ESSENTIAL BUSINESS TOOLS AND RESOURCES
As we have made our journey into internet marketing we have found for ourselves and other people have introduced us to some fantastic tools that have made our life so much easier so we thought that we would help you by telling you about them.
Every business needs marketing tools and resources so that is what we are concentrating on here on this page
We only recommend tools and resources we use ourselves or come highly recommended with proven results
Time is our most precious asset so it makes sense when running a business that you utilise those tools and resources that will save you time for the more important tasks.
Some tools and resources are widely available and at no cost but others have a cost attached. As entrepreneurs we accept that we have to invest in these tools and resources to streamline our business and help us grow.
If you don’t have the money set aside for business expenses such as these then don’t start your business until you can pay for at least the very basic of tools and resources.
Let’s look at some of the most important ones that we would recommend you have.
An Autoresponder
An autoresponder is an email service which allows you to manage building and communicating with a list of subscribers. Autoresponders are messages set to go out automatically after a contact subscribes to your list and help you automate campaigns and manage one-to-one communication with your recipients and are useful if you want to send an automatic message to contacts who join your list
There are many different companies who provide these but the most well known for someone just starting out for both ease of use, support, training and cost are Aweber and GetResponse. Bother offer free trials so you can try them out and see what suits you best.
A Funnel Builder
A funnel builder creates the web pages that are needed as part of the funnel.
No matter what you sell, getting prospective customers to buy doesn’t happen in an instant.
Instead, the sales process unfolds in stages through a process we call a funnel.
A sales funnel is a marketing strategy designed to turn cold prospects into long-term customers by funneling them through a number of stages
Depending on what you’re selling and who your target audience is, you’ll want to tailor each stage of your sales funnel(s) accordingly.
To keep it simple, a funnel is required to capture details of prospective clients and be able to communicate with them at each stage of their journey (which is where having an autoresponder is important)
A simple funnel goes like this…
Step 1 : Find a place to generate traffic that feels natural to you
Step 2 : Drive traffic to a landing page that grows our email list
Step 3 : Send daily emails teaching and sharing offers of products they’ll love
What do we use for creating funnels? We use ClickFunnels as well as LeadPages
We’ve been using it for years and you can’t beat the simplicity and easy of their platform
We’ve even partnered with ClickFunnels and LeadPages to get you a 14 day Free trial through our affiliate link. See which suits you best.
A Website
Many people don’t believe that a website is an important tool for a business but we would absolutely disagree. We have had one for over ten years even before simple, easy to use websites built on the WordPress platform (like this one where you are reading this page) could be created.
We like to think of a website or blog as the home online of any entrepreneur or business owner where you can always be found and your clients and prospects can reach out to you.
Social media platforms are owned by someone else so we would never recommend anyone thinks as using any one of the many available as their home online but rather complimentary to their website
WordPress is very simple to use.
You can purchase a domain from Namecheap or GoDaddy for about $10 as well as hosting which will cost you about $5 per month and from there install WordPress.org. Your hosting company will help you with that if you are not techie.
We use TSO Host in the UK
International Users we recommend LiquidWeb
Alternatively you can have one of our fully hosted WordPress blog websites where you can send your content direct from your smart phone in minutes. You can try it out here with our compliments.
These are the absolute basics you should have in your business and should should factor in these costs (of course they are tax deductible too)
Of course there are many ‘nice to have’s‘ and we’ll share some of our favourites here (some are free to use so take advantage).
NICE TO HAVE’S
Linktree
This is a fabulous tool that allows you to share multiple links on your social media accounts – Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tik Tok etc… It basically creates a simple landing page that hosts multiple links. You pop the link to this landing page in your social bio in order to drive traffic to specific areas of your business.
There is a free version and a premium version, which (at the time of writing) costs $6 per month.
The free version has limited functionality and doesn’t allow you to add much branding. However, you can add a profile picture and change the colour of the background to one of their pre-sets.
You just need to visit the Linktr.ee website and create an account. When we tried it, it took about 5 minutes to set up, front to back. We have the Pro version and we love it – see it here
How To Create Your Linktree
Simply list the most important links on your site in order to direct users to specific information. For instance, you could feature your latest article, your newsletter sign-up page and your contact page. There’s no limit to how many you include.
Once you’re ready publish to your Social Media Bio / About Pages
See ours here
Even though we talk about this under our “nice to have” section actually it’s more than a nice to have!
Ripl
Ripl is an app that makes it easy to create eye-catching social media posts and lets you share a post you create to all your social accounts with one tap or schedule for later.
There are thousands of templates to choose from and over 500,000 stock images and videos you can use
Their blog is awesome with so many ideas and information to help you build your business
It is a paid for application but when you balance the time it takes to create content for social media and build your brand it’s definitely worth every penny
10/10 would recommend Ripl! We use it to create, post, and track social content.
Sign up with this referral link for an exclusive deal.
Here’s just ONE of our many posts using Ripl so you can see for yourself
It’s very powerful and allows you to get more engagement, leads and sales from your social media efforts!
Mention
Your reputation online is EVERYTHING
You need to protect it as if your life depended on it
Luckily there’s a service that can handle all that for you – mention.com
it recently alerted us to a social media post on Instagram and we were able to respond
They have free and paid accounts so you can get started for free which is great news
As an added bonus you can sign up for alerts about content relating to your brand so you’ve always got something to talking about adding authority
Facebook Apps
Truth is there are a lot of Facebook Apps for all kinds of tasks to save you time and help you build your business. We’ve tried lots of them and now we have our firm favourites. These two can also be used on LinkedIn so doubly effective!
