Looking for information about top business tools in the future? This book is full of useful tips, examples and easy-to-understand charts explaining the use of specific types of business tools in business. With this article, you can learn all you need to know about how to use important types of business tools in your business.
Similar to businesses, the tools used by the business are equally important. These help in performing various activities related to business. Let us take a look at various types of business tools and their uses.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is completely free software that provides valuable insights into who is visiting your website and how they engage with it.
It’s best paired with Google Search Console – another free digital marketing tool that helps you to identify any problems on your site and optimize it for traffic.
Some of the data points that Google Analytics makes available to you include:
- The number of visitors to your site by day, week, month, or any time period you choose
- Where these visitors are coming from – referrals from other website, organic search, ads, social, or direct
- The keywords people are using in Google to find your site
- The demographics and interests of your users
- How long each user spends on your site and which pages they visit
All this information is interesting, but it’s also vital knowledge that can help you to optimize your website and marketing campaigns (while keeping your SEO efforts low cost).
For example, you might notice through Search Console or Analytics that you’re getting a lot of traffic from a keyword that you lack content covering. Write a blog post optimized for that keyword and watch your traffic and engagement levels rocket.
Getting loads of visitors from Facebook but none from Twitter? Maybe this is a sign you should concentrate your marketing efforts on your main channel.
It’s all about the insights – not just the analytics.
Mailchimp
No matter how large or small your business is, email marketing should definitely be a part of your overall strategy.
When a customer signs up to your mailing list, they’re inviting you straight into their inbox. That’s why email marketing on average offers a higher ROI than any other marketing activity.
To get started with email marketing, you need a service that will enable you to capture emails, manage your lists, send out emails automatically or on a schedule, and analyze engagement.
Mailchimp is an ideal choice if you’re just starting out or if you are running a small business. Mailchimp’s basic service is free until your list hits 2,000 subscribers. It offers the main functionality you need without making managing your email marketing too complex.
Plus, Mailchimp now offers a slew of features and digital marketing tools (some under paid plans):
- Segmentation and personalization
- Landing page builders
- Form builders
- Audience insights
- CRM tools
- Predictive insights
Hootsuite
There’s no question. You must maintain a presence on social media to remain competitive in the marketplace. You also probably already know that social media can be a huge time sink, even if you’re using it purely for marketing purposes rather than endlessly scrolling.
Luckily, you have digital marketing tools available to cut down on this time inefficiency, like Hootsuite.
Hootsuite provides a central management platform for all your social media channels and allows you to schedule posts in advance so you can get all your social media content for the coming weeks or months ready in one session.
You also get advanced reporting tools to see which of your social media campaigns are working most effectively and use this data to calculate ROI.
You can also track mentions of your brand and manage responses, all in one dashboard.
Hootsuite also offers tools for promoting your social media posts through the platform now as well.
BuzzSumo
Your content strategy shouldn’t consist of wild stabs in the dark as you cover topics you think your audience will engage with.
That’s why 60% of B2B brands with the most successful content marketing have a documented strategy. Meanwhile, only 21% of the brands with the least successful content say they have a documented strategy.
To be successful in content marketing, you need to do your research properly, and this is why BuzzSumo is one of my favorite content marketing tools.
BuzzSumo shows content that is trending across social media based on searched topics. Following your search, you can analyze the results that are returned to see what’s so appealing about them and to get ideas of subjects to write about.
But BuzzSumo is moving beyond just basic content research and viral posts. Today, BuzzSumo offers tons of digital marketing tools like:
- Keyword research
- Influencer search
- Topic-based social media feeds
- Content analysis
- Crisis management
- Brand monitoring tools
KWFinder
SEO is a fundamental of online marketing and it’s important to get right. Not only should you make sure your site is structured properly and optimized for mobile, the content you produce must also contain relevant keywords that you have a good chance of ranking for in search results.
You need a special digital marketing tool to find those relevant keywords and start your search. You have several options available from the free Google Keyword Planner, to more complex suites of tools like SECockpit.
The more advanced digital marketing tools get quite expensive, with monthly subscription fees starting at $100 or more. However, options like KWFinder offer affordable, accurate, and useful insights at a perfect price point for small businesses.
Just put in a seed keyword and the tool will come back with hundreds of suggestions, search volume data, trends, and a ranking difficulty score for each word or phrase.
Mangools, the brand behind KWFinder, offers plans for individual tools or its full suite which includes a backlink tool, website analysis, SERP watchers, and more inside each one – along with a nice browser extension.
