Growing a business is hard. It goes beyond creating top-notch products and building a sleek website.
Yes, it’s all part of the game. But you will need a smart tool along the way.
Smart tools eliminate the hard work that goes into learning technical skills. The best part, some of these tools are easy drag-and-drop builders.
With a mere click on your computer screen, you can get your business up and running in no time.
Don’t get it twisted — using smart tools does not guarantee the success of your business. It just reduces your workload and helps you eliminate the long hours that go into growing a business from scratch.
Whether you are new in the business world, or you desire a better way of running your existing business, here are the 11 smartest tools to grow your business in 2021.
1. Sendinblue
Digital marketing is an expanding industry. To strive in this industry, you would need to keep up with the pace — and that’s where Sendinblue comes into play.
Sendinblue helps you to manage all your digital marketing needs at a go. You will get all you need to grow your business without losing sweat.
Whether you are looking for communication channels like SMS marketing, or you need to improve your conversion rate, Sendiblue got you covered.
Features:
- Helps you to create sleek landing pages, signup forms, and converting Facebook Ads
- Built-in tools that monitor your customer journey
- Good marketing automation to help you boost performance and save time
- Helps you monitor your customers via email marketing, chat, SMS marketing, and inbox.
2. Lead page
Driving eyeballs to your website is not enough. You have to convert the traffic into loyal paying customers — and the Lead page helps you to do just that.
The lead page helps you to connect with your audience, collect leads, and turn them into paying customers.
It’s also a good choice for people who want to build websites, pop-ups, landing pages, and alert bars.
The platform provides an all-in-one stop to help you start and scale an online business.
Features:
- Built-in tools to help you create websites and landing pages
- Built-in opt-in offer to help you grow your email list
- Built-in checkouts, high-converting sales pages, and secure online payment systems
- Simplified analytics dashboard
- Built-in systems to run unlimited split tests.
3. Constant Contact
Great content is king. And one sure way of maximizing great content is through email marketing.
If you desire to connect on a deeper level with your audience and build a more thriving business online, then email marketing is one area you should focus on — and Constant contact will help you do just that.
To dominate online, you would have to master the art of launching a top-converting email marketing campaign, building a sleek website, generating awareness using social media platforms, and getting sales with Google Ads.
But doing all these things requires time, effort, and skills — and that’s why you need a reliable tool — Constant contact.
Features:
- Top email marketing tools to help you grow your brand, and reach your audience right in their inbox
- Tools to help you start and scale your online store in no time
- Built-in marketing tools to help you create a sleek, functional website
- An effective system of driving quality leads using Facebook and Instagram Ads
- Free email templates to help you communicate faster and more effectively with your audience.
4. Bluehost
It’s no news — a fully functional website is the backbone of your business. In the twenty-first century, creating a top-notch product (and services) is not enough.
You need to showcase it to a global audience, and a website comes in handy at this point.
To build a website, you need a hosting company. Hosting companies pretty much offer a cloud system where your files are stored — and that’s what Bluehost is all about.
First off, the platform helps you to name your website (picking a domain name).
Next, you pick a design template and optimize your website for results. There are also good marketing tools and insightful analytics to help you scale your business.
“Since 2005 Bluehost has been recommended by WordPress because of their customer service and expertise and affordability” – Get Started with Bluehost at €3.23/mo*
Whether you want to build an online store or manage a WordPress-powered website, Bluehost will help you do just that.
Features:
- Built-in SEO tools to help you gain visibility and get results
- Free Google My Business profile for Bluehost users
- Reliable ways of optimizing Google Ads using automated machine learning
- Experts to help you create a sleek website in no time
- 24/7 customer support for all users.
5. Shopify
To sell online, you would need to impress your customers with a beautiful store. And a beautiful store goes beyond the aesthetics of the store.
You would need a mobile-friendly store, and comes with dozens of professional free themes — and that’s where Shopify comes into play.
Also, Shopify has built-in systems to help you accept credit cards without going through the vigorous process that comes with third-party accounts.
Good user experience is one of the factors that make your visitors stick around.
The themes are fully responsive. This will, in turn, help your visitors get a good experience on the platform.
Selling online goes beyond creating top-notch products (or services), or building a sleek online store.
You would need to be visible — and good visibility to a large extent translates to great SEO. Shopify SEO features coupled with the educational materials will keep you a step ahead of your competition.
Features:
- Drag-and-drop store builder
- An intuitive mobile app that let you add features to your online store
- No coding skills required
- Shopify comes with a 14-day free trial.
6. Semrush
In the digital marketing industry, visibility is everything.
A good website and great products (or services) are of no good if you cannot be found in the online marketplace. To be found, you would need a reliable tool like Semrush.
Semrush is a comprehensive platform that helps you handle your SEO, content marketing, market research, advertising, and social media needs.
Organic traffic is arguably the best kind of traffic, and it’s relatively cheap compared to other traffic sources. With Semrush, you get to access dozens of tools to help you grow your traffic.
If your content is not ranking well on search engines, then you are probably doing something wrong. Semrush helps you create SEO-friendly content.
Features:
- Keyword discovery tool to help you create content that resonant with your audience
- Helps users monitor competitors’ landing pages and ad copies
- Helps you create social ads and track competitor’s accounts
- SEO audit tools and tools to help you track your position on search engines.
7. Optinmonster
It’s one thing to drive traffic to your website, and it’s another thing to convert these eyeballs to loyal paying customers — Optinmonster helps you do the latter.
