Being a small business owner is never easy, but if we can be smart about some of the tools we use, then it can make our lives easier AND save us precious time. Often these tools come at a cost, so you are balancing the benefits they bring with the cost, however, if we are smart, lots of free small business tools exist that we can utilise.
Coming into the new year, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to share our favourite free tools for small businesses in 2024.
Hubspot
Let's start with one of the big boys. Hubspot is one of the biggest and best in the CRM market, but did you know they offered a free version for small businesses? Yep, you can get free access to the same powerful tool that many of the biggest companies in the country use.
For those unfamiliar, Hubspot is a platform where you can store your contacts and build a strategy to ensure you are constantly contacting the right people at the right time. So if you constantly worry about not following up with people, and that you are missing opportunities, this is the perfect free tool for you.
We’ve all been there, you chat with someone or they send you a message, telling you they are interested but now is not the right time for them. If you’ve ever worried that you forget these moments and are not maximising the sales opportunity, then Hubspot is a great tool for you.
Hootsuite
It’s important to be actively listening to what’s being said about you on social media, but it's also one of the most time-consuming jobs if you are not careful - so enter Hootsuite. It’s one of the better social listening tools that also happens to offer a free version for small businesses.
We always look for the tools that grow with you, so if you do outgrow the free plan, you’ll easily justify the small monthly fee to upgrade, but you’ve got good initial room in the free version before you hit that.
Trello
If your business needs structure and processes to function correctly, then a project management tool might be the order of the day and one of the best, with a completely free version for small businesses, is Trello.
The free version of Trello comes with loads of templates, unlimited storage and access to their app so you can use the tool anywhere.
Google Forms
In truth, we could have done an entire blog just about the free business tools that Google provides but one of the best that we think all businesses can utilise is Google Forms, because they act as a great survey tool.
Talking to your clients and learning what’s important to them is vital in helping a business grow, you can understand the needs of the customer and react with updates to your messaging, evolve your products or services and become more attractive to your audience.
Canva
If you are a small business owner and looking to do any form of marketing, you’ll likely need to pull together some creative. That is scary, as many of us don’t see ourselves as creative and certainly don’t know what tools to use.
That’s where a tool like Canva comes in. It helps the non-creative person develop marketing materials without any formal training and we include things like brand logos in those materials.
It’s stacked with templates, access to free images and advice that will help anyone, regardless of their skills - and it comes with a free version for small businesses just like yours!
Calendly
If you are a services business that needs to book appointments, you’ve probably experienced the stress of ensuring your calendar is correct and you are not missing appointments or double-booking yourself.
Stress no more, because we have a free scheduling tool that solves all these problems.
Calendly allows you to offer people access to your calendar to book meetings directly and you can even control what they see, so they only get time slots you are happy with.
Website Builders
Cheating slightly here because there are so many different free options it didn’t make sense just to pick one. Over the last few years, we’ve used all of these different options and each comes with its own pros and cons, but ultimately any small business that needs a website should be looking to utilise one of these free options first.
Wix comes with a lot of power out of the box, Weebly is good for simple websites, WordPress is the biggest option in the world with a lot of free templates and Webflow is great if you want to get a little more hands-on.
Mailchimp
Similar to the website builders, we could have named several free email platforms, but as a long-term supporter of small businesses with their free packages, we felt Mailchimp was the best one to suggest initially.
Mailchimp will store your email contacts, place sign-up forms on your websites and ultimately help you send professional looking emails, by choosing from free templates that will fit your needs.
Google Analytics
Ok, I’m going to squeeze one more Google tool in, because I think it's that important and one of the best free pieces of software for any business. If you have a website, then you have to place Google Analytics on that website.
It will enable you to understand how your site is being used and make key improvements, as well as track all the sources of traffic. It’s critical to understand what traffic is arriving and what they do, so you can optimise any marketing spend.
Semrush
When it comes to understanding what your customers are looking for online, few tools offer you support better than Semrush. It gives you the ability to track what keywords are popular with your customers and alter your marketing to capture these potential customers.
They offer a free version that is a little limited but will still enable you to track at least 10 key phrases, which can really kick-start your marketing efforts.
We hope that’s useful and some of these tools help your business grow and become more efficient. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, so if you’ve got any other that you use and think others would benefit from, please share - let's make 2024 the year we support each other.
