If you want to build a successful business that is capable of generating
steady, predictable sales, then you need to develop systems that will allow
your business to continue to run even when you’re not in the office. If you
are feeling stressed by the overwhelming number of tasks, email, projects,
clients, and social media marketing that you are tackling on a daily basis,
several tools can automate your tasks and free up your time.
The following tools will help you to automate many of the essential daily
tasks that are required to run a successful business. By utilizing some of
these tools you can free up your time, so you can be more productive and
focus on those tasks that you need to work on.
Asana
Asana (https://asana.com), is a tool that helps you move your work
forward. It is the easiest way for your team to track their work and get
results. Asana can help you free up your email because any conversation
that you have with your team happens in the app. While asana was
designed to be used by organizations, individuals running their own
business can also benefit from utilizing the tool in their business. Here are
a few highlights that make this an excellent tool if you’re trying to
systemize your business.
• It splits your “to do” list into actionable tasks based on when those
tasks are due, who was allocated to work on the project, and by the
project themselves. This feature will allow you to collaborate on
larger projects with your team or focus on small, individual tasks.
• It allows you to delegate tasks more efficiently.
• It works with Google Drive and Dropbox, so you can easily share
files within the project.
• It’s free.
Ontraport
Ontraport (https://ontraport.com) is an all-in-one business automation
tool that brings together all your business tools, customer information, and
data into a single application. It is a true marketing automation system that
will allow you to market your business using email, postcards, SMS, and
more. It also has a feature that will enable you to sell your programs,
products, and services seamlessly with a payment processing option for
PayPal or the merchant provider for your business. Here are just a few of
the reasons why Ontraport is a great automation tool for your business.
• It allows you to map your entire customer journey. While most
marketing tools show you either how your email performs or how
your pages convert, Ontraport shows how your whole business
performs on one single campaign map.
• You can see who’s converting when, where they are coming from,
and their lifetime value through the tools campaign reporting
feature. The data you receive can then be tied back to your
marketing activity, so you know which campaigns are working.
• It allows you to build your campaign from scratch or choose a
campaign from its vast library of turn-key templates that include
emails, pre-designed pages, and everything else you need to launch
your campaign.
Slack
Slack (https://slack.com), is a business tool that allows your team to kick
off a project, hire new employees, review a sales contract, finalize your
budget, measure and A/B test, and more; all from its easy to use interface.
The program will help you save time when collaborating with your team by
providing you a single place for messaging, files, and tools. Here are just
some of the features that Slack has to offer your business.
• Organized conversations, utilizing channels to bring conversations
together. The channels can be organized by team, project, or client
and allow team members to join and leave any channel as needed. It
also features threads that keep side conversations from derailing the
project or topic at hand.
• Slack also allows you to search conversations and turn them into
common knowledge. Users can explore everything that has been
posted in channels to see if their problem has already been solved.
Deadline Funnel
Deadline Funnel (https://deadlinefunnel.com) is a program that will allow
you to sell your programs live through webinars, as well as allowing your
customers to enter into mini-launches, which are fully automated, using
timers that countdown to the expiration of the cart. The countdown timers
that deadline funnel uses are personalized to each visitor, allowing you to
add a sense of urgency to your marketing funnel. With deadline funnel, you
can build real, evergreen campaigns that provide each of your subscribers
with their own deadline. Here are several reasons why businesses utilize
deadline funnel in their companies.
• You can create deadline campaigns for your product launches,
with the ability to set the same deadline for everyone.
• It integrates with several powerful business systems
including ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, MailChimp, and Ontraport.
Lead Pages
Lead Pages (https://leadpages.net) helps businesses to build stunning
opt-in campaigns easily allowing them to quickly capture leads, convert
customers, and integrate their campaigns across all their favorite digital
marketing tools.
• Create mobile friendly templates that seamlessly adapt to your
audiences favorite connected devices.
• Easily build ads with the integrate Facebook Ad Builder that pulls
content directly from your page to create compelling ads
instantly.
• Fine-tune your campaigns quickly and create maximum impact by
testing multiple versions of the ad, side-by-side, so you can keep what
works and get rid of what doesn't.
Calendly
Calendly (https://calendly.com) helps businesses schedule meetings
without the back-and-forth emails. Calendly allows you to create simple
rules and share your Calendly through links via email or embedded in your
website. Calendly works with your Outlook, Google, iCloud, or Office 365
calendars, so you never become double booked. Here are some of the
features in Calendly that business owners love.
• They have complete control over their schedule. The program
allows you to set buffer times between meetings, prevent last-
minute meetings, create secret events, and more.
• The program is extremely flexible and supports joint availability
meetings, round-robin meetings, and one-on-one meetings.
• It works with all your favorite business apps like Salesforce,
GoToMeeting, Zapier, and much more.
GoToWebinar
Webinars have become a massive part of many online businesses.
GoToWebinar (https://gotomeeting.com) lets you quickly and more
efficiently communicate with employees, prospects, and customers. It can
easily handle large groups of people and turn your presentation into a
conversation and the conversation into sales.
Both large corporations and small businesses can tell their story with
GoToWebinar and reach their audience. The following features make
GoToWebinar an indispensable tool for any business.
• The email automation feature allows users to create custom email
invitations, confirmations, and reminders. With automated email
templates, you can let the tool do all the work for you.
• To indeed make the webinar yours, GoToWebinar allows you to
display your company logo and custom image on all the material
used in your webinars.
• Add the ability to share videos to make your webinars more
impactful. Upload MP4 files or share video clips on YouTube or
share a promotional video and more with high-quality video.
DropBox
With Dropbox (https://dropbox.com) business, you can grow your
company without limits, while maintaining complete control over your
company’s sensitive data and other activities. Flexible storage plans and team storage management are just some of the features of the powerful file
sharing business tool.
