7 Simple, Affordable Tools to Digitize Your Business

