5 Best Tools For Small Business Owners For Exponential Growth

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Tools For Exponential Growth
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As a business owner, you have to manage all aspects of your business – from customer satisfaction to payment to marketing campaigns. How do you keep track of it all while still making sure that your business is growing?

Thankfully, it’s 2020, and there are literally thousands of apps and tools for any kind of business task imaginable.

And if you’re a regular ShoutMeLoud reader, you know that we review a lot of tools…

5 Great Tools For Small Business Owners

In this roundup, we’re going to name five excellent tools designed for solo entrepreneurs and small business owners. We hope these tools help you achieve your business goals and make life easier for you and your team.

1. Brand24

Brand24 is a monitoring and analytics tool for small businesses who want to track their brand reach and reputation across popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Its main function – Projects – tracks keywords about your brand, topic, or even the name of a competitor.

The tool will return social media mentions, influencers, and other data relevant to a Project. These vital pieces of information will help you gauge how your business is perceived in social media and other online platforms.

Brand24
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A feature called Mentions will track specified keywords and classify them into positive, negative, or neutral sentiments. And a list of all social media posts of these mentions will be shown below the graph.

The Engage button will lead straight to that social media post, so you can reply, for instance, directly to a post on Twitter.

Brand24 has all the social tools that a small business owner could want or need. Its dashboard and UI are easy to learn and use. Information is presented in a clear and modern format. You can hover over line graphs to get more details about specific elements.

You can even get a PDF or infographic of your Project mentions.

Pricing

Brand24 is great for tracking and analyzing social media reach, but it doesn’t come free.

Its Plus (personal) plan costs $49 a month, which is limited to one user and offers very few features.

The Premium (professional) plan is $99 a month and allows 10 users, up to 400,000 mentions, and gives hourly updates.

Finally, the Max plan is $399 a month and has all Premium features. The Max plan will also unlock Mention Analytics, and you will be assigned an account manager to help you maximize the use of this tool.

For a detailed review on Brand24, read this post.

Check out Brand24

2. LeadFeeder

If you rely on generating leads as a primary way of growing your business, then LeadFeeder is a valuable tool for you.

This tool connects with your website’s Google Analytics to see companies that visited your website in the last 30 days. Clicking on a company will give you more details including their LinkedIn profile and website, as well as the date and time of their visit.

LeadFeeder
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A new feature called LeadFeeder Contacts will show you a list of people who are connected with any company. Note that this feature may not be available for all company profiles.

LeadFeeder also integrates with CRMs like webCRM, Pipedrive, Zoho, Salesforce, and Dynamics 365.

Pricing

LeadFeeder has four pricing tiers on a monthly subscription basis.

The $59/month plan can return results of up to 200 companies.

The next plans come at $99/month for 400 companies, $169/month for 1,000 companies, and $299/month for 3,000 companies.

Check out LeadFeeder

3. PushEngage

PushEngage
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Are you not getting enough sales from your email marketing efforts?

You might want to try PushEngage.

It’s like asking website visitors to subscribe, but instead of getting an email, they get pop-up notifications inside their browsers.

To use this feature, you need to install a script (provided by PushEngage) to your website. There are step-by-step instructions on how to do this when you log into the PushEngage dashboard. You can also use this post to help you get set up.

Once the script is successfully installed, you can now create your opt-in box and write or schedule push notifications just like you would write email sequences for your email subscribers.

PushEngage
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In addition to sending notifications, PushEngage has a feature designed for eCommerce sites. An automation feature will detect a visitor who leaves your store with unpaid items in their cart. You can create an automated pop-up when this happens so you can encourage the customer to buy the product or offer similar products they might be interested in.

Check out: Please, Come Back! How to Return Clients To Your Website

Pricing

You can use PushEngage for free (one website and a cap of 2500 subscribers).

The paid plans start at $29/month (2 sites, 10k subscribers), $49/month (3 sites, 2 users, 50k subscribers), $99/month (5 sites, 5 users, 100k subscribers), and $249/month for an Enterprise plan (25 sites, unlimited users and subscribers).

Check out PushEngage

4. AgoraPulse

Another social media management tool, AgoraPulse, is designed for agencies and social media managers.

