10 tools to grow your business online
10 tools we recommend to small business owners to grow online.
Software As a Service (SaaS) solutions are aplenty these days, as more businesses move their workforce and workflow online.
With so many new tools to choose from, it can be exhausting trying to compare and find the right fit (and stick with it).
Over the past 5 years working with small businesses, we've tried and tested dozens of SaaS tools, and learnt a lot. Here are our top 10 that we recommend to business owners everyday:
Squarespace
There are plenty of website builders out there. Most of which will try to upsell you on features (*cough* Wix), which is a pain, and others simply take too much time to upkeep (Wordpress).
Squarespace, in our experience, combines the best mix of design, practicality, speed and ease-of-use. It handles the basics really well, and that’s what matters most for a no-fuss small business.
Example sites we’ve built on Squarespace: Journey Chinese, iFLYflat, Unknown-Coffee
Deal: Get 10% off new websites: Click Here and use code ‘PARTNER10’
Mailchimp
Over the years Mailchimp has proven to be a reliable email marketing platform for small businesses.
With Mailchimp, you can quickly set up and send email campaigns to your community, or go further with advanced customer Journey Maps that automate / drip feed content. Mailchimp makes building sales funnels and onboarding experiences easy.
Jotform
We’ve tried them all — Typeform, Paperform, Google Forms and so on. Form builders are essential for streamlining event registrations, client onboarding, collecting payments and so on.
Jotform rises to the top of the list for a few reasons: First, it’s affordable (and take advantage of the 24 hour offer after you sign up). Second, it’s easy to use, and third, it’s extremely versatile. You can build almost anything — questionnaires, quizzes and apps like no other tools allow for. Plus there’s 100+ third-party integrations to plug into immediately.
Here are a few ways to use Jotform:
Lead generating assessments and quizzes
Onboarding forms (internal or external)
Internal approval forms
Signup forms with payment and automation
Feedback forms to customers
Calendly
Scheduling meetings via email is a time-drain, slows down and can even disrupt your sales process.
Calendly handles scheduling — from checking availability to sending out calendar invitations and following up with reminders. It even integrates seamlessly with Zoom.
From our experience, Calendly generates higher quality leads when used to schedule sales calls and meetings. Mainly because it invites customers to take clear action and qualifies them in the process. When you have a ‘Calendly meeting’, there’s a clear time, place and agenda.
Trello
Trello is a popular web-based, Kanban-style, list-making tool. It’s widely used by individuals and mainly small businesses for task management, project management and just about any type of collaboration task.
We’ve recently found a bank using Trello for their public roadmap. The possibilities are endless.
Trello is free to use, easy to use and to access on any device. We use Trello everyday to create:
Sales workflows / pipelines
Internal / external business processes
Project management boards
HubSpot CRM
A Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) is a key tool in growing a business. Without a CRM, you’ll find it more difficult to track customers and offer a good customer experience.
There are so many CRM’s in the market today. HubSpot’s own CRM platform has been a reliable choice for many years, with a ‘free-forever’ plan that ticks most boxes for growing businesses.
At Nicolson and Co, we prefer and use HubSpot because:
It marries marketing and sales, which most CRMs lack
You can easily integrate it with other applications
You get incredible customer insights and data
It’s very intuitive, easy to learn
You can scale with it (from sole trader to corporation)
Canva
If you don’t have access to a graphic designer or marketing team, Canva is a great tool to help fill that gap. With thousands of templates to get you started, and an easy drag-and-drop style interface, it makes designing fun and accessible to all.
We’ve seen Canva work wonders for startups, cafe’s, and personal brands.
Fathom
When we ask most business owners about their cash flow, we get shoulder shrugs. “Ask my accountant” and “here’s last year’s P&L” are common replies.
Sadly, too many business owners don’t understand what’s happening in their business on a daily basis. That’s because accounting software is made mostly for tax and payroll, not real-time data leads and dashboards. That’s where Fathom can help…
Fathom syncs with your accounting software to provide insights and metrics that you can make informed decisions with. It strips back all of the accounting jargon so that you can get clarity of what’s happening in your business and have great conversations with your accountant.
Fathom can:
Generate stunning business reports
Set and track KPI’s in your business (including non-financial KPIs)
Forecast situations, such as hiring an employee or the break-even point for a new product
Consolidate financial reporting, and more.
Zapier
Small business leaders know that they need to leverage automation, but don’t know where to begin. Zapier helps fix that.
In a nutshell, Zapier is a workflow automation tool that uses rule-based logic to automate manual tasks (such as data entry) through a sequence.
Example Zapier Task:
(When) a new form is submitted on Docusign, (do this:) Upload signed DocuSign envelope to Google Drive, (then do this:) Add new contact to Mailchimp list.
Zapier saves you time, reduces errors and raises productivity in your workflow.
We’ve created a free guide on Zapier, which you can access here: Automate My Small Business with the accompanying Workflow Planner.
Business Made Simple University
Business Made Simple University (BMSU) is an online learning platform with on-demand courses to help business owners and professionals learn the practical skills they need to build their confidence and grow their business.
Born out of Storybrand, a world-class marketing framework, Business Made Simple has grown beyond an online university to become a bestselling book, and now certifying the best business coaches in the world (and yes, we’re one of them!).
Tip: Check out the free 60 day video series here.
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