Tools Every Small Business Needs
As a small business owner, you are no doubt used to juggling many responsibilities and obligations in order to run your company effectively. Whether it is increasing communication demands, balancing work schedules, meeting payroll, filing reports, or the need for more engagement with your customers, your schedule sometimes is overtaken by many of these important activities.
When you run a small business, you are also likely to come up against struggles like having limited time and manpower, occasional budget shortfalls, and fluctuating workloads.
The good news is that with advancements in technology and the availability of highly effective business tools, you can utilize specific resources and solutions to make your job much easier and have your days operate more smoothly and efficiently. If fact, there are some business tools that could make your small business run better and increase the likelihood of reaching your business potential.
Here are just some of the tools and programs that your small business needs:
A Complete CMS (Content Management System)
Your website is a powerful marketing tool that showcases to the world the largest representation of your business. You can have a website developed that suits your particular business needs and competently promotes your brand and it doesn’t have to be a difficult process.
You can utilize a content management system like WordPress, which makes constructing a highly functional and dynamic website simple. No advanced tech skills are necessary.
WordPress is extremely popular because its platform is user-friendly and completely functional. You can even make your website more dynamic by using plugins, which are programmed to address various functions on your website. Among the tasks that you can perform with WordPress are building an e-commerce shop, creating forms that help you collect data, or integrating with social media and email marketing.
Google Analytics
With Google Analytics, you can monitor how many people visit your website and how long they stayed on your site. This impressive tool also informs you of how many unique and return visitors access your site, as well as where website visitors are coming from. This free tool enables your small business to track information about the ways visitors are interacting with your site.
What’s more, Google Analytics makes it possible to evaluate the performance of your keywords so you can make adjustments and be more successful in drawing people to your site. It also tells you how much traffic each of the keywords brings to your website.
The extensive information you gather from Google Analytics allows you to determine which marketing initiatives are successful. One of the biggest advantages of Google Analytics is observing website activity trends over time.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a perfect way to widen the sphere of influence of your brand. You have the potential for your brand messaging to reach scores of people, including some consumers who might be predisposed to want to buy what you’re selling.
Whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or other social media platforms, your small business can launch conversations that can inspire people to visit your website. As a result, your small business creates a pool of “pre-qualified customers” who, based on interests and life circumstances, are inclined to search for your products or services.
Advantages of using a social automation tool: This tool is ideal if you don’t have the time or expertise to maintain and oversee activities on these social media platforms.
The benefits include:
- Creating and posting engaging content on all platforms that are relevant to your users.
- Scheduling posts in advance, which saves your staff time and resources.
- Posting at peak hours, allowing you to reach the best quality consumers when more of them are trolling social media.
- Keeping your posts consistent.
- Building your presence without having to constantly visit these social media sites.
Personalized Email Marketing
Small businesses like yours look to email programs to bolster their relationships with customers and convert curious prospects into people who purchase your products or services. There are a few tools that can help you streamline the email process. Two
well-known platforms are Mailchimp and Constant Contact. They each offer relevant and powerful tools that make emailing your customers easy and efficient.
For example, these emailing platforms allow you to segment people you email to and customize your messages. You can also email personalized content, which is a big advantage for your marketing campaigns as it gives you the capability to gauge what the interests and tendencies are of your customers and customer prospects. In fact, you can craft precise email messages that are based on products or services that people viewed on your website.
Customer Relationship Management
Gone are the days when you manage your customer relationships haphazardly with no real helpful data to guide your decisions. With the customer relationship management (CRM) tools now available, you can hold onto leads and encourage first-time customers to become repeat customers.
Your CRMs enable your small business to effectively monitor all facets of every customer relationship you establish. With CRMs, you can effectively follow up with loyal customers, and know which users are visiting your website and completing forms but aren’t motivated enough to purchase your products or services.
CRM software like HubSpot can assist you in staying organized internally and keeping track of all types of customers and their activities.
Project Management Programs
A small business, and especially one that has a remote workforce, has to keep track of many projects and goals. This is also true when collaboration across teams takes place. Email programs aren’t ideal for this purpose – as they are isolated and staff employees could be inadvertently omitted from an important update because they did not receive an email message.
Instead, look to project management platforms such as Trello or Wrike, as they are efficient and tailor made for handling remote workforces and facilitating collaborative projects. These cloud-based tools provide a complete and transparent look at where each vital project is in its lifecycle and it enables all your staff to track progress from inception to completion.
Video Conferencing Software
If you are like many small businesses – particularly with so many employees working remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic – you need video conferencing software. A video conferencing solution allows you to hold effective meetings with clients and prospective employees or consultants.
If you’re looking to save money, consider free options like Join.me. You should be aware that most of the free video conferencing solutions allow for a maximum of only 10 participants. You can always upgrade to a paid service for more attendees.
Spotted Fox Digital Marketing — Building Brands with Purpose and Passion
At Spotted Fox Digital Marketing, we partner with businesses like yours to provide a full range of in-house digital marketing services. Spotted Fox Digital is a top-rated Tri-Cities Marketing Agency that believes in relationships, transparency, and trust! We are a results-driven top-ranked marketing company that uses responsive websites, targeted advertising, social media management, video, SEO, and more!
Our work is backed by data, providing your brand with the marketing insights needed to scale! Spotted Fox Digital marketing experts help businesses understand, reach & engage with their audiences through our digital marketing services.
If you are interested in scheduling a marketing consultation with us, we invite you to call Spotted Fox Digital at 509.792.3283 or complete our Online Contact Form.