Optinmonster is a tool that helps you grow your email list, generate more leads, and boost your sales.
Let’s face it; you are in business to sell and make more cash — and Optinmonster helps you to do just that.
By merely signing up with the platform, you get to join the millions of websites that are already playing in the big league using Optinmonster.
If you’ve been in the digital marketing industry for some time, you probably know that generating more sales starts with creating a visually appealing offer.
Using behavior automation, you get to personalize and target your offers. Finally, you’ve got to keep testing and adjusting in real-time.
Features:
- Powerful drag-and-drop builder to help you create and optimize opt-in forms
- Offers easy ways of optimizing your campaigns using tablets and smartphones
- There are options for creating compelling designs from scratch
- The tool has a precision campaign feature to help you generate more leads, subscribers, and sales.
- You get actionable insights on what’s working and what’s not working.
8. Thrive themes
A stunning website, sleek sales funnel, scarcity campaign, email campaign, and online course will be worth nothing without a great theme — and that’s where Thrive themes come in handy.
Thrive themes eliminates the heavy lifting that comes with designing a good theme.
The tool can integrate with lots of other third-party tools like Active Campaign, Infusionsoft, and MailChimp. Simply put, Thrive Themes can integrate with third-party tools to help you up to your marketing game.
The support team is second to none. If you run into any issues, you can reach out to the support team for help.
Whether you are in search of WordPress themes or plugins, Thrive themes got you covered. The best part, Thrive themes are tailored to generate conversions.
That is, you get to convert those visitors that land on your website into customers, subscribers, and clients. Beginners who do not have a good grasp of online marketing can get started using the training materials.
Features:
- Thrive Theme builder helps you build websites even without coding skills
- Thrive Architect helps you create funnels and landing pages in no time
- Thrive Leads helps you build an email list and create opt-in forms
- Thrive Quiz builder helps you create quizzes and boost your online engagement
- Thrive Apprentice helps to create online courses
- Thrive Comments helps you to gamify the comment section
- Thrive Ovation helps to boost conversions using testimonials
- Thrive Ultimatum inserts countdown to your website
- Thrive Optimize helps in A/B testing.
9. Buffer
If you are like most people, you probably think that a Buffer is a scheduling tool. Well, that’s right — but it’s much more than that!
The platform helps you plan and schedule your Instagram story, including the first comment whenever you schedule Instagram posts, and also helps with Instagram tagging.
If you are keen on learning more about social media strategy, Buffer offers useful answers for that. All in all, Buffer is the right tool to help you tell your brand’s story by publishing authentic content on the platform.
Let’s face it; managing your brand’s social media accounts is a full-time job. Yes, you have two options — hire a social media account manager or use social media automation software like Buffer.
Features:
- Helps you publish thumb-stopping content with ease
- Helps to perform thorough campaign analytics
- The tool serves as a hashtag planner
- Buffer offers custom reports to help you make more informed marketing decisions.
10. Canva
Eye-catching graphics and images are everything! Nowadays, all you need to create compelling graphics is Canva.
Nothing more, nothing less. If you’ve got graphics skills, that’s better. Even without some skills in graphic design, you can get more work done using Canva.
Becoming a graphics professional requires long hours of hard work.
With Canva, you get to eliminate these tedious hours and learn the basics and even some advanced graphic skills in minutes.
There are thousands of templates on the platform to help you kickstart your journey in the world of graphic design.
Whether you desire compelling graphics for your social media handles, or you want an infographic for your blogs, Canva will help you handle it.
What’s more, you can opt for more features by upgrading from the free version to the paid version.
Features:
- Thousands of free templates for beginners, amateurs, and professional designers
- Built-in photo editor to help you with your photo editing needs
- Thousands of templates to help you create the right logo for your brand
- Free training materials for people who are new to the world of graphic design
- User-friendly mobile apps for users who desire more flexibility.
11. Rankmath
There are millions of SEO plugins out there. But website owners who desire a more robust way of upping their SEO games should opt for Rankmath.
Rankmath is arguably the easiest and most powerful way to get SEO working on your website.
One of the primary reasons why people build websites is to create more visibility.
Visibility, to a large extent, translates to good SEO. There are built-in suggestions in the Rankmath tool to help you optimize your content and get found in search engines.
Running a successful website is not rocket science. All you need is the right plugins — and Rankmath is one of such plugins.
The tool is compatible with both WordPress editors — the Gutenberg and Classic editors. And if you run into any issues, there are experts on standby to help you through the challenge.
Features:
- Built-in SEO analyzer to keep you on top of the game
- Position history to help you keep a close eye on your SEO performance
- Ranking system to help you know the exact keyword your content ranks for
- Rich snippets that support over twenty schema types
- Helps you to quickly track keyword ranking.
Conclusion
— Grow your business with smart tools
Running a business is hard.
With smart tools, you get to lessen the burden that comes with managing a business in a fast-paced evolving world. These tools help you to automate the process and also boost your overall revenue.
What’s more, smart tools can pretty much help you gain more visibility online.
After all, boosting branding awareness and gaining visibility is one of the primary objectives of setting up an online presence.
Do you want to build a website, or set up an online store? Well, there are tools for that — and one of such tools is Shopify.
People who want to get more from their email list can use Constant contact. And if you are looking for a web hosting platform, then Bluehost is your best bet.
Enough said!
Do you have a favorite smart tool for your business? Let’s know about it.