30 Tools Every Small Business Should Have
The world of entrepreneurship is growing larger every year. However, being a business owner can be intimidating and complicated in the beginning. Ever since the advent of the internet, in the ’90s, various organizations have offered tools that are designed to make business easier. These tools are designed to help you streamline your business processes and increase productivity. In other words, implementing business tools will help you work smarter, not harder. There are a lot of business-oriented platforms, services, and technology on the market, and choosing the best one can be overwhelming. Therefore, to save you from that hassle, we have created a list of the top business tools for various business functions.
Google My Business
Google is the world’s most used search engine and offers businesses a free profile to help them connect with their customers. Google My Business allows you to post your business hours, location, pricing information, share pictures, and even a virtual tour. All these elements will then show up for your target audience in Google’s search results. Additionally, a complete Google My Business profile can also help boost your website’s overall SEO ranking.
Google Analytics
The Google Analytics tool is one of the best marketing tools available. It will allow you to understand if your marketing efforts are successful at converting leads by providing you with information regarding how and from where your audience is landing on your website. This is an excellent tool for small businesses to determine if a marketing plan is working and gaining insights about your website traffic.
Hubspot’s Marketing Grader
As a small business, it’s natural to wonder if all the time, money, and energy invested in online marketing is working. Hubspot’s free marketing tool is designed to provide businesses with insights regarding how well your blog, social media, and other digital marketing efforts are doing. The information provided by this tool will allow you to see if your efforts are generating leads and how you stack up against competitors.
WordPress.org
The best blog management platform online is absolutely free. You can sign up for WordPress through your web hosting service. Once you sign up, you can create and manage a beautiful blog for your business. Moreover, there are thousands of third party add ons that make managing your website even easier. Essentially, the benefits of WordPress for digital marketing really never ends.
CoSchedule
If your business has a heavy blog presence with multiple team members writing, editing, and publishing content, then CoSchedule is perfect. It is available as a WordPress add on. You can plan content months in advance, notify writers of upcoming posts, and collaborate seamlessly in the writing, editing, and sharing process – all from a single platform. The tool is free to use for 14 days, but by then, you will be in love with it anyway.
AngelList
AngelList is a must-have resource for any small business. Whether you are looking for investors or hiring your first employees, hundreds of companies have been matched with angle investors and employees on this platform.
Fundera
If you want to skip looking for investors and would rather borrow money for your business, then Fundera is the marketplace that can connect you with the right business loan based on your requirements. Fundera doesn’t provide loans itself, but it works with more than 25 lenders to find the best possible rates for you.
Kickstarter
If you are looking to crowdsource for your business but don’t want to give away equity, then launch a funding campaign on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a free crowdfunding platform that helps you find micro-donors for your business. You can provide future products or gifts as incentives. Kickstarter will take a small percentage if your campaign is fully funded.
Canva
If you want to create high quality and professional-looking graphic designs for your blog or marketing collateral without investing a lot of money, then Canva is the tool for you. Canva offers pre-formatted templates that you can use to create social media banners, blog graphics, marketing flyers, and much more. Free and extremely user-friendly, Canva will make your low budget marketing effort look like a seasoned pro.
Pablo
If you are looking to create beautiful social media images without putting in too much effort, Pablo by Buffer is a great place to start. You can create an image from your text in under 30 seconds.
Piktochart
Infographics are everywhere and for a good reason. They are informational and can be highly impactful for your audience; however, if you are looking to create a top-notch infographic without investing in a trained graphic designer, then Piktochart is your tool of choice. This design-oriented tool offers beautiful templates and easy to use tools that even non-designers can use to create a visually stunning infographic.
Gmail
Gmail is, without a doubt, the best email communication tool available. Both the standard free Gmail account and a business email account are unbeatable in terms of ease of organization and inbox management.
Boomerang
Boomerang is a third party add on for Gmail that can schedule sending and follow up reminders to help you balance your email. So if you have a fantastic idea in the middle of the night, you can schedule an email that will drop into your team’s inbox during office hours. Or, if you need to send a follow-up email in a week’s time, you can easily use this tool as a reminder!
Organizer by OtherInbox
The organizer does precisely what its name implies—organizes your inbox.
Once you have added this to your email, it will sort through promotional emails, receipts, newsletters and add them to folders of your choosing. The tool’s main purpose is to prioritize the most important emails and keep them on the top of your inbox. You will also receive a “Daily Digest” that will give you information about which email has been filed into which folder. This will allow you to keep an eye on what emails are coming into your inbox without having to actually sift through each folder while focusing on the emails that are the most critical to you.
