Sharing with you 10 essential must-have business tools for the success of your online business. So enough of that, let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
1. Task Management / Productivity Tool
Task management tool is to help you stay organized and to keep you on task and to have your business flowing will easier. And a place where you can keep everything that’s going on in your mind as well. So if you need a panel, then you may not know already that my favorite task management tool is notion. Now there are plenty of others that are very popular, and you can also check out a sauna is a good one. A lot of people use Trello, which is also, you know, kind of similar because of the boards. So Trello Trello is a really good one as well for managing tasks. Having a task management tool. The reason why this too on it as number one on the list is that it is very important and it will come in handy throughout your business, whether you’re at the beginning stage or if you’ve been scaling and moving along that ladder, a task management tool is important because it’s also something That you can use when you have teams and you can share information easily. So get a task management tool.
2. Email Responder
The reason why is that as you build your audience and build your clientele, you need a way to able to communicate with them in a way that you can get messages off to them without having to sit there and send messages also one at a time. Sometimes you can’t always reach everybody and social media. So having an email responder is important. Some popular ones that are out there are Mill Chimp. That one is pretty popular for beginners’ convert kits, right? It’s popular for a lot of content, creators, bloggers, and also people that have to sell digital products. Active campaign is a very popular one that believe is more advanced. Another very popular thing that you can do with an email responder is can send off a batch Of emails all at once, and you can also have emails being sent while you sleep. You don’t have to be up pretty much while your emails are sent. So this is great, especially if you sell digital products or online products that need to be delivered, whether that’s courses or eBooks, your auto email responder can be automated to where you can send off those items, no matter what time of the day someone buys the product from you.
3. Online Scheduling Tool
If you are a coach or consultant, or if you run any kind of, online meetings, the strategy calls, having a scheduling tool where people can go in and book their days and times that work for them, rather than you having to email back and forth, you know what time works for you? What day works for you? An online scheduling tool that can make your days a lot more efficient and you can get more appointments or more calls booked off a lot easier than the traditional back and forth. So some popular ones out there are Calendly scheduled once acuity. It is like an all-in-one type of tool. It does have a calendar scheduling tool in there as well.
4. Document Management Tool
So the fourth category of tool or type of tool that you use for your online business is a document management tool. Use Google Drive because it has Google Docs, sheets, you know, Google Slides all incorporated in it. It’s easy to share amongst people, whether those are people that you’re working with or people that have purchased a product from you, you can easily, share the links of things using Google Drive. Another popular one is Dropbox. One drive-by Microsoft. You can check those out. You know, we’re now living in a digital type of world where having papers like physical paper documents and file cabinets are becoming like a thing of the past, not for everything, but a lot of things. So having a place where you can usually store documents and can easily find them and share them amongst your team or the people that you work with your clients or your customers is going to be a time-saver for you.
5. Automation Tool
The fifth type of tool is an automation tool and yes, all of the tools that I’m going to be listing today, most of them have almost had some type of automation in them. Like for example, your email autoresponder will have automation in there. We can set up auto sequences. Like when someone signs up for your newsletter, they get automatically sent an email or they buy something from you. They get automatically sent emails over a certain period. If someone books a date on your calendar, it automatically might set up a Zoom meeting, or however, you set that up. But what if you have two separate tools and you need them to speak to each other, this is where an automation tool comes into play. So you can see why this type of tool can make your life as a solopreneur, or even, if you were an entrepreneur and have a team, it can make things so much easier for you.
6. CRM & Pipeline Management
CRM stands for customer relationship management and that tool cool does pretty much what it sounds like. It helps you manage your customers and your client. So the one that many people use surprise surprise is going high level. Having a CRM tool will help you out because you can see where someone is in your pipeline, in your whole sales funnel. So if they come in as a lead, maybe they downloaded a freebie. You can see that they are where they are, or if there’s someone that’s customer, you can be, you can manage that. A CRM tool will help you do that.
7. Sales Page / Funnel Building Tool
The next tool on the list is online sales page software or funnel software. This is important because if you are going to be online, then you need a place where you can actually offer your services or sell your services online as well. So having a sales page or a sales funnel allows you to do that for digital product creators and coaches, consultants, usually having a sales page or funnel software is the way to go. Though there are plenty out there. You have to see what works best for you, even Shopify, which is more of like an e-commerce website, where you sell products and goods allows you to sell digital products.
8. Online Payment Processor
Now the next one on the list is a payment processor, because if you’re going to sell online, then you also need a way to accept payment online. So having a payment processor will help you process those credit cards that people will use to purchase things online. So a lot of the tools to build sales pages and funnels will integrate with PayPal. With Stripe, the only thing is you would have to create an account with PayPal or Stripe or whatever payment processor you will be using, and then have it integrated with your funnel software. All right, then moving along to the list.
9. Product Delivery / Course Hosting Platform
Now, if you are selling online courses, then you would want a course hosting platform, some popular ones out there are Kajabi Kartra members, vault, ClickFunnels, and SamCart, as funnel tools. They also allow you to host your courses and host your digital products on their software. So that’s like a two-in-one as well. It is important to have a way that you can deliver these products to people. If it’s an ebook or a free download that can easily be delivered through email.
10. Finance Management Tool
Last but not least a finance management tool. This is important because as a business owner, you need to be able to see the money that is coming into your business and the money that is flowing out of it and keep track of that. Sure there are plenty more out there that you can take a look at and see, depending on where your business is, what type of tool that you require to be able to manage your finances.