The Top 10 Software Tools For Entrepreneurs in 2020
“Software is a magic thing whose importance only goes up over time – Bill Gates.”
This line still rings true today. The initial thought of starting an entrepreneurial business is an uphill battle yet a thrilling experience. Once you get the hang of what you should do, things start falling in place. Registering a domain, building a website, getting a server, and creating appealing presentations – the list of tasks is never-ending.
With so many tasks under your hat, you should prepare for everything that might come your way. Apart from enthusiasm and passion for your product, you should have the right software tools that will increase efficiency and save time daily.
In this guide, we will walk you through the top 10 must-have software tools and how each tool adds value to creating a successful product.
1. Website Building Tool
Getting your message out these days requires a strong internet presence that reflects the personality of your brand. It lends credibility and sets you apart from the crowd. What you require is an appealing website because 38% of people stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.
Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/zs98a0DtKL4
However, getting your website requires a tech wizard who knows servers, FTP, HTML, hosting services, and so on. Thankfully, we live in the space of easy website builder tools. If you’re into the hospitality sector and plan to build vacation rental website, use a site builder to design a mobile-friendly, well-designed website with minimal technical knowledge.
Tool recommended: Lodgify
Recommendation reason: Let you choose from a variety of customizable and mobile-friendly templates.
2. Presentation Tools
There is nothing more important for an entrepreneur than creating a pitch deck that scores potential investors. With PowerPoint and Keynotes becoming a daily routine, holding the investors’ attention with mundane slides is a thing of the past. Remember that a lot of your success rides on the presentation. Strike the right chord by pitching your idea through a story. Use visuals, create movements, and limit each slide to a couple of points. With 63% of clients remembering presentations that tell a story, using traditional presentation methods is a strict no.
Source:https://unsplash.com/photos/bzdhc5b3Bxs
To shake things up and connect with the clients in a friendly and engaging manner, you can try out some of the best online presentation tools.
Tool recommended: Piktochart
Recommendation reason: Lets you convert data-heavy content into an appealing visual story with interactive maps, animated icons, GIFs, Vimeo videos. The tool allows flipping of the color scheme with a single click and provides versatile sharing options.
3. Channel Management Tool
For the hospitality business, a channel management tool is a blessing in disguise because it helps the hotels manage their booking across different channels, which boosts sales. From synchronization of pricing to offering vacation rental house manual templates, these channel management tools prevent potential booking conflicts and create a seamless customer experience.
Tool recommended: Host Tools
Recommendation reason: It allows automated messaging and provides an excellent pricing engine that increases sales and improves 5-star reviews. It helps you take the vacation rental to the next level.
4. Email Marketing Tool
In the tech-driven world that we live in, marketing channels come and go, but one channel that remains unshaken by the penetration of technology is email. With 87% of marketers using email campaigns to nurture their audience, an email marketing tool is a must-have tool in your arsenal.
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Don’t be among entrepreneurs who think email marketing is limited to collecting email addresses stored away in an Excel spreadsheet.
Dedicated email marketing tools take this one notch higher as they collect, verify, and host an extensive mailing list. Such a tool allows you to send better emails, automate marketing workflows, track statistics, monitor the email campaign’s performance, reduce bounce rate, and build a connection with potential customers.
Tool recommended: Constant Contact
Recommendation reason: From real-time tracking tool to creating customizable email templates and from email marketing automation to mobile-responsive email – it’s your one-stop solution.
5. Project Management Tool
As an entrepreneur, you unquestionably juggle between different project plans, tasks, projects, and even people. Managing multiple projects and maintaining healthy communication together is impossible, especially when an unprecedented problem crops up. This is where you require a project management tool. It helps you sew all the broken pieces into a single thread to create a concrete plan.
From collaboration to resource management and budget management to documentation, a project management tool streamlines a process, increases efficiency, and reduces repetitive tasks. It also results in effective internal and external communication, which eventually increases customer satisfaction.