HubSpot
If you’re running multiple campaigns across numerous marketing channels, not only is it a huge challenge to manage them all, but you also have to figure out exactly what’s working and where to make improvements.
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software solution that enables you to bring all your different marketing channels together, and optimize for more traffic, a higher conversion rate, and better ROI.
The tool includes optimized templates that are ideal for creating landing pages along with other features like live chat and user action events which ramp up your engagement and convert more visitors into customers.
Other features of HubSpot include:
- Content optimization tools
- Optimized landing pages
- Email templates
- Marketing automation
- Lead management
- Analytics
- Social media management
The full version of HubSpot has a hefty price tag but small businesses on lower budgets can get started with their free or basic package.
HubSpot has also made the switch from an inbound marketing tool to a complete CRM platform, now offering free and paid sales hubs, customer service hubs, and content management (on top of the free/paid marketing hub).
However, the complete content management platform is only available in paid versions.
Canva
You need visuals to keep your audience engaged.
For example, you could use quality photos to keep your readers interested, come up with motivating quote graphics, visualize complex data with colorful graphs, and create highly engaging infographics.
Now, what if I told you that there is an awesome tool that will help you create original, visually appealing content in just a few minutes? Of course, I’m talking about Canva!
Canva keeps evolving, offering more graphic design tools and templates all the time: social media, infographics, marketing posters, business cards, eBooks, and anything else you could possibly need.
And Canva’s free templates (and entire freemium version) are actually useful too!
Use photos already featured on the site, upload and polish up your own images, or even create brand new ones. Most importantly, you don’t need to have any graphic design experience to create high-quality graphics. With its easy-to-use drag and drop features, Canva arms you with a wide range of photo editing options, color palettes, font combinations, effects, and custom image sizes.
SendX
Price:$7.49 per month (billed annually), for up to 1,000 subscribers
SendX is an easy to use and affordable online marketing tool that enables you to reach your email subscribers and grow your audience.
With SendX, you can build your email list using email popup forms, inline forms, and landing pages. You can design your forms with ready-made themes, and integrate them with any website.
The WYSIWYG email editor helps you design emails without HTML, using pre-built email templates, personalization, and even a countdown timer.
You can make sure you’re sending the right message to the right user at the right time. Email drip sequences and audience segmentation makes it easy to automate your email marketing. And the email campaigns are optimized based on more than 30 parameters such as time zone, domain name, past open rates, and more.
A heatmap report gives you a quick overview of which CTAs are working and which links people are clicking visually.
The pricing is straightforward, and every SendX paid plan comes with the ability to send unlimited emails to opted-in subscribers. No hidden limits or charges.
Proof
Price: Tiered pricing based on the volume of your website traffic, starting at $24 per month
Proof is designed to help you display your social proof on your website in the most effective and convincing way possible. It’s very easy to download — all you have to do is copy and paste their pixel onto your site page.
Once you paste the pixel, it will integrate with your site (or CRM) and show your targeted customers:
- Social media posts
- Reviews
- Video testimonials
- Hot streak notifications
- Live Visitor counts
Additionally, you can get a look at your customer’s demographics by looking at their Visitor ID information.
Survey Anyplace
Price: Tiered pricing, starts free and goes to $42+ per month for enterprise
Survey Anyplace has streamlined the survey creation experience by allowing you to build your own surveys and tailor them to your brand’s unique needs.
Far from the classic survey creator, they have streamlined for mobile and optimized the survey experience so that it’s quick and simple, with a heavy visual emphasis if desired.
The more accurate data you get from your users, the better your insights can be — ultimately, surveys are one step in the direction of increasing your conversions.
Trello
Price: Tiered pricing, starts free and goes to $42+ per month for enterprise
Trello is a content brainstorming and calendar service that allows you to collaboratively create and share ideas across multiple individuals and teams.
It operates more as a content planner than content scheduler — you can create notecards for article topics, marketing campaigns, or other subjects your team may focus on. On each card, users can take notes, record instructions, update the project status, and assign cards to certain people.
Trello is a comprehensive tool for content strategists looking to really plan out their editorial calendar.
Conclusion
The days of scribbling notes on napkins, leaving voice mail messages, and finding highlighters too high-maintenance are over. Business tools include smartphones, laptops, digital cameras, online services, and more. These items are important to the modern businessperson. Before you take that job or start that company, learn about all of your options.”