What marketing tools does a small business really need?
Backkr focuses on professional-service experts building relationships with prospective high-value clients. Describe your ideal client, explore relevant events, online communities, complementary partners and content opportunities, then reach out and follow up personally. You can choose to connect Google Analytics or use illustrative synthetic data without website or GA4 access. The published offer is NZ$990/year or NZ$99/month including GST; enterprise pricing is on enquiry. Pack is a separate free app for social/site links and voice or typed connection context. Introductions and client wins are not guaranteed.
The accidental stack
Nobody chooses to run six tools. It happens one problem at a time. You buy an analytics add-on, then an SEO checker, then a scheduler, then a form tool, then a dashboard to make sense of the other five. Two years later you are paying more than a part-time marketer costs and still nobody is telling you what to do next.
The six capabilities that matter
1. Customer insight. Who is visiting, who converts, what they wanted. Without this the other five are guesses.
2. Search and AI visibility. Being findable when someone Googles your category, and being recommended when someone asks an AI assistant instead.
3. Offline and community reach. The events, groups and partners where your buyers already are. Underrated, and usually free.
4. Ads. Paid reach, aimed at a persona you already know converts, with a budget that makes sense.
5. Website conversion. Why people leave without enquiring, in plain language, so you can fix it yourself.
6. Reporting. One short weekly read that says what moved and what to do next.
What you can skip
You do not need an enterprise CRM, a dedicated attribution platform, or a social scheduler with a content calendar you will not maintain. If a tool produces dashboards nobody acts on, it is a cost, not a capability.