10 Tools Every Small Business Marketer Should Have on Hand
If you’re like me, trying to squeeze 30 hours of work in a 24 hour day, efficiency is a big deal. Well today we have Hannah Watson sharing her top 10 tools every (busy) small business marketer needs, to help us get more done in less time.
Getting more done in a day doesn’t mean having to spend a fortune on software or working at all hours of the day. These tools can help you be more productive and launch more effective marketing. The vast majority of them are also free or very reasonably priced so you’ll be able to stick to your budget as well.
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Firefox: While Google’s browser Chrome might be quicker on its feet than Firefox, Firefox still maintains a distinct advantage in that users can add loads of customization with add-ons. These can help you organize information, track your websites and even keep up on your RSS feeds.
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Google Reader: Subscribing to blogs can be a great way to keep up with the latest things going on in small business or just to entertain yourself. The easiest way to keep up with them all is through an RSS reader like Google’s offering that will put them all in one place.
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Google Alerts: You don’t need to wait for your ears to burn to know if someone is talking about you with this tool. Create a search for your business name (or your competitor’s) and you’ll get daily emails about when it’s mentioned online.
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TweetDeck: If you’ve decided to use Twitter as part of your marketing scheme then make the most of it with this tool that lets you more easily control who you follow and what you see.
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WordPress: These days many businesses are taking to the blogging world and this free blogging platform offers an easy an customizable way to represent your business on the web.
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Google Analytics: If you want to know about the success of your website and your business online this is pretty much an essential tool as it lets you track traffic, conversions, searches and more.
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Backpack: Those who are chronically disorganized can get a little help from this tool that lets users create to-do lists, take notes, store files and keep a calendar with email updates.
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Breeze: Make sending out email campaigns child’s play with this online service. It helps you create, send and track the effectiveness of email marketing.
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Highrise: If you’re in need of a CRM tool, try this version that will let you keep in touch with clients and organize your customer information.
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Zoho: This fully featured office suite has tools for everything from creating presentations to managing customer data, and just about everything else in between.
Have any other tools small business marketers shouldn’t be without – let us know in the comments section below.
Author Bio:
Hannah graduated from UH in Houston as an English major. She worked for a Marketing firm for a year before trying to pursue freelancing and currently writes for online education sites and about a variety of different topics like education, business, and marketing.
Photo Credit: xjara69
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Great article, Hannah! I got through the first six and was patting myself on the back since I use all those. Then I hit the last four that I’ve never heard of… so, thanks, I’ll check them out.
Great post! Bblackwood – I did the EXACT same thing. Ha! I’ll definitely check out the remaining tools.
Another great tool is iGoogle. It allows you to customize many different pages of plugins. You can follow your stocks, link to your gmail, use google calendar, subscribe to news feeds, and much more. It keeps me organized and brings me all the latest information on areas I’m interested in.
Best,
Ryan Taft
Managing Principal & CEO, Catalyst Marketers
http://www.catalystmarketers.com
Yuppers.
This is an essential list. Timesavers and productivity unmatched.
Very cool.
Matt, you always have the best guest posters here!
George
Great tools! Time is Money, always find ways to accomplish a certain task efficiently in a shorter timeframe. Make every second count.
Excellent list of resources. Thanks!
Some useful free items I know of for businesses are: CutePDF Writer, it works great and doesn’t destroy your formatting in order to create a quick PDF; OpenOffice, I haven’t used it in a long time but last time I did it was a great Office Suite; Zip Genius, a great zip utility, just right click on the highlighted files and zip. There have been many different free software products that I’ve tried, but I can highly recommend these three.
These are some great tools. I use many of them but I have to say that I punted Google Analytics in favor of Cystats because I like being able to control everything from my Dashboard. Penny has a great suggestion with CutePDF Writer. I use it all the time and love it.
Well, that is one thing i would surely want to do. To be able to finish everything without necessarily staying up 24 hours a day and working all hours on a day. In my experience, that had a drastic effect in my nerve- not to mention my slipped disk. These tools, some i am quite familiar but there are others that still needs to be getting used to. I am sure though that these tools will be a tremendous help. You are such a darling, thanks.
Great list, some of that on the list I can’t live without.
Nice List Hannah
I use a a few of these tools everyday. As for Google Analytics, even if you don’t use it for reporting, I recommend keeping the code on your site. It may be coincidence, but I got a bf traffic increase when I started using it!
Ken
I’d add in there Photoshop or GIMP – it’s always useful to have imaging tools whenever you need them.
@Barbara
GIMP is a great tool, and awesome free alternative to Photoshop. Completely agree with adding that one to the list.
Matt
Never heard of zoho before – looks like something that I will use. Thank you so much!
I tried everything except google alerts and zoho. Thank you for the list.
I use AwayFind to manage emails (in a word, it’s: Awesome!). I also use EyeJot to send follow up video emails to new commentators and/or people who email me from my website. It’s a great way to follow up (I’ve gotten some excellent responses from it).
This is a great list. No more explanations, everything simple and precise. But could we add some more social networking sites on the list aside from Twitter?
Thanks for this very helpful review. You know I also have issues between Google Chrome and Firefox. Because Google is faster just what you said. But the features are best in MFF.. I hope there could be any browser that could mix the two.wehehe.. Anyway, where could i found the nofollow detector in FF? Thanks..
Love reading here!!!
@Barbara Crown – You can download a no follow plugin for free. Install it with Mozilla Firefox browser. A small icon will appear at the right bottom part of the browser. Allow to highlight the no follow link blogs…
This is an informative entry..
Good tools list of small business marketer. I use 5 tools of it but remain 5 tools i’ll try it. Thanks for information about good tools.
Good list of tools. One more I would like to suggest is online surveys. I have used them for customer feedback on my website layout/design, for new product ideas as well as for overall customer satisfaction. The tool I use for that is SurveyGizmo, they have a free plan and pay plans, but the free one has always been enough for me.
Hard to believe there are people still not using Firefox. I would have to say my favorite on that list is google alerts.
As for online marketing….SimplyCast has several services, not just email.
Good article. We recently started using the DRE Business Collaboration Software BCN collaboration tool a few months ago. http://www.dresoftware.com/
The BCN DRE Software is web-based business collaboration software that can be set up by anyone without the help of IT resources. I just found out they are now planning to add web conferencing in a future release.
We use the BCN to collaborate with our customers, prospects, partners and other colleagues in a secure, personalized work space. It makes me wonder what we did without it. They gave us a free trial we used for all kinds of business scenerios
that have work really well for us. We keep finding more and more ways to use it. We have gotten very positive feedback from our customers and I think it has really improved our response time with the email integration. We have the whole team on the same page. I think we will see big cost savings once the web conferencing is implemented. We have CRM but found there was a big hole that the DRE software filled without having to download any software we can access from anywhere and it has helped us solve issues with our offices in different time zones.There is no limit on the number of work spaces our users can create and we have unlimited storage space for all the imformation we need to share.
5 star rating
Easy to use, no IT resources required, cost effective, building customer loyalty, great for teamwork.
All positive feedback from users internal and external contacts!
Missing from your list
As you know Web conferencing solutions are too essential for it reduces cost of traveling and in-house hosted solutions like RHUB’s appliances (http://www.rhubcom.com) are even more economical as they come with a single payment option.
Good tools list of small business marketer. I use 5 tools of it but remain 5 tools i’ll try it. Thanks for information about good tools.
Hard to believe there are people still not using Firefox. I would have to say my favorite on that list is google alerts