Tool recommended: Asana
Recommendation reason: It’s a strong collaboration and intuitive project management tool. It lets you organize and manage work in one place. You can manage workflow, and dependencies, and make strategic decisions.
6. Accounting Tool
Unless you’re a mathematics or finance wizard, accounting can be one of your entrepreneurship’s most boring aspects. According to the survey, almost 50% of entrepreneurs or small business owners loathe bookkeeping. Meticulously tracking expenses, calculating business taxes, and managing payroll is not everyone’s cup of tea. If you mess up entries or records, you will receive a knock from the government’s revenue or tax department.
This is where you need an accounting or bookkeeping tool. Using a professional tool, you can handle payroll taxes across different departments and locations. The tool micromanages all your accounting details, ensuring you’re not sued for wrongful entries or taxes.
Though every business is different, an accounting tool comes in handy in managing your company’s basic finances.
Tool recommended: QuickBooks Online
Recommendation reason: This versatile account tool offers some noteworthy features such as reporting, inventory capabilities, customizable invoices, in-depth transaction forms, contact records, payroll support, different integrations, add-ons, etc. Last but not least, it’s easy to use and well-designed.
7. Customer Relationship Management Tool
As the name suggests, CRM helps develop, maintain, and manage a profitable relationship with customers at all stages in the buying journey. For entrepreneurs, relationship management is the lifeblood because it increases profitability and builds brand value.
Relationship management becomes a breeze with CRM tools as it enhances the quality of customer relationships, increases team collaboration, and reduces cost and manual efforts.
In short, it maintains your organization’s workflow and achieves its goals.
Tool recommended: Zoho CRM
Recommendation reason: It provides an omnichannel platform for connecting with customers across channels and provides an excellent sales automation tool. The AI-powered sales assistant is the icing on the cake.
8. Keyword Research Tool
Searching for keywords is both an art and a science because it’s the building block of SEO. If nobody is searching for your product, you will never appear during Google’s search results – no matter how hard you try. If you’re not using the right keywords, you’re probably not selling your brand to its best capabilities.
What you require is a keyword research tool for ensuring a consistent flow of organic and high-quality traffic to your website. These tools place the right keyword at the right time to remain in the first few pages of the search results.
Tool recommended: SEMrush
Recommendation reason: It produces a list of keywords your competitor uses and uncovers all the long-tail keywords. The tool enlists profitable keywords in competitive niches. It also tells you how difficult it would be to rank for a particular key phrase.
9. Productivity tool
If time is money, productivity for entrepreneurs is the golden egg-laying duck – it has the power to make you the next Warren Buffet. Instead of obsessing over efficiency, focus on increasing productivity because being productive means adding more hours to your day.
This is where you need a productivity tool. These tools increase productivity by effectively managing your time. Using these tools, you can identify productivity killers and create processes to remove the possible bottlenecks.
Tool recommended: ProofHub
Recommendation reason: It’s a productivity tool designed to plan, collaborate, and deliver projects on time. ProofHub offers features including task management, reports, files, Gantt charts, Timer, online proofing, and third-party integration. Overall, it provides better control over time collaboration and checks overtime spent on every task.
10. Social Media ManagementTool
Due to the vastness of its scope, social media has become a wasteland of productivity. Marketers are using it but not efficiently. Getting a slight increase in web traffic through social media strategies is just the tip of the iceberg. Creating content, publishing blogs, analysis, and reporting are a few tasks that can overwhelm marketers but are essential for business growth.
One fundamental way to achieve efficiency and productivity is by using social media management tools. Using these tools, you can manage multiple social media profiles, track analytics, schedule advance posts, etc.
Tool recommended: Hootsuite
Recommendation reason: It offers something to every size of business. Using Hootsuite you can publish your post in one go from all social media profiles. It also boasts terrific analytical reports for making critical business decisions.
Wrapping up
As an entrepreneur, you will need software tools to make your life easier and simpler. These ten software tools will increase efficiency and allow you to focus on tasks and meet long-term revenue goals.
Choosing the best software tool is the roadmap to ensure success in the online business world.
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