15 Marketing Tools for Running a Business in High School
A high school business grows when people know it exists and understand what you offer. And marketing can help you with that! It helps you reach your audience, explain your work, and guide interested people toward buying or returning. Without marketing, even strong ideas struggle to find momentum.
What aspects of a high school business do marketing tools help with?
Different tools support different parts of this process. You might use one tool to design posts, another to plan a content calendar, another to track email responses, and another to study website traffic. Each tool uncovers a small piece of how customers think and act. When you follow those signals, your decisions become more grounded in information than in hope.
Why should you consider marketing tools for running a business in high school?
Exploring these tools during high school shows colleges that you understand digital workflows and that you pay attention to how a business functions. You show skill in managing information and adjusting your plans based on results. These are qualities that matter when admissions teams look at students who build their own ventures.
If you’re also interested in marketing summer programs, check this out!
With that, here are 15 marketing tools for high school students!
15 Marketing Tools for Running a Business in High School
1. Canva
What kind of marketing is it used for: Content creation & design
Initial costs: Free plan available; Pro starts at $12.99/month or $119.99/year
Canva lets you design flyers, posters, social posts, menus, pitch decks, and logos through drag-and-drop tools. You keep your branding consistent through templates, and the built-in image and font libraries give you plenty to work with. For a school business, this helps your brand look organized across platforms.
2. Hootsuite
What kind of marketing is it used for: Social media management
Initial costs: No free plan; Professional plan starts at $99/month
Hootsuite lets you schedule posts across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and TikTok from a single dashboard. You can monitor comments, track engagement, and analyze what type of content performs best. This helps you avoid the “post when you remember” trap and keeps your brand active even during exams or busy weeks. It’s especially useful if you're trying to grow a consistent social presence for your business.
3. Mailchimp
What kind of marketing is it used for: Email marketing
Initial costs: Free plan available; Essentials plan starts at $13/month
Email becomes a steady line back to your customers. Mailchimp helps you write newsletters, send follow-ups after a purchase, and automate welcome emails when someone joins your list. You don’t need a complicated design; the editor handles layout and fonts while you focus on the message. When people open or click, you see exactly what worked. That’s how small ventures convince customers to return without spending money on ads every week.
4. Google Analytics
What kind of marketing is it used for: Website analytics & SEO insights
Initial costs: Free
Look at how people behave once they land on your website. Google Analytics shows traffic sources, page views, bounce rate, and time spent, which tells you what’s attracting attention and what pushes people away. If your visitor numbers rise after a TikTok post, you’ll know. If everyone leaves after seeing your product page, that’s another signal. Learning how to read these metrics is basically learning how digital businesses make decisions every day.
5. Buffer
What kind of marketing is it used for: Social media scheduling & analytics
Initial costs: Free plan with limited features; Essentials plan starts at $15/month
Buffer lets you queue content, review engagement, and measure reach without a complex dashboard. You can plan for a week in advance, see which posts worked last week, and avoid repeating formats that didn’t connect. It’s simple enough to use during school without feeling like another assignment, which makes it easier to keep your account active throughout the year.
6. HubSpot CRM
What kind of marketing is it used for: Customer relationship management & email outreach
Initial costs: Free plan available; Starter plan begins at $20/month
Keep every lead, message, and customer action in one organized space. HubSpot CRM stores contact details, logs emails, tracks website actions, and sends outreach messages. Instead of scrolling through DMs and remembering who asked what, you follow actual records. If you’re selling services, managing bookings, or handling repeat customers, this keeps your communication consistent and shows you where interest turns into real business.
7. Google Ads
What kind of marketing is it used for: Paid advertising (search & display ads)
Initial costs: No platform fee; you pay for ad spend (you can start with as little as $5–$10/day)
Google Ads lets you promote your business on search results and across websites that show Google Ads. You can target keywords like “math tutoring near me” or “custom stickers,” depending on your business. The platform gives you detailed data on clicks, conversions, and spending, helping you learn how paid advertising works. It’s a powerful way to drive traffic if you want to experiment with real marketing campaigns on a small budget.
8. Later
What kind of marketing is it used for: Social media planning, especially for Instagram & TikTok
Initial costs: Free plan available; Starter plan begins at $25/month
Later is a visual-first scheduler designed for platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. You can plan your feed, draft captions, schedule posts, and track performance. Its media library helps you organize photos and videos, which is ideal if you’re running a product-based business. The drag-and-drop calendar makes it easy to map out your content rhythm without feeling overwhelmed.
9. Moosend
What kind of marketing is it used for: Email marketing & automation
Initial costs: Free trial; Pro plan starts at $9/month
Build automated email flows without long setup. Moosend gives you tools to segment your audience, personalize messages, and send emails triggered by behaviour, such as browsing a product or leaving a cart. It’s cost-friendly while still giving you access to automation usually found in bigger platforms. When you start building sequences, you learn how businesses create repeat sales through communication rather than discounts alone.
10. Google Business Profile
What kind of marketing is it used for: Local SEO & online presence
Initial costs: Free
If you run a local business like tutoring, baking, photography, or lawn care, Google Business Profile helps you appear in local search results. You can list your services, location, hours, photos, and customer reviews. This increases your credibility and helps nearby customers discover you. Learning how to optimize a business listing is a genuinely great marketing skill and makes your business look more established.
11. Trello
What kind of marketing is it used for: Project management & content planning
Initial costs: Free plan available; Standard plan starts at $6/user/month
Trello helps you organize your marketing tasks using boards, lists, and cards. You can plan content calendars, track campaigns, manage to-dos, and collaborate with friends if you run a business together. Visual workflows make it easy to see what’s in progress and what needs attention. Using Trello teaches you how real marketing teams structure projects, which helps build discipline and improve execution.
12. Semrush
What kind of marketing is it used for: SEO research, keyword analysis, competitor insights
Initial costs: No free plan; Pro plan starts at $129.95/month
Study real search behaviour and track where your website stands. Semrush lets you investigate keywords, monitor ranking changes, analyze competitor websites, and audit your own SEO problems. Even basic reports show what people type into Google before buying something, which helps you plan what content to create next. It’s advanced, but high schoolers who learn this stand out immediately.
13. Bitly
What kind of marketing is it used for: Link management & click tracking
Initial costs: Free plan available; Basic plan starts at $8/month
Track clicks from every place you promote your business. Bitly creates short links for bios, posters, QR codes, and newsletters, and then shows you where clicks came from. It’s a simple way to compare Instagram vs. email or online posters vs. real-world flyers. When you know which channels work, you stop guessing and start spending your time where results happen.
14. Zoho Social
What kind of marketing is it used for: Social media management & monitoring
Initial costs: Free trial; Standard plan begins at $10/month
Zoho Social is a budget-friendly scheduling platform with strong analytics features. You can plan posts, monitor brand mentions, respond to comments, and track growth trends across platforms. It’s especially good if you want something more affordable than Hootsuite but stronger than basic tools like Buffer. For high school entrepreneurs, it helps streamline social posting without feeling overwhelming.
15. Hotjar
What kind of marketing is it used for: Website behaviour analysis (heatmaps & user insights)
Initial costs: Free plan available; Plus plan starts at $39/month
Hotjar shows how visitors actually use your website. For example, where they click, how far they scroll, and which parts they ignore. Heatmaps and session recordings help you understand what’s confusing or engaging. This is extremely useful if you want to design a better online store or improve conversions. For a high school business, it’s a hands-on way to learn UX thinking and data-driven optimization.
Looking to Build and Scale Your Own Business? Check Out the Young Founders Lab!
If you want to go beyond using marketing tools and actually build a full, revenue-generating venture, the Young Founders Lab is one of the strongest programs you can join in high school. It’s a 100% virtual start-up boot camp run by Harvard entrepreneurs, designed specifically for students who want to launch a real company or non-profit.
In this program, you’ll get hands-on mentorship from founders and professionals from Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, and YC-backed companies, while building a venture that solves a real-world problem. You’ll attend live workshops, explore business fundamentals, refine your idea, and work toward a fully developed MVP and pitch.
Multiple cohorts run throughout the year, including summer, fall, winter, and spring, so you can join whenever it fits your schedule. Financial aid is available, and the program is open to all high school students, with no prior experience required.
You can check out the brochure and apply for the next cohort here!
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