Smart Tools All Entrepreneurs Should Use to Increase Their Effectiveness

Entrepreneurs are a smart bunch. They try to find overlooked opportunities and take advantage of them.

If you’re an entrepreneur but aren’t very tech-savvy, you might be missing out. There are a whole bunch of free and paid tools available out there that can make your lives a whole lot easier.

Here are some tools that all entrepreneurs should use to increase their effectiveness:

 

Grammarly.

Entrepreneurs have a hard time establishing themselves, their business, and their credibility.

Having lousy grammar or frequent spelling mistakes can be off-putting for potential investors and your target audience.

By using a tool like Grammarly, you’ll be creating better content that would be a joy to read.

Grammarly is an artificial intelligence-powered tool that aids in your writing.

Grammarly has a good free plan as well as paid ones.

The free plan allows you to check the grammar, spelling, conciseness, punctuations, and tone.

The premium plan provides you all the functionality of the free program along with loads of other features such as a plagiarism checker, analyzing the engagement of your writing, giving advanced suggestions, and much more.

The premium plan for Grammarly starts at $11.66 per month and is billed annually.

Grammarly also has a business plan which is designed for teams starting from three users to one hundred and forty-nine. The business plan is a bit pricier at $12.50 per month per user, but not too crazy.

Grammarly is a great tool that everyone should use. It makes your writing better and reduces the workload for your writing team.

Ahrefs.

Without great SEO (Search Engine Optimization), your website is not going to be able to be seen.

A lot for entrepreneurs do not have the experience of managing a business before. For businesses, it has become increasingly important to stay relevant online and have a substantial digital presence.

By ensuring that your site is optimized for search engines, you can be sure that your website will be seen at the top of the search engine results page.

Having a tool like Ahrefs on your side will allow you to make informed decisions about your SEO strategy.

Ahrefs provides several tools and features, including competitive analyses, keyword research, backlink and content research, rank tracking, web monitoring, and much more.

Sadly, Ahrefs is a paid tool with the lowest plan starting at $99 per month. The good news is that you can get a 7-day trial for the lite or standard program for $7.

If you have a basic understanding of digital marketing and a little bit of tech-savvy, you’ll be able to use the complete functionality and benefit from Ahrefs in no time.

For the value that Ahrefs provides, it would be a wise decision for entrepreneurs to invest in such a comprehensive SEO tool.

Buffer.

With a proper strategy and effort, entrepreneurs can enable themselves to grow their businesses and brand using social media.

Social media is not something that you can do on the side and expect to get unprecedented returns. With organic reach slowly dying on almost all social media platforms, entrepreneurs need to pay attention to their social media strategy.

Luckily, there are many tools and software available that make social media management more manageable, and Buffer is one of them.

Buffer is a great social media management software that makes your social media management job more straightforward.

If you’re just starting, Buffer is a great tool that you should be using.

There are three pricing plans with the lowest starting from $15 per month.

You can get either a free 7-day or 14-day trial, after which you can opt to use the free plan, which provides you with three social accounts, one user, and ten scheduled posts.

Start with the free plan, and if you think that Buffer brings your business value, get one of the paid plans.

SwiftChat.

SwiftChat is a live chat application for a website that allows you to provide customer support to your audience.

You can also use this live chat app for up sales and cross-sales by engaging online visitors at the right time in their buyers’ journey.

SwiftChat comes with a free plan that supports one website. Three agents can use SwiftChat at the same time. The free plan also supports 500 contacts as well as 10,000 monthly unique visitors.

If you haven’t used a live chat app before, feel calm to know that SwiftChat comes with a super easy installation process, so that you can start delighting your customers instantly.

Google Analytics.

Utilizing data has become crucial for entrepreneurs. With more and more people starting their business, the profit margins are getting thinner by the day.

Entrepreneurs that have insights into the workings and operations of their business can make better decisions. With the data available to them, entrepreneurs can stop guessing and make decisions that are based on facts and figures.

Google provides many tools that small and large businesses can utilize.

Google Analytics is and for the foreseeable future will be one of the most widely used web analytics service provided by Google. It is used to track web activity such as session duration, bounce rate, pages per session, etc.

By using this data, entrepreneurs will be able to analyze their website and come up with a strategy to improve their business.

Google offers free training for Google Analytics as well as certifications. Small businesses can use Google Analytics for free, but for the advanced features, you’re going to have to pay up.

Google Trends.

Entrepreneurs need to be able to ride trends.

Cashing in on a popular trend can prove to be a boost that your business direly needs.

Google Trends is a tool that you can use to identify the popular trends in a region during a period.

Comparing different trends can provide you with insights that might lead you to the next big trend.

The best thing about Google Trends is that it’s free to use.

MailChimp.

Email marketing is a channel that a few marketers don’t particularly like. But the numbers speak for themselves.

The average return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent on email marketing is $38, which is pretty good.

As an entrepreneur, you should have the mindset of trying all kinds of marketing channels at first and then sticking to the ones that work well for your business later.

MailChimp is a tool that can make your email marketing efforts efficient and more manageable.

MailChimp has three paid plans, where the lowest one starts from $9.99 per month.

MailChimp also provides a free plan where you have seven marketing channels, 1-click automation, basic email templates, marketing CRM, behavioral targeting, and much more.

If you don’t have any reasonable prior experience or know-how email marketing, you can always start with the free plan and get a sense of how email marketing works.

Skype.

Most people have heard of skype.

Skype allows people to communicate and collaborate with each other with audio and video calls. It also allows for text messaging and sending files.

As an entrepreneur, you’ll want to stay in touch with your team. Skype is easy to use, and many people already know how to use Skype, so you don’t have to worry about training people to use new software.

The good thing about Skype is that calls on skype are free all over the world.

An alternative to Skype is Slack. Test both tools out and choose the one that fits best for your business.

Canva.

Canva is an easy to use graphic design tool that can help you make all kinds of designs from logos to resumes, infographics to brochures, Canva can help make your design efforts easier.

People respond to well-designed things better. Making sure that your content is visually appealing needs to be one of your top concerns as an entrepreneur.

Canva has a lot of advantages. It is easier to use than Photoshop, Illustrator, Inkscape, or any other graphic design tool. All you need to do is drag and drop, mix and match, and your design would be ready.

The best thing about Canva is that it is free to use. Although if you want to utilize one of the premium elements in your designs, you’ll have to pay a dollar per element peruse.

Make My Persona.

Knowing your audience better will allow you to make decisions where you’re keeping the customer first.

Make My Persona is an amazing free tool from Hubspot that you can use to make your very own buyer personas.

It would be ideal if you came up with a different persona for each kind of customer. The more details you can include in your buyer persona, the better it would be.

By having multiple buyer personas, you’ll be able to create offers that are targeted towards a particular audience only. These targeted offers will almost certainly increase your conversions and ultimately help you make sales.

The Make My Persona is an excellent choice because it is a comprehensive and easy to use tool.

Conclusion:

Entrepreneurs need to be efficient with their time. Like everyone else, entrepreneurs have a limited number of hours each day that they need to utilize to the best of their abilities.

With the help of a few smart tools and applications, entrepreneurs can make themselves more efficient.

With more time at their disposal, entrepreneurs will be able to take some time off, relax, and make better decisions. They might even be able to dream of the next big idea in their newfound spare time.

This Content is Originally Written by Hamzah Adil