to create, to name a few.

If you’re a small business owner that hates writing and doesn’t have the budget to outsource, the end of writer’s block days will be over when you meet ChatGPT. Now, it’s important to note that simply copying + pasting ChatGPT copy (text) without a plan to rework it and make it your own can be a bad idea and search engines may penalize you for it, so keep this in mind and always make sure you’re using ChatGPT for the initial concepts, but not word-for-word content!

Unsplash - Stunning Stock Photography

If you’re on a tighter budget, you’ll know how difficult it is to maintain a fresh collection of images to advertise your small business with. A few of my smaller clients understand the value of professional photographers but yet don’t have the resources to execute a quarterly branding photoshoot - and that’s okay!

The good news is that most audiences are looking for authentic, REAL content in 2025, so less emphasis is being placed on elaborate, expensive branding shoots nowadays (we used to shoot every 3 or so months back in the day!). If your business can only afford a yearly branding photoshoot, don’t fret - there’s a variety of wonderful, free stock photo resources that you can lean on.

Websites like Unsplash or Dupe provide beautiful, trending, high-quality images for free! I personally opt to pay for the Unsplash+ membership and I believe it pays for itself with the use I get out of it. By subscribing to the paid plan, you’ll receive access to a much wider variety of images, many of which are better quality than the free ones in my opinion. When looking for free stock photo sites, you’ll want to search for what’s called a CC0 license (or, Creative Commons Zero).

MailChimp - Email Marketing Made Easy

Another fabulous tool is MailChimp - your go-to when it comes to everything email marketing! This top email marketing platform helps you create, design, and manage email campaigns to your audience. It has a super easy, user-friendly interface that you’ll pick up in no time!

I use MailChimp on the regular to design monthly (or more frequent) emails for my clients and love the analytics that it provides after the fact, making retargeting or tweaks super easy. You may consider ConstantContact instead, but I personally prefer the design capabilities and customer service practices of MailChimp.

Most marketers will say that the most important and valuable list that you can have is an email subscriber list given that this is the only thing you actually have ownership over. With scary stories of platforms such as TikTok, it’s incredibly important to grow your email list in the event that your top performing social media platforms go down tomorrow.

Squarespace - Your All-in-One Website Solution

I’ve tried many web design platforms in my time and am so happy to have landed on Squarespace as my home! This web design platform is cutting-edge, leading the way for user-intuitive, do-it-yourself design. Recently, they unveiled new AI-powered tools that will allow users to create a branded website without prior design knowledge (although us professional web designers do encourage folks to hire a human designer to avoid your website looking like everyone else’s and possibly containing some glaring mistakes overall!).

This affordable builder is certainly one to consider if you’re a small business looking for an average website scope featuring blog functionality, booking/scheduling capabilities, e-commerce tools, or virtual e-course tools. While there are a few limitations like any other DIY platform, they’re quite minimal in the grand scheme of things and very rarely do I ever run into a small business that requires a platform more complex.

I also love that Squarespace integrates seamlessly with tools like MailChimp and makes marketing a breeze!

Another nice perk is knowing that Squarespace is an ethical, eco-conscious and social justice-oriented company that donates to important causes and genuinely supports its employees. I urge you to consider it if you’re still mulling over your options!

Each of these amazing tools brings something unique to the table, but when utilized together to make up smaller pieces of a greater puzzle, they are surely harmonious. These 6 platforms have transformed how I manage my business and assist my clients as a well-rounded, creative, and more stress-free service provider! Whether you’re just launching your project or are seeking helpful hacks to streamline your daily operations, these tools will make marketing feel more manageable - and hopefully more fun!