Friend Or Foe : Friend or Foe is a software that runs as an extension in Google Chrome. We’ve been using it for the past 6 months and absolutely love it. In it’s simplest form it works by sending a message to everyone who friend requests you on Facebook (you create these messages to fit your business and style) That way you control who becomes a friend and who doesn’t so that your Facebook Friends truly are a group of people you have chosen to be connected to.
And the biggest PLUS of all…you can use this tool to direct someone to join your Facebook Group, subscribe to your YouTube channel, or anything else you want, turning every friend request into a potential lead!!!
We’ve just got notification (July 2021) that it’s going to become a full CRM, Messenger Organiser, Messenger Scheduler, Personal Profile, Page or Group Post Scheduler and many more exciting additions. Whenever you get in the price is locked forever and you get all the software updates. Now would be a very good time to get locked in with a free trial here
Happy Birthday : Also by the creator of Friend or Foe this is another fabulous chrome extension software. The newest update lets you post to your friend’s timeline, messenger or both. It automatically defaults and sends a message if timeline is selected but that person doesn’t allow posts on their timeline. It also tracks ALL BIRTHDAY MESSAGES SENT for the last year in a little CRM with clickable links to all your birthday posts and the associated user profiles. It really is ONE of the most powerful tools for Facebook and we’ve loved using it. Try it out for yourself here
Post Planner
With Post Planner, you can schedule posts to:
- Facebook pages & groups
- Instagram business accounts
- LinkedIn profiles & pages
- Pinterest accounts
- Twitter profiles
It’s a most valuable time saver and provides you with so much content you will never be lost for what to write
They have a fabulous blog too so well worth checking it out for tips and strategies posting on social media
We were one of Josh’s very first clients when Post Planner was in it’s infancy. It’s amazing to see it in action now from it’s early days 🙂
Blog This Wow
Blog This WOW is the easiest way to have your own website and grow an audience and establish your brand
We mentioned having a blog/website above but we wanted to touch base on it again here and introduce you to our most favourite and easy way to publish content without actually having to write it yourself! Every day we see great content either on social media or in emails and we’re able in an instant to share it to our Blog This Wow website here
It solves so many problems simply and easily
- Builds YOUR Brand
- Builds YOUR List
- Simple Content Creation
Most people don’t start a blog in our experience as it’s complicated to bring all the moving parts together especially if you are non techie… and then there’s all that content to create
What if there was a way to solve your blog nightmare?
A fully hosted blog with all your own assets and best of all designed for integral list building
And all you need to do is share relevant content from around the internet that your perfect customer wants to know…
And leads to your personal offer of YOUR products, services, coaching program etc
That’s Blog This Wow – why not try it for yourself and see how EASY it is
WordPress Plugins
SEO Pressor
If you are looking for search engine optimization for your WordPress Website then this product is well worth the investment. Not only will it bring your wordpress website to the top of search engines but it will also bring it to the top of the top page! You can find out more and watch the video training here
Pretty Links
This is a plugin we can defintely not do without! It allows us to cloak those long ugly affiliate links and make them look really nice. Check it out here
Marketing Tools & Training
EZine / Solo Ad Marketing
Always proceed with caution when entering into the world of Solo Ad or Ezine Marketing and test small. It can be the best and quickest way to build your subscriber list but it can also cost you a lot of money if you get it wrong.
We recommend The Directory of Ezines as a safe place to get started and you can get access to one of the smartest marketers to help you get started safely.
Writing Articles & Blog Posts
This seems to be a real stumbling block to newcomers to blogging and article writing so getting off to a flying start is essential. This little tool called Instant Article Wizard is a real wizard – just $7 to try it out for 7 days then $77 a year. Well worth a try
Article Builder
This is the super version of Article Wizzard. For the more experienced blogger and article writer then Article Builder is for you- its $297 a year but is well worth it for outsourcing your content. Made by the same guy as Article Wizard.
Ninja Tools
Roboform
This is one tool that we could not live without and recommend to all of our students. As you build your business online you will have more and more sites and passwords to manage and this keeps them all neatly locked in one place. It’s called and it manages all your websites, software, affiliate links etc all neatly locked in one place.
Dropbox
This is one of those tools that we could not be without – thank goodness someone took the time to share it with us.
This is a great tool that we use to share information and to store important documents on “the cloud” You can get one for free here You get a limited amount of space to begin with – 250 mbs but you can get more space by inviting others to join Dropbox
Give Aways
If you are looking for something valuable to give away to help you build your list or build a relationship with your list then re-brandable books is an option for you
XHeader is a free header graphics design tool. Stunning header graphics create a great first impression and this piece of software includes 500 headers all totally FREE – all you do is add some text. Click Here
Books
There are a number of books that we highly recommend that teach the basic fundamentals of oneline marketing and positioning yourself in your chosen market
These are all available FREE (you just pay S&H)
Thanks for reading and if there are any questions we can answer for you do let us know. We’ll continue to update this page with our favourite things to help you build your business
Chris and Susan
Please read our Affiliate Disclaimer:
Our recommendation is ALWAYS based on our belief that the product and its author will provide excellent and valuable information or service based on a review of that product, our relationship with that person, and or previous positive experience with the person or company who’s product we are recommending. In some cases, we will be compensated if you decide to purchase that product based on our recommendation. In some cases, we will receive the product for free for review purposes. Always do your OWN due-diligence before making any purchases. Never purchase anything that you cannot afford. Most people don’t do anything with the products they buy, so most of the time, their typical results are zero.
