Marketing Tools for Small Business: The Stack I Actually Use

Most small businesses need five kinds of marketing tools: a fast, well-hosted website, an SEO tool to get found, an email platform to follow up, a social scheduler to stay visible, and an AI assistant to create content in your voice. Pick one good tool in each category and connect them, instead of collecting dozens you never use.

Premium WordPress-only hosting with speed, security and backups handled for you. I’ve hosted my sites on WP Engine since 2012. Don’t go cheap on hosting: Google notices. Read my WP Engine review. See WP Engine

The WordPress theme and page builder this site runs on. Beautiful layouts, lots of built-in functionality and a long track record of updates and support. See Avada

What I use for opt-in forms, lead magnet landing pages and online courses. Built by people obsessed with conversion. See Thrive Themes

My go-to for keyword research, competitor analysis and tracking where you rank. It’s also what I use for the organic side of every local visibility audit. See Semrush

The WordPress plugin that handles your SEO titles, meta descriptions, schema and sitemaps, with helpful checks as you write. See Yoast SEO

Automatic speed optimization for WordPress: caching, image optimization and code cleanup, without hand-tuning every page. See NitroPack

The email platform I use and love for newsletters, automations and tagging. Built for creators and small businesses, with great training and a supportive community. Read 7 things I love about Kit. Try Kit

Quizzes are one of the most engaging lead magnets around. Interact makes it easy to build one that grows your list and points people to the right offer. See Interact

AI-powered chat automation for Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. It answers common questions, captures emails and follows up with leads in your DMs around the clock. Read my ManyChat guide. Try ManyChat

Pinterest and Instagram scheduling, visual planning and analytics. Feed it a blog post URL and it creates on-brand posts and images in seconds. It’s how I keep my pins posting consistently without living on Pinterest. See Tailwind

Social media scheduling with evergreen recycling. Queue your best posts once, sort them into categories, and it keeps them going out on a schedule across your social profiles, so your feed stays active even in your busiest weeks. Try SmarterQueue

Buzzsprout has hosted my podcasts since 2019: easy publishing, solid stats and great support. PodcastGuests.com connects hosts and guests when you want to be on other shows. See Buzzsprout · See PodcastGuests

The AI tools I use to write, record, design and repurpose content without a production team.

The AI assistant at the center of my marketing system. With a brand voice guide and the right setup, it drafts content that sounds like you. See Claude

Video and audio editing as easy as editing a document. I love it for recording my screen and myself at once, plus the teleprompter and eye contact correction. Try Descript

Realistic AI voice-overs and voice cloning. I’ve cloned my own voice, and it keeps getting better the more I train it. Great for audio versions of posts and video narration. Try ElevenLabs

Turns blog posts, scripts and long videos into short, captioned videos with AI narration. An easy way to get more video out of content you’ve already written. Try Pictory

AI trained on your podcast. It turns each episode into show notes, transcripts, blog posts, social posts and video clips, so one recording feeds your whole content calendar. Try ToastyAI

AI design for ebooks, reports, slide decks and lead magnets. Turn an idea or a blog post into a polished download without design skills. Try Typeset

Start with the job, not the tool. Decide what you need done (get found, follow up, stay visible), then pick one tool per job.

Check the track record. Look for strong reviews, regular updates and real support. I once built on a theme that stopped getting updates and had to start over. You don’t want that.

Pay for what matters. Free versions are great for testing. For the tools your business runs on, paid plans usually mean better support when you need it.

Make them work together. The magic isn’t any one tool. It’s a website, email, social and AI that pass work to each other so your marketing keeps moving without you doing it all.

Work smarter, not harder.