5 Free must-have online tools to manage your business more efficiently

 

When running a business, your website is basically the hub of all your online activity.  It is the face of your business and any online interactions will be passing through there.  As you probably already know, when people are looking for products and services they (yep you guessed it), GOOGLE it!  Therefore it is VITAL that you are capturing data so you can do some analysis and use this information to:

• Drive more visitors to your website
• Know how people are finding you on the web
• Understand their behaviour once they reach your website – which pages they are going to and how long they are staying etc.
• Use your website to grow your email marketing list
• Capture sales and enquiry data in a CRM system/database

In order to do this, there are some FREE (yes free!) online tools that can help your website become a cash machine for your business.   So let’s get started!

1. Google Keyword Planner

This nifty tool is actually used for creating Google Adwords .  The  Keyword Planner tool requires you to login before using it.  You will need to create an Adwords account but don’t worry, you won’t need to pay for any advertising to use it.

 

Once you login, click on “Search for new keywords and Ad group ideas”.  Then enter your product or service.  For example, I would enter “CRM consulting” and click “Get Ideas”.  Click on the “Keyword ideas” tab to get some ideas of which keywords are being used the most in monthly searches.

For more information, there are some great resources such as:

The Definitive Guide to Using Google’s Keyword Planner Tool for Keyword Research

2. Google Analytics

In my opinion, Google Analytics  is the BEST free tool I have ever seen in terms of  the vast amount of insights you can get from your website stats.  If you don’t already have it for your website you have to get it NOW! The type of information you can gather includes:

• The demographics of people coming to your site
• Who are new visitors, who are returning visitors
• Which country, cities they came from.
• Which keywords they are using to get there
• Which sources they used eg Google, Bing, Facebook etc
• Which landing page they reached first
• How long they spent on each page
• Which browser they used and whether they used a PC or mobile device
• How well your opt-in pages and sales pages are converting

There is way to much information to cover in this blog post but there are some great resources such as

GOOGLE ANALYTICS TIPS – DISCOVER WHAT PEOPLE CLICK ON YOUR WEB SITE

 

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing tool which is FREE for under 2000 subscribers.

It’s a fantastic tool with many features including:

• Ability to generate sign up forms which you can embed in your website very easily
• Double – opt in feature to prevent SPAM and to easily provide offers to people who sign up to be on your list such as free downloads or ebooks.
• Ability to integrate with Google Analytics so you can see which campaigns drove visitors to your website
• Reporting to see how many people opened your mail, how many clicked on links and it also provides a click map to see where people clicked in your mail – very handy
• Ability to test your subject lines and view how the mail looks on a mobile device before sending out your mail
• Easy to use templates to build really nice looking newsletters.
• Compare your stats to industry standards

For more info, please visit their website which has a wealth of information.

4. Hootsuite

 

Hootsuite is your magic genie to manage all your social media interactions.  It can manage most of the main social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linked In etc.

Create once and your content will be posted to all of the social media channels you want it to be posted to.  You can even schedule posts so you can create in advance and not have to think about it for a couple of months.

There is a free version which works really well for most businesses and also a paid version with more features. More information can be found on their website.

 

5. Capsule CRM

 

We now come to the main core of your data capturing machine for your business.  A CRM system is ESSENTIAL to manage ONE customer database and get a 360 degree view of your customer.  The CRM system will integrate with Mailchimp and your website to capture important information like customer enquiries and feedback.

If you don’t already know the benefits, read these posts:

How Implementing CRM Can Fulfil Your Top 10 Business Wishes – Part I

How Implementing CRM Can Fulfil Your Top 10 Business Wishes – Part II

Capsule CRM has a FREE version which does a darn good job of managing your contacts, integrating with Mailchimp as well as giving you the ability to embed contact forms on your website so you can capture customer enquiries automatically.

Once you have got the enquiry in the CRM, it is easy to track and follow up and also know if a sale has resulted from the enquiry.

For more information on what Capsule CRM can do, please visit their website.

Do you live in Perth?

If you would like to attend  a FREE information session on the above tools, please sign up for our newsletter  to get the latest updates.  Our last information session with Perth B Schoolers  was a roaring success.  The kind people at Spacecubed sponsored the event in support of Women in Business.  We will be running these sessions every month so make sure you get on our list to find out when the next one is.

 

 

 

 

photo credit: greyweed via photopincc