Any new online business will face a plethora of challenges and hurdles in its infancy – from dealing with proper search engine optimization practices to perfecting the art of marketing, it can be a time-consuming process with little immediate reward. This may explain why the majority of online businesses either fail or fail to thrive, as it takes persistence and dedication in order to achieve a positive result. Luckily, there are dozens of tools available that can make the process of transitioning from upstart to success story much easier. If your business has recently unveiled its online operations or you have started a new business from scratch, then continue reading to find out more about a few marketing tools that can make your life easier.

WordPress

No doubt one of the most popular content management systems, WordPress can be the ideal template for upstart businesses that are concerned with marketing. While the platform itself offers a limited amount of marketing potential right out of the box, the true flexibility can be found within all of the available plug-ins for WordPress. Users can quickly optimize pages and blogs for SEO, but those who want to be pinging networks with their content can employ a variety of social media and integrated content plug-ins to make it easier to share and distribute content on a regular basis.

Mailchimp

Marketing can be done in many ways, but email remains perhaps the most cost-effective form of marketing. Mailchimp is a great utility that can be used for free if your current audience is relatively small. The free version of Mailchimp allows you to design customized emails via drag and drop, create various mailing lists for each type of subscription or interest, and can be used to send up to 12,000 emails per month. Users will even be able to preview how their emails will appear in various desktop and mobile email applications. There really is not a better alternative available that rivals the functionality and cost of Mailchimp.

Google Analytics

The most widely used and one of the best free tools out there, Google Analytics can be a great solution for any upstart business that wants to monitor its traffic, engagements and conversions on a daily basis. Many web hosting companies now offer Google Analytics integration standard, but those that do not can be easily configured to work with the utility. You will be able to view the number of visits to your website, how many pages the average visitor views, the average duration of each visit and your bounce rate. Any marketing effort that does not use Google Analytics (or a premium solution) will be doomed to fail, as webmasters will not be able to see who is pinging networks on their site and how often.

Conclusion

With so many forms of marketing available to upstart businesses, it can be difficult to know where to begin. The most important aspect when you begin a new online business is to have a solid foundation from which you can launch your marketing efforts. This includes a solid content management system (WordPress), a versatile email marketing solution (Mailchimp) and a great analytics program (Google Analytics). With these elements in place, your marketing efforts will have a better chance of success and you can then focus on growing awareness of your products, services and content offerings.