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To successfully launch, manage, and grow your startup, you need to work smarter, not harder, and you need to be as efficient and productive as possible. Fortunately, there are many tools available at affordable costs that you can use to do exactly that.
Let’s take a look at 11 tools that can help your startup be more successful.
Founder Support Tools
As a startup founder, you need support from experienced people who have insights, advice, and experience that can help you avoid problems and seize opportunities. From accessing funding to hiring, marketing, and more, you can’t be expected to know it all.
To get this kind of support, What Is UP offers a number of resources for founders to find investors, learn how to save money, gain startup knowledge, and more. For example, small businesses can use StartUp Networx, a deal flow management and startup fundraising platform, and access discounts through StartUp Rebates.
Communication Tools
As you build your team, particularly if your team is remote, streamlined communications will be critical to your startup’s success. Aside from email and phone communications, you can boost efficiency by integrating other communication tools into your organization.
An excellent option for team communications that allows team members to collaborate and follow conversation threads is Slack. For video conferencing, Zoom is one of the most popular options today due to its ease of use and helpful features.
Collaboration & Project Management Tools
As you’re building a team for your startup, you should make it as easy as possible for everyone to work together and for you to ensure projects are moving along smoothly. There are both free and affordable tools that can help you do it.
Asana offers a feature-packed free tool for team members to collaborate and track projects and hold everyone accountable for their parts. Another option is Trello which offers both free and paid options.
Email Marketing and Customer Relationship Management Tools
You should start promoting your startup brand, products, and services as soon as possible to raise brand awareness and jumpstart sales and cash flow. Email marketing is a must in your startup marketing plan.
When looking for an email marketing tool, it’s important to choose one that also offers customer relationship management (CRM) features, so you can integrate your sales efforts and marketing initiatives in one place.
An affordable email marketing and CRM tool for startups is ActiveCampaign. It offers comprehensive features at a low cost when you’re just getting started. For a more robust tool and a higher price tag to go with it, HubSpot is the choice of many companies of all sizes.
Social Media Monitoring and Management Tools
Social media marketing is a vital piece of the marketing puzzle for most startups simply because most business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) customers use social media. It’s important for your brand to be there too. However, monitoring brand mentions and conversations, publishing content, and responding to questions and comments is very time-consuming.
Using a social media monitoring and management tool can help you save time and get more done when it comes to social media marketing. Determine which social media channels your target audience is active on, and then focus your time on those channels.
Once you know how many social media channels you’ll be active on, you can choose your tool. You don’t want to overbuy! Hootsuite and Buffer are both great choices with slightly different free and paid pricing models, so do your homework and pick the tool that meets your needs today.
Design Tools
As a startup, it’s unlikely that you’ll have a budget to hire expensive graphic designers. However, you’ll need visuals to share on social media, add to your website and blog, create brochures and presentations, and more. If you can invest a bit of time upfront, there are some easy-to-use design tools that will save you a lot of money in the long-term.
Canva is a fantastic tool to create a wide variety of print and digital designs, including social media images, infographics, brochures, presentations, and so much more. If you pay for the pro version of the tool, you’ll get access to thousands of images and photos as well as templates to make designing even easier for the non-designer. You can also try Visme to create images, presentations, flow charts, infographics, and more.
Key Takeaways about Tools to Help Startups
As a startup founder, you need a variety of tools and resources to put yourself and your business on a path to success. However, don’t think that you have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for these tools and resources. You can find excellent options at affordable prices, and some are even free! Start with the 11 tools introduced above and you’ll be on your way to leading a successful startup.
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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