If you’re a small business owner, chances are you don’t have an entire team to handle your social media accounts. But even if you do have a team, this tool will make life easier for them, and they’ll get more done in less time.

What I like about AgoraPulse is it’s more than just a social media publishing tool. Its Fans & Followers tab tells you who among your followers share and engage with your posts. You also get to see a feed of posts that mention you on Twitter (or message you on LinkedIn or Facebook) under the Listening tab.

PushEngage
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Beyond scheduling posts, you can set posts to be re-published in daily, weekly, or monthly intervals.

What’s even more remarkable is that you don’t have to schedule posts from scratch. When you sign up for an account, your old posts will appear in your calendar, and you can simply duplicate posts to publish them again.

Pricing

As with most social media management tools, AgoraPulse is a paid service.

You can opt for a monthly or yearly subscription, with the most affordable plan being $49/month ($39/month, if paid annually). This option allows for 3 social media profiles and one user.

If you want to manage Facebook ads and apps, then you’d have to get the Small Business plan at $99/month. This plan allows for 10 social media profiles and 3 users.

The next two plans go for $199/month for 25 profiles and 6 users, and $299/month for 40 profiles and 12 users.

Check out AgoraPulse

5. 2Checkout/Stripe

Depending on where you are in the world, 2Checkout and Stripe are great ways of getting paid for your products and services.

Stripe, however, is not available in all countries (see a list of supported countries here). If your business qualifies, you can apply for Atlas, Stripe’s service for countries outside its scope.

Unlike PayPal, Stripe and 2Checkout can accept payments directly from credit cards without having to link it with a PayPal account. This makes it more convenient for customers who might not have PayPal or don’t want to go through the hassle of creating a PayPal account.

2Checkout accepts payments globally, so you don’t have to worry about limitations due to your location.

2Checkout/Stripe
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As for Stripe, its best feature is that the money accepted goes directly to your bank account. It’s also the best option for business owners who might want to develop apps or websites and include Stripe as part of its interface.

Stripe also has plugins to work with WordPress and Squarespace.

Pricing

Stripe is pay-as-you-go, which means that for every transaction, you pay 2.9% plus 30 cents.

They also have Enterprise plans available for high profile businesses and customers.

Check out 2 Checkout || Check out Stripe

The Best Online Tools For Small Business Owners

Whether it’s knowing what your audience is saying about you online or keeping your payments organized, these tools could be the key for any business to achieve faster growth and better results.

But don’t take our word for it. As with any tool or software, you still need to do your own research to determine how your business can really benefit.

Once you make the purchase, make sure to track and measure your ROI (return on investment). With this approach, you’ll have solid data to justify the cost of these tools.

Have you tried any of these tools for your business? What are your thoughts? Share your experiences below!

Like this post? Share it with your friends!

Here are more interesting tools that you others are checking out:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

23 thoughts on “5 Best Tools For Small Business Owners For Exponential Growth”

  1. Motishree Patel

    Nice blog Kim. I was not aware of these tools. Gonna use and let you know about my experience.

  2. Cartofy

    Such an informative article!! As we all know that eCommerce continues its insolent growth. Nowadays design sector has played a leading role in product marketing.

    The interaction between digital channels and the offline world is of particular importance given the current market dynamics, all voted in the urgency of change and continuous innovation.

    I really love these tools because it tells you what customers are saying about you.

  3. TechyChaps

    Hi, TechyChaps here

    I like almost all of the apps especially the 4 one (agropulse) But can you suggest some alternatives that are free or that cost less because being a beginner I can’t afford these apps.

  4. Raghunath Samantaray

    Hi Kim,

    Thanks for Sharing these tools, I love PushEngage.

    Good Work Kim!

  5. Joby John

    Hey Kim!

    It’s indeed a refreshing article to read on, managing a startup does require a lot of attention and needs to be groomed into a roadmap.

    thanks for the share!

    looking for your blog link, much appreciate if you can provide me your blog homepage.

    Regards
    Joby John

  6. Ashutosh singh

    Hey Kim,

    Such a great list of applications for small businesses. All tools are very useful.
    Thanks for sharing such a great list!
    Ashutosh singh

  7. Freddy G. Cabrera

    Hey Kim!