MailChimp
If you are new to email marketing, MailChimp is the ideal choice. MailChimp allows you to create beautiful and bulk newsletter content easily. You can send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers completely free. Your audience will love the fascinating material in their inbox, and you will enjoy MailChimp’s features like beautiful templates, advanced analytics, easy one-click personalization, and more.
Skype
The first and perhaps still the best internet calling service available, kype is the standard tool used for video conferences throughout the world. If you need to connect with your employees or clients from far away regularly, the free video conferencing between Skype accounts is the perfect tool to use.
Slack
Today, team members have multiple choices to communicate like social media, email, text messages, chat tools, and more. However, using various communication platforms can be confusing and can lead to miscommunication. Slack can help manage conversations with team members across devices and accounts on one platform. So if you send an email, get a reply over text, and follow up via a tweet, no one will miss a beat.
EverNote
Evernote is a great place to keep track of thoughts, plans, and ideas wherever you are. The app’s free version lets you clip content from around the web, create notes, share with friends, and comment on documents together. Moreover, you can do all this with seamless integration across your devices without missing anything.
Google Drive
Google Drive offers pretty much all the same benefits of Microsoft Office, but it is accessible from anywhere as long as you have online access. You can collaborate on documents with colleagues, track spreadsheet changes as you edit, and share with clients quickly without waiting for uploads or software compatibility —all for free.
Hootsuite
Individually publishing social media messages in real-time is time-consuming and a recipe for low engagement. Sign up for Hootsuite, and you can manage multiple social media profiles from a single dashboard.
For absolutely free, you can schedule posts, track mentions, engage with followers, and measure the effectiveness of your social media content. It’s the go-to tool for keeping your social media accounts in line.
Flickr
Flickr is a user-generated photo sharing site that offers a vast variety of images for free or without attribution. Check the creative commons section of Flickr and read the usage terms to ensure that the image is free to use.
FreeImages
FreeImages is an excellent resource for business-related images for generic blogs or social media graphics.
Pixabay
Pixabay is an excellent resource if you are bore of the regular stock images and want to shake things up a little. The images on Pixabay have a more indie vide compared to the more generic vibe of traditional stock images.
Unsplash
Unsplash has a comparatively smaller selection than most free stock image website. However, images on Unsplash don’t look like stock images at all. The site is updated every ten days, and the collection of free to use images can create a personalized connection with your audience which typical stock images can’t.
Google Cloud
If you are already using various Google apps, then Goole Cloud is the obvious choice for backing up files, documents, images, and all other content. You can easily integrate Google Cloud seamlessly with other Google apps and can rest assured that you will never lose track of your files.
Trello
Trello was recently purchased by Altassina for $425 million. The tool is proving to be one of the best team and task management platforms around. You can create various boards and cards, set due dates, add notes, etc. Trello allows you to structure and keep track of tasks to be as simple and straightforward as possible. Trello can be free for individuals and small teams, and the payment grows slowly depending on how fast you scale up your team size.
Dropbox
Modern companies are using Dropbox to share files between employees and collaborate on documents from multiple devices. You can save all your documents to the cloud and have access from anywhere. You can also share them via email invites with colleagues, clients, prospects, or whoever may need access. The first GD of data is free, and for a small organization, that may be all you may ever need.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is one of the marketing tools for people who need to learn more about their market. As a small business owner, you may have some idea about your industry, but as you dig deeper, you’ll find additional data that you can use to your advantage. BuzzSumo is the tool you will ever need if you want to gain a better understanding of your competition or the type of content that best performs with search engines and your audience.
Unbounce
Unbounce is great for building compelling, eye-catching websites and content, but it also helps in choosing the right content for increasing sales. The Unbounce software is one of the best business development tools that allow you to create dedicated landing pages that drive more leads and conversions through pay per click campaigns. The software also helps you create sticky bars and creative popups that have a proven high conversion rate.
GSuite
Google built the GSuite to provide a range of functionality for businesses. For a low cost, you can purchase a domain, set-up emails, track analytics for your website, launch and manage ad campaigns, and much more with the apps in the GSuite. Having all of your business needs concentrated around your domain, and within Google, the platform will allow for seamless marketing efforts.
We hope our extensive list of small business tools will support you in taking your business to new heights! Did we miss your go-to free business tool or resource? Share your favorite tools with us in the comments below.
For more updates, tips, and tricks on how automation tools can help businesses and for in-depth reviews on automation tool reviews keep reading ToolsMetric.
