Most businesses would love to have access to tools like SharpSpring or HubSpot. They’d love to have the sales funnel that would require SalesForce. But for many startups and entrepreneurs those relatively expensive tools are out of their reach. However there are free tools out there to help businesses get going without incurring the costs.
So if you’re an entrepreneur who isn’t quite ready for a marketing agency or more expensive tools here’s are 5 marketing tools that you should know about.
Social: Buffer/HootSuite
Yes, this is two different tools. But they’re honestly they’re pretty similar. It really depends on on what you need your social media management tool to do. If you’re just looking for a great tool to post to your social channels from one place, Buffer is your tool. If you need robust social tracking application, you may want to give HootSuite a try.
Email: MailChimp
MailChimp gives you the ability to email your leads and nurture them, as well as send newsletters and it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. In fact most of the features are free until you get thousands of people that you’re emailing. And hey, by that point you should off the ground and ready for a professional upgrade.
CRM: Zoho
There are A LOT of CRMs out there. For specialty businesses Zoho may not be a good fit, but for most service based businesses this is a robust platform that doesn’t cost anything for micro businesses. They have some low priced paid options, but they also offer a free version for businesses that are just getting started. If you have less than 3 employees, this might be a great place to start.
Notes: Evernote
If you are a person who gets ideas or has a team who needs to collaborate on ideas, Evernote will be your new favorite tool. It can help you stay organized, and put all of your work into the right space. Best part is, it’s free for a lot of your needs as a startup.
Communication: Slack
We use Slack internally to communicate with our remote employees as well as with our clients. It takes the place of many of our emails. It also gives us the ability to have a more dialogue centric communication style with our clients. We really get to know them and they us.
If you’ll be working with a team that perhaps isn’t in your area, or you’ll need to have consistent communication with your customers, this is probably the right tool for you.
Conclusion
It can seem overwhelming as an entrepreneur to use all these tools to get work done. But once you get in a rhythm it will be second nature. Of course, at some point you’ll want to bring it all under one powerful tool umbrella, just to cut down the amount of time it takes to do all these tasks.
Those tools exist, and we have lots of information on them. But, until that point at least you know there are applications that won’t break the bank, while giving you the power to grow your business. If you’re looking for other productivity tools to help you be more efficient. there are plenty of resources out there. Just browse and find the tools that work best for you.