Tools to Boost Small Business Growth

In the ever evolving Web 2.0 world and with Google leading the way, the rules always keep changing. There are many tools available to help small business owners grow their businesses, but like many newly formed business money becomes the biggest constraint.  Deciding on what software, tools and products to spend money on takes careful research and consideration. There are many tools available that small business owners can get something for nothing- and for new entrepreneurs, that something can have a significant impact on their businesses.  The web is full of free tools to help entrepreneurs start, run and grow their businesses for next to nothing. However, sometimes the free tools don’t offer everything and one either needs to upgrade the software to a full version by purchasing the software or membership or simply purchase a totally different product to get the full benefits to boost their small business growth.

Here’s a small list of free tools to help save new entrepreneurs some money and tools entrepreneurs should consider spending their money on in order to boost small business growth.

Design & Marketing

I’m unsure if you ever heard of crowd sourcing, but it’s a fairly big concept. The idea behind crowd sourcing is to allow a crowd of professionals to work on a project. The advantages of using a crowd sourcing website such as 99designs is that it reduces the costs for entrepreneurs, while solving different problems through a diversity of solutions.

99designs is the leading crowd sourcing marketplace for creative design projects, such as website graphic design, logo design, business card layout, and even marketing promotional material design. Small businesses can create design briefs, set the price, and let designers compete.

Video Marketing

Creative videos are becoming the future of digital marketing. And it’s no secret that video’s on websites have shown to increase conversation rates, retention rates and sign-up rates significantly. As much as I appreciate creative home made videos or webinars, I as much appreciate professionally produced videos. The key that engages me to a professional video is keeping the video down to earth and offering something that I can relate to.

Invodo is a full service video production firm that helps small businesses to better engage customers. If you’re looking to engage more customers and especially if you’re looking to increase sales (if you sell products/services on your website), than getting a professionally made video may be the way to go for you.

Project Management & Productivity Maximization

The idea of maximizing productivity of your small business use a software that maximizes productivity across your the different areas of your small business. A tool such as ERP (enterprise resource planning systems) inspires a businesses employees (and it’s owner/owners) to be innovative by thinking differently about the company as whole and eventually delivering the final product or service with full inspiration to the end clients. One of the leading companies in maximizing productivity is Epicor, which has more than 20,000 customers in over 150 countries.