Business can often be a tough field to be in with many challenges that all need to be taken on. However, there are some tools that are essential for your business to have if you are going to have success in the long run. A website is without a doubt one of the very first things you need if you want to be successful. This is because it is the easiest way for people to find you when they are looking for your services or products. You can also customize these so they have information regarding your business which will help with branding. There are plenty of people who don’t even know how important these are when it
There are the basics to get started. Power tools are also good to have, but not essential. Try to avoid purchasing extra tools at first because your tool collection will evolve over time to include all the essentials. Once you start your business you will need to acquire many more tools but, until then just buy enough tools for your home business needs to get started.
Mobile Marketing Tools
Nowadays, technological advancements allow you to reach potential customers even if they do not physically go to the stores. In fact, because of increased connectivity, it’s never been easier to reach consumers.
According to Blue Corona, the average person now spends more than five hours a day on their phone.
In 2013, mobile phones made up 16.2% of web traffic worldwide. In 2018, this increased to 52.2%.
Source: Broadband Search
In short, the best way to reach your potential customers’ is through mobile marketing.
This means you need special mobile marketing tools. These enable you to send messages to potential buyers in three ways:
• SMS,
• Push notifications
• Or in-app messages.
The benefit of SMS is that all phones already have text messaging on board. That means users don’t have to download your app. However, texts are often considered more intrusive and more obnoxious than other mobile channels.
It’s also harder for your audience to opt-out of SMS marketing. They may then feel stuck receiving your messages.
On the other hand, push notifications are less intrusive since potential customers are given a chance to opt-out in they’re phone settings. With push notifications, your potential customers can get your marketing messages without even accessing the app.
In-app messages guide your users within the app. They can, however, also be seen as obnoxious advertisements if they are overused not used properly. The key is to use them in such a way that you don’t disturb your users’ experience.
Content Management System
With the rise of online shopping and the decline of brick-and-mortar retail, your business can’t survive without a web presence. According to Blue Corona, 30% of consumers will not consider a company without a website.
97% of consumers go online and research local businesses before going to a physical location.
H&M, a clothing retailer, recognizes these facts. Its physical stores all over the world are supplemented by its websites. This comes in different versions, depending on where the person accessing the site is from.
Source: H and M
Of course, you can hire your own designer to create your site, but that doesn’t come cheap. You might also end up with a backend system, which makes it hard to update your content without using direct uploads.
If you’re just starting out, it’s best to take advantage of budget-friendly CMS tools that allow you to create your site and regularly update it. These can help you create a presentable business website, with its pre-designed themes and plug-ins.
These typically employ a drag and drop interface, making it simple to customize your site or add new pages without any coding skills. More advanced CMS platforms also help with SEO optimization and translation into other languages.
Hiring Software
When you’re starting a business, you have to hire people to take on specific tasks. Before you hire them, though, you would have to conduct the necessary background checks to ensure that they will not be a liability to the company.
Sure, you can hire a recruitment consultancy firm to do the legwork for you, but that can be very expensive. Luckily, there are now cloud-based technologies that can help you streamline your recruitment process. Your best options have user-centric, mobile-optimized workflows that help you hire better and faster with no paperwork.
You can also automate background checks to improve speed and assure accuracy. This includes things like resume verifications, credit checks, drug screening, international checks, among others.
Source: Good Hire
Accounting Software
Businesses are all about profit. To track this effectively, you need to monitor your outgoing costs, in addition to your gross profits. These can include employees’ pay, store rent, and electricity bills, among other things.
Sure, this can be done by one person. The downside, however, is they will be prone to mistakes. After all, we’re all human. Also, it will take a lot of time, since the accountant will have to make calculations on their own.
Remember, accountants are highly trained professionals, so their time is expensive.
This is where accounting software comes in handy. Instead of doing manual computations, you can just let the software do the sums for you.
You don’t even have to worry about the space it will occupy on your computer or laptop. Most accounting software nowadays is cloud-based, which means all you need to do is register online and pay if it’s not free.
Since all you need is the Internet and a device, you can access your financials anywhere and anytime.
Source: QuickBooks
Team Chat App
When you run a business, you naturally need to communicate with your employees.
This is because there are times you obviously need to follow up if certain tasks have been completed or ask questions to know specific information. Has an article been finished? Has the contract been drawn up? How many sales did the company make in the first quarter?
Sure, you can ask these when your employee is at the office, but what happens if you need to know the answer right then and there? Keep in mind, many people these days work remotely. This is where a team chat app becomes essential.
With team chat apps, you don’t need to go through the hassle of looking for your employee’s phone number in your phone book. If they’re part of your group chat, you can easily reach them and throw over those crucial questions.
Source: Chanty
Operational Systems
Gusto—Gusto is a fantastic platform for payroll and extended capabilities like benefits management and paid time off (PTO) tracking. We use it for all of those services and for making certain vendor payments to take advantage of its automatic 1099 paperwork processing come end of year tax time.
Guideline—We’re proud to offer a 401(k) investment benefit to our team, managed via Guideline. It connects directly with Gusto so that appropriate deductions are withheld from the team’s respective paychecks per whatever selections they’ve made.
Management Systems
Monday.com—Monday.com has become our system of record for work. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s our go-to project management platform that all managers use. It’s a delight thanks to its intuitive user experience and comfortable views. Best of all, at least to me, there are roll-up views that allow me to see all projects visually mapped together.
CoSchedule—We use CoSchedule as our central content marketing calendar and production platform. In it, we’ve structured an automated workflow of tasks for the different pieces of content that we regularly produce and publish. Everything is tracked and easily malleable to our content needs. And it integrates directly with WordPress.
Communication Tools
Communication is at the heart of business. And whether you’re conversing with employees, customers, or other external parties (suppliers, contractors), you should be able to get your message across in the most hassle-free manner possible.
Internal and external communications are made easier with VoIP (voice over IP) technology. Which allows you to have your phone line on an Internet Protocol network.
The benefits of using this form of communication are extensive, but features include an ability to make calls to (and from) anywhere in the world at the same exact cost, the functionality to set up whole-team conferences, inexpensive hardware, and software (sound card, microphone, etc.), flexible infrastructure and mid-call data transfer.
Switching to a more fault-tolerant, cost-effective communication platform like VoIP is a no-brainer.
Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing remains a great way of reaching your customers. In 2017, global email users totaled 3.7 billion, with the figure set to hit 4.3 billion by 2022.
Sure, email marketing can be hit or miss but properly executing your strategy will inspire brand loyalty and deliver a strong ROI.
A range of email marketing solutions are available, and these promise to help you keep in touch with subscribers, dispatch newsletters and offers, set up autoresponders, capture leads, and use statistics (e.g. open/unsubscribe rates) to improve retention and increase brand recognition.
Though we all complain about receiving spam emails, customers actually like to hear from their favorite brands. Indeed, 49% of consumers said they liked to receive promotional emails from their preferred brands on a weekly basis (Statista, 2017).
Whether you use MailChimp, Constant Contact, or some other email marketing service, it’s important to start building up your contact list and getting your name out there. These online business tools are simple to use, cost-effective, and crucial elements of modern marketing campaigns.
The best part about these online business tools is that they can help automate your email marketing processes.
They offer pre-built templates, 1-click automation, and even ready-made segments. As a result, you can easily build your email marketing campaigns and send out newsletters to your email list quickly.
Conclusion
There are a number of tools a business can’t operate without. From customer relationship management tools to the latest in innovation, businesses have a plethora of choices at their disposal. No matter what direction your business may choose to venture into, you’ll want the right tools to help get the job done.