18 of the Best Small Business Tools You Need to Use 13 May 2019

You need to do a little bit of everything to keep your business afloat. From tracking inventory to making sales calls and coming up with a marketing strategy, your to-do lists can leave you feeling exhausted.

Small business owners are especially susceptible to stress caused by overworking. One survey found that 41 percent of small business owners felt managing their business was more stressful than raising their kids. Working too much can suck the joy out of your job and overwhelm you, but most small businesses don’t have enough cash to hire additional staff. If you’re in this situation, how can you make it easier to run your business?

Specialized tools can save you time and even automate some tasks. Let’s look at 18 of the best tools for small businesses that will lighten your workload.

Grow Your Business With Communication and Hiring Tools

Communication and hiring are essential for making your business thrive. However, connecting individually with employees, clients, vendors, and job prospects is time-consuming. Check out six tools that help you communicate and hire without eating up all your time:

1. Slack offers instant messages, video calls, and a wide range of integration options. Its intuitive design helps you figure out how to use it quickly.
2. Ryver offers unlimited free messaging and data storage, which is great for businesses with small budgets. It also filters conversations by employee to keep confidential discussions private.
3. Indeed is one of the biggest online job boards. Thousands of people post their resumes and job hunt on it. By posting job descriptions on Indeed, you can find the right new hire. 
4. BambooHR is a human resources platform that includes an applicant tracking system, onboarding options, and an employee database. It keeps track of everything you need to get your new hire up and running.
5. JazzHR is an applicant tracking system. With it, you can create and distribute job postings and digitize paperwork to focus on finding the right hire. 

Communication and hiring are challenging, but using the right tools can make running your business a little easier. These aren’t the only tools that benefit your business. Management tools can simplify even the hardest parts of running your business.  

Management Tools Keep Your Business on Track

Keeping track of your work projects and finances can get complicated. One little slip up could set your business back months. Project management and financial tools organize your data and simplify your complicated tasks.

6. Asana is a project management tool that works for any size business. With features like project checklists and team calendars, you can quickly find a project’s status and due dates.
7. Wrike manages multiple teams and projects simultaneously. It has time and budget tracking tools built in, so you never lose track of your project’s available resources.
8. Gusto is a payroll service that takes care of repetitive compensation tasks. It also deals with the stress and frustration of payroll taxes.
9. FreshBooks provides total financial control from a single dashboard. It integrates with other business applications to connect all your financial tools together.
10. QuickBooks Online creates profit sheets, loss sheets, invoices, and billing statements. Its mobile optimization means you can access it anywhere, giving you more time to work on your business’s finances.

Now that your management tools are keeping track of things, you may want to bring in some new clients. If you’re looking for new customers, automation and marketing tools can bring them right to you.

Automation Tools Help Marketing and Sales Bring in New Customers

Marketing and sales can be tricky. You need your product in front of the right people at the perfect time. Add to that having to remember when to post specific content pieces, and you have a lot to juggle. Having marketing tools along with automation grows your client base without overwhelming you.

11. HubSpot’s marketing tools can bring your entire marketing funnel together. It has tools for blogging, SEO, social media, lead management, landing pages, and calls to action.
12. MailChimp offers email marketing services to get your email list in shape. Create your own email campaigns and automate them to ensure they’re sent at just the right time.
13. Hootsuite manages all your social media platforms in one place. It allows you to schedule your social media posts, so you never forget to contact your audience.
14. Zapier lets you set up thousands of automated actions to take care of repetitive tasks. You can even create multiple automated actions from one trigger action, simplifying your to-do list.
15. IFTTT is an automation service that runs specified actions when triggered. It takes away the hassle of having to approve every task. The free version keeps your expenses down without sacrificing efficiency.

You’ve figured out how to use automation and marketing tools together to grow your business. As your business grows, you need to track and analyze how your marketing is doing.

Analytic Tools Track Your Company’s Progress

To know if your business’s marketing is successful, you need analytic tools. Analytic tools measure how your company is doing and predict its growth in the future.

16. Google Analytics tracks long-term data, calculates your advertising ROI, and analyzes your social media traffic. It can also reveal trends so your marketing stays current. 
17. Kissmetrics is a full-scale analytics tool. Its audience segmentation feature shows you how website visitors interact with your site. 
18. Crazy Egg generates easy-to-understand reports on visitor click behavior. It also offers A/B testing so you can test out what will improve your engagement rate.  

Now you know about 18 of the best small business tools, but do you really need to use all of them?

Does Your Small Business Have the Right Tools?

Trying to do everything yourself will just wear you out. When you have the right tools for your small business, you can maintain your work-life balance and focus on growing your company.

These tools can keep your company on track and grow your customer base. While small business tools may not be able to run your business for you, yet, they can take some of the pressure off. So relax, take a seat, and let your small business tools do a little work for you.