The internet is an invaluable resource for any business, but it can be especially important for small businesses as it helps to put you on a level playing field with larger corporations on many levels. Here are some inexpensive online tools that can help your small business grow.
Collaboration tools
Collaboration tools are apps or software that helps you to streamline the creative process. Here you can track progress, assign tasks, and generally improve workflow. This helps to improve communication between employees and departments, enabling them to work together with minimal hiccups. A manager can assign tasks and give feedback instantly. Problems or obstacles can be identified and resolved quickly. A huge benefit of these collaboration tools is that it enables your employees to easily work from home if needed or desired.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Effective digital marketing is based largely on the creation of high-quality online content. Using a content management system makes it so much easier to create, store, and manage your marketing content as well as saving you time and money in the long run. Without this software, you will probably have to enlist the help of a web developer whenever you want to make changes to your website.
Graphic Design
Images are just as important as written content. Without an accompanying image, written content has far less impact – it makes it easier to read, can improve how it ranks in search engines and makes it more likely to be shared online. Using a graphic design platform like Canva, you can easily create professional-looking logos, presentations, and infographics without needing specialised graphic designer training.
SEO (search engine optimisation) tools
If you really want to be visible online then you need to be optimised for search engines. Using an SEO tool will let you see what keywords your potential customers are searching for and provide you with a whole range of other features to improve the performance of your website. You can optimise your content once it is published, see how your competitors are performing in search results, as well as learning from your sector’s highest-ranking content.
Social Media Management
Social media is a very valuable resource in the modern age. You can generate brand awareness, advertise your company and demonstrate your expertise virtually for free. By creating posts for your different social networks and then publishing them on individual sites you can save valuable time. Using a social media management tool such as Hootsuite, you can manage multiple social media accounts and schedule your posts across all the apps you use. This will save you or your marketing team an inordinate amount of time!
Pop-ups
Simply attracting visitors to your site is not enough to generate revenue, you need to convert them into prospects. You need to convince them to give you their contact information in exchange for something. Using an email capture tool to create attention-grabbing elements like pop-ups to do this can massively increase the chances the visitors will give you the information you ask for without having to offer discounts or free demos.
