There are too many tools out there to count. As a digital marketer myself I like to be on top of what is new and what is coming down the pike. Here are the top digital transformation tools for startups.
From making digital transformation easier to improving your productivity, these are the best digital tools for business.
Communication Tools
Good communication is a prerequisite for the success of any company. Communication – whether successful or not – impacts the productivity and success of your employees and organization on a daily basis.
Unlike email, where information is uneditable, can be misplaced, or distributed incorrectly, digital communication platforms centralize all important information and provide a single source of truth for corporate communications.
With tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, you can create dedicated work groups to ensure that everyone involved in a project or a team is well informed. This not only allows for better circulation of information, but also better involvement of relevant stakeholders in key processes. Everyone in the team can contribute by proposing solutions, giving feedback, or answering questions. Engagement is a fundamental element in stimulating teams and driving them to achieve their goals.
Digital technologies are transforming the way employees work. Employees are no longer constrained by the limits of a physical office. That’s why you need to adapt how you communicate to support your field, remote, and international employees. Other tools like Skype, Zoom, and Google Chat bring communication to the next level with video conferencing and face to face conversations.
Whatsapp Business
For most individual businesses, especially on social media, the Whatsapp Business app is the go to digital tool. With features such as a business profile, catalogue to show your products and services, auto messaging, QR codes to invite new customers and other features, Whatsapp business allows businesses to enhance operations and provide them with a professional and personalised way to engage with their customers.
The messaging app was created by Facebook as a standalone application for business owners and can be downloaded from the app and PlayStore.
Zendesk
Interfacing with a lot of old and new customers seamlessly can be a hassle if your business has yet to integrate with the right customer service software. This is where Zendesk comes in. The tool helps optimise your customer relationship with features like messaging and live chat, ticketing system, voice, answering bot and so much more.
CMS Tools
It’s impossible to talk about digital transformation without mentioning CMS (content management system) software. A CMS allows you to create and manage digital content like websites and mobile apps. According to CSO Insights, 70% of buyers fully define their needs on their own before engaging with a sales representative, and 44% identify specific digital solutions before reaching out to a seller. With this in mind, your web content and presentation is critical in your buyer’s decision-making process.
Successful websites are visually attractive, easy to navigate, provide targeted, relevant information, and answer frequently asked questions.
Some of the more well-known systems include WordPress, Prestashop, or Drupal. Each has its own advantages in terms of functionality, ease-of-use, and pricing, compared to tailor-made-sites. If you don’t have a dedicated internal team to create and manage your CMS, it might be worth bringing in an expert agency dedicated to building your ideal website and customer experience.
WordPress
WordPress is the most user-friendly and popular choice, with over 60 million users and the platform for about a quarter of the websites on the internet. Almost half of the internet is powered by the WordPress platform. This free web software is open source, with a basic framework of functionality that can be expanded through the addition of plugins.
Project Management Tools
Successful project management means greater efficiency, faster time to market, and beating the competition. It is important to not only choose the right digital project management tool for your organization, but also to ensure the tool is widely adopted.
An effectively utilized project management tool will help your teams create and schedule tasks, stick to project timelines, track progress, increase efficiency and responsiveness, and provide holistic visibility for team members and managers. Ultimately, it will lead to more productive employees, successful projects, and happy customers.
To boost adoption of project management tools, you can set up email alerts or notifications whenever there is a change in project status, a team member completes a task, or help is requested. Sharing documents within the tool allows you to address complicated workflows and tasks with several people in an instant, without having to go through your mailbox or organize lengthy meetings.
An example of some well-known project management solutions include Jira, Trello, Monday, and Asana. Research the various options available and choose the one that fits your needs best. Consider how these particular tools will integrate into your overall digital workplace, considering your collaborative suite, intranet platform, and other tools already in place.
Marketing Tools
Statusbrew
Statusbrew is one of the leading social media marketing tools for big organizations and small businesses. It allows you to schedule, collaborate, and track your social media accounts.
The platform is an excellent choice for social media managers to make their workflow easier. It offers to connect the popular social media channels- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, and LinkedIn.
With Statusbrew you can:
- Recycle your old posts that worked best
- See all the messages, mentions, and comments in a single inbox
- Stay updated with the latest blog posts and can share them
- Integrations with Slack, Box, Google Drive, etc.
- Add your team members and grant specific permissions
- Get free stock images and other media to share on social media
- Create categories according to post types to analyze which works better
- Check different metrics on posts such as engagements, likes, comments, impressions, etc.
SocialPilot
Social Media is a place where startups can connect with their first customers, introduce their brand’s personality, and boost their leads and sales. But social media takes time and resources to get right, something startups are in short supply of. So, what do you do?
You get SocialPilot.
SocialPilot is a simple, affordable, all-in-one social media marketing and management tool. You can schedule posts, manage your mentions, and engage with your community all from one simple interface.
It works across all social media channels with no limits on sharing. You can reply to all your comments, messages, and posts in real-time – so you never miss an opportunity to build a relationship with a prospective customer.
Campaign Monitor
Good customer communication means good customer service. Both are vital to building your brand.
In fact, customer service is the top indicator of company trustworthiness, especially when you’re an unknown startup. Because of this, you need a reliable communication channel and even in 2020, email is still your best bet.
With its low-cost, high-reward record, email remains a perfect fit, plus user-friendly email service providers like Campaign Monitor are ideal for startups. Plus, you can try Campaign Monitor for free.
If you’re a small business owner, you may handle email alone or with a basic email service provider (ESP). This can be effective, but as professional needs grow, finding the right provider becomes more complex.
You may find yourself needing to graduate from DIY tactics or basic services. Comprehensive tools and reliable support will become necessary as your business grows.
With a long history of helping both experts and newbies, Campaign Monitor has a massive, easy-to-use toolset.
As there is no such thing as a dull moment in a startup’s life, busy marketers who are looking to make emails quickly will appreciate Campaign Monitor’s email templates and drag-and-drop solutions, which let you customize buttons, copy, and images instantly.
However, if you’re accustomed to building your own emails from scratch, Campaign Monitor can help you do that, too with resources for developers and designers.
TalentSoft
TalentSoft is a cloud-based HR software that enables Human resource managers to have better interactions with other managers across the organization as well as employees. The tool has a wide range of features that caters to different HR functions like, recruiting, employee engagement, onboarding and more.
TalentSoft adapts to HR practices across different countries and organizational structures, making the tool effective for talent management on a global scale even whilst it respects local requirements.
Conclusion
This list could go on and on. There are at least a dozen alternatives for every major digital marketing tool. I’m not saying you should use all of these lesser-known tools, but definitely give the tools you currently lack in your marketing arsenal a try.
A new startup that doesn’t have an array of digital tools to automate and simplify tasks, connect remote users and improve operations may soon be running behind its competitors. It’s especially important to have these tools in place to manage a remote workforce.
Start things off on the right foot by investigating these digital tools early—it’ll be easier to scale up with them than to retrofit your tools to your existing, perhaps inefficient, processes.