• With the administrator dashboard, you can monitor team
activity, view connected devices, and audit sharing activity from
one place.
• The remote wipe feature allows you to clear files from lost or stolen
devices to ensure that all your company files are kept from getting
into the wrong hands.
• The Dropbox paper feature is a simple, yet powerful way to create,
share, and keep all the members of your team in sync, with the
added benefit of admin controls.
Google Docs
Google Docs (https://docs.google.com) is a robust document sharing and
editing tool that allows team members to work on documents in real time.
With immediate syncing capabilities, the program reduces the chances that
someone will over-ride someone else's contribution. Google Docs brings all
your business documents to life with smart editing and styling tools that
make it easy to format text and paragraphs. Other features include:
• Hundreds of templates that are designed to make your work more
professional and your life much more comfortable. With a wide
variety of report, resume, and other pre-made documents you can
get a head start on all your document creation needs.
• Since Google Docs is a web-based tool, you can get all your
documents anytime and from anywhere. You and your entire team
can access, create, and edit documents from your favorite devices,
even if there isn't a connection.
• All the changes that are made in documents are automatically saved
as you type. The program also keeps the revision history, so you can
quickly view old versions of the report and sort the changes by the
date they were made or who made the change.
Google Calendar
Make the most out of your days with Google Calendar
(https://calendar.google.com). The newly designed app helps you spend
less time managing your schedule and more time enjoying it. All of the
events that you add to Google Calendar are stored online so you won’t lose
your schedule if you happen to lose your phone.
• With the assists feature, you can create events in just a few taps.
With smart suggest, you can quickly and easily generate event titles,
add people, and places to your calendar.
• Get multiple views of your day, week, and month. Easily invite guests
to your events and view your calendar on the web.
• Events from your Gmail account are automatically added to your
calendar.
Webinar Jam
Webinar Jam (https://webinarjam.com) offers business owners
unmatched flexibility and high-tech precision at a value that can’t be
matched. With the ability to invite up to six co-presenters Webinar
Jammer is one of the best collaboration tools on the market. The program
is compatible will all browsers, operating systems, and devices, making it
easy for anyone to attend your webinar.
• Draw and mark up directly on your screen and turn your whiteboard
ideas into reality. You can quickly highlight and write annotations on the screen as you run presentations, training, software demos, lectures, or share mind maps.
Screencast-o-Matic
With Screencast-o-Matic (https://screencast-o-matic.com) you have
everything you need to create, manage, and share videos with your team.
The integrations allow you to use the platform end to end or as video
editing and screen recording tools. Screencast-o-Matic is an intuitive,
powerful screen recording and video editing tool for businesses of all sizes.
• It features an advanced screen recorder to capture your screen or
webcam while you add text annotations, shapes, or draw freehand.
You can also import or export and mix in other video and audio
media seamlessly.
• With advanced video management and sharing, you can efficiently
manage all of your videos and how they are viewed. Quickly set up
channels by topic, set user options like comments and notes, and set
permissions for who can see the videos.
• Easily integrate your workflow into your training, communications,
support, and learning management system with API.
HootSuite
Do more with your social media with HootSuite (https://hootsuite.com).
HootSuite is dedicated to not only enhancing your social media
engagement but helping you automate it across more than 35 global
networks like Twitter and Facebook. It identifies the social media
influences in your industry and automates social media strategies for you.
• Save valuable time by scheduling all your social posts through an
easy to use interface. Keep your business's social presence active around the clock by automatically scheduling hundreds of social
media posts at once.
• Track and prove your social return on investment (ROI) with the
programs social analytics feature. Quickly measure the impact of
your social media campaigns with comprehensive reporting.
Measure each social channel’s conversion rates and separate ROI
between paid and owned media.
Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft (https://infusionsoft.com) is an all-in-one marketing solution
specifically designed to help small businesses. It allows you to automate
lead scoring and capture and a segment with the tool's powerful customer
relationship management (CRM), features. Quickly integrate with
hundreds of third-party business services through the expansive
marketplace of apps.
• Get more organized with Infusionsoft. All of your customer
information is gathered in one place, which allows you to review all
of your previous customer interactions quickly. The simple
dashboards and reports show you exactly how your audience is
responding to your campaigns.
• Get more customers by creating follow-up email campaigns that are
targeted to your customers.
• The marketing automation feature allows you to work leads down
the sales funnel and build a sales pipeline that works. With easy to
read analytics you can quickly see what’s working and what’s not.
MailChimp
MailChimp’s (https://mailchimp.com) primary focus is on email
marketing and is one of the most affordable automation tools on the market. Its marketing automation features allow you to target customers
based on specific data. Create customer workflows with scheduling and
segmentation tools with their application program interfaces (API), and it
easily integrates with numerous Web technologies.
• Connect your store to one of the hundreds of e-commerce
integrations offered by MailChimp to create targeted email and
ad campaigns.
• The robust marketing automation in Mailchimp ensures that your
emails are getting in front of the right people at the right time. It
allows you to target customers based on preferences, behavior, and
previous sales.
• Reach a wider audience with Facebook, Google, and Instagram ads
to grow your bottom line in fewer steps.
Needls
Automatically create, target, and optimize all your digital advertising with
Needls (https://needls.com). All you have to do to get started is upload
your images, videos, and primary message, and let Needls do the rest for
you. Stop spending hours trying to come up with the perfect ad. Arm
yourself with all the tools you need to turn your visitors into sales.
• Needls will quickly identify your ideal customer as they post their
wants and needs to their social media accounts and then display
timely ads, so you have the best chance of gaining their business.
• Automatically optimize and retarget your ads, 24/7, 365 days a year.
• Create simple, high converting landing pages that capture
more sales, inquiries, and phone calls.