    I have only heard from Brand24. The other ones are new to me.

    I agree, it is very important for a business owner, no matter how small or big, to track everything, analyze data, and go from there. This is how you ultimately grow and innovate.

    You have to track and look at data. It’s not only an option but a MUST. If you want to really expand and grow your business, that is.

    I’ve learned this the hard way. I had fail countless times in order to realize that building a successful business is all about that – tracking, testing, tweaking, implementing, and growing.

    Great post!

    Thank you for sharing!

    Cheers! 😀

  8. Ankit Mishra

    Hello Kim
    All tools that you said can be very helpful for a small business owner but all the tools are paid but the thing is they worth their price too. Loved reading this artice. Thank you.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Yes, these tools will need you to spend, so it’s important to have the budget/resources to get them.

  9. Ravi Chahar

    Hey Kim,

    I have used LeedFeeder and Brand24. It’s good to have such monitoring tools. And something similar to HootSuite is always helpful.

    Scheduling the social media post is required which can bring more exposure to the business.

    Thanks for sharing with us.

    ~Ravi

  10. Susan Velez

    Hi Kim,

    This is such a great list of tools to help us grow our blogs. When I first started my blog, I wasn’t paying attention to any stats or anything.

    So it was hard to tell if what I was doing was actually helping me grow. I think it’s extremely important to pay attention to what’s working and what isn’t. This will help you know where you need to focus on and which tasks are actually helping.

    Using the right tools makes a huge difference. I’ve actually just started using Cyfe to help me keep track of all my stats in one place. To tell you the truth, I am still new to it, but I am loving it.

    I know that I need to get PushEngage set up, for some reason, I’ve just been dragging my feet.

    Thanks for sharing these tools with us. It’s nice to know what people are using to help them grow.

    Have a great day 🙂

    Susan

    1. Kim Barloso

      I haven’t tried Cyfe, Susan. I’ll check it out. Thanks for sharing!

  11. Lisa Sicard

    Hi Kim, I love Brand24 – I’ve been using them for almost a year now and found places I didn’t know that mentioned me or my blog on theirs. Wonderful tool!

    I also just started with Leadfeeder and like it! I haven’t yet done their subscription but been thinking about it, it’s on my wish list.

    I really love push engage, which I learned about HERE. It’s easy to use as a user and it’s great for my blog as many more subscribe that way now. I loved how ShoutMeLoud used it to announce their Twitter Chat on Saturday, otherwise I would have forgotten! Great use of it!

    I haven’t tried the other tools yet, thanks for sharing about them Kim with us.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Great to hear about your experience with some of these tools, Lisa. Thanks for joining the Twitter Chat!

  12. Vishwajeet Kumar

    Hello Kim,

    thanks for the list of these great tools. I am using Pushengage for some of my blogs and its really effective way to increase conversions. However I haven’t tried agorpulse and willing to give it a try. Thanks again for sharing these great tools here.

    Have a Great Day 🙂
    Vishwajeet

    1. Kim Barloso

      Agorapulse ia great if you want a social media post scheduler that tracks your audience engagement at the same time.

  13. Golden Okechukwu

    Hello Kim,

    Very nice article you’ve got here.

    Advancement in technology has really made marketing a bit easier for us all.

    Even before you dropped the list, Brand24 flashed my mind and Alas! You mentioned Brand24 first.

    I really love this tool because it tells you what customers are saying about you.

    When ever your brand is mentioned Brand24 tells you that and they send you emails when you are mentioned.

    Out of all the 5 tools you mentioned, Brand24 worth the position it made.

    Thanks for sharing and have a nice day.

    Golden.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Brand24 is indeed very useful for recognizing your fans. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

  14. Muhammad Abbas

    Kim! Great Article, Amazing list of the tools. Well appreciated.

  15. Rajesh Dube

    Dear Kim,

    Thank you so much for sharing me a wonderful article.

  16. Yogesh Khetani

    All those are great tools. Again first to comment here! 😛

    1. Kim Barloso

      Thanks for the comment, Yogesh!

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