If you’ve ever had a discussion about tools with a mechanic or carpenter, you know they can be pretty passionate about the particular instruments. Using the right tool for the task can help us get the job done right the first time. As marketers, we use a lot of tools to aid us in our business.
I’m often asked what tools I use in my digital services business, so I decided to develop a short blog series on “Tools of the Marketing Trade.” This introductory post will share a simple list of tools I find helpful for my day-to-day duties, and in future posts, I’ll explain what I use for each task.
Like most small business owners, I’m on a tight budget, so many of the tools I will share about are either free or very inexpensive. For some items on the list, I have used (or still use) more than one product, so I’ll share about what I find most helpful and why, plus some tips on how to use these items.
At first, the list may seem daunting, but in reality, most of these (once they’re set up) only take a few minutes a day to use, and they save me TONS of time!
- Email Client
- Customer Relations Management (CRM) system
- Project Management system
- Social Media Management system
- Bookkeeping & budgeting software
- Filing system
- Calendar
- Content Management System (CMS)
- Photo-editing software
- Screencast software
- Video-editing software
- Audio-editing software
- eBook-editing software
- Word-processor
- Cloud storage
- File transfer software
- Link-shortener
- Payment Processor
- Note-taking software
- Mobile Apps
- Computer
- Mind-Mapping software
- Auto-responder
- And I’m sure I’ll think of others before this series is done 🙂
What types of business/marketing tools do you find helpful? Please share your ideas in the comments area.