Today’s technology gives small business owners the ability to level the playing field against larger players – especially when it comes to sales and marketing. But at the same time, marketing has never been more complicated.

Many small businesses have jumped into social media and email marketing because they feel they have to. However there’s been a lag in figuring out how to make these efforts pay off and how. Social and email have remained isolated from a broader business process.

Invest just a few minutes of your time, and a new, free online tool can help get you get a real handle on Inbound Marketing – a process for generating leads and sales online. The tool is called Marketing Grader – www.marketinggrader.com. It’s from HubSpot, the company that, literally, wrote the book on Inbound Marketing.

Marketing Grader provides an excellent overview of Inbound Marketing. And it can show you how your online marketing is doing so far, where the gaps are, how to fill them in and how to measure your progress. It can also show you how your marketing is faring against the competition.

Try Marketing Grader and you’ll finally see how everything fits together - social media, SEO, blogging, mobile, landing pages, calls-to-action, conversion forms, analytics, and more. In addition, you’ll have an educational report of about 11 pages that steps you through the Inbound Marketing process and explains best practices to shoot for.

If you haven’t yet taken the leap into social media, blogging or content marketing – not really understanding how it’ll help you – your Marketing Grader report may well give you the needed push! Of great value are the statistics, best practices and tips that accompany each item -- along with links to specific information to help you improve your scores.

Here’s how easy it is. Type your company’s url into Marketing Grader, enter your email address and in a few minutes you’ll see how your overall online marketing scores on a 100-point scale. (Higher is better.) It also provides separate scores for each of the three distinct activity areas of inbound marketing tied to business development -- Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel and Analytics.

The three areas correlate to lead generation, lead nurturing/sales conversion and marketing improvement/ROI proofs. For an even bigger picture, you can compare your marketing with a few competitors’.

Your report shows you how you’re doing driving traffic to the top of the sales funnel, converting leads and nurturing them through the middle of the funnel to closed sales, as well as how well you’re using analytics to drive marketing improvement and, ultimately, business results.

If you want to market better in 2012, try Marketing Grader. Keep in mind that the tool is new and will be continuously improved based on user input. Let us know what you think of Marketing Grader and learn how your report can figure into your marketing plans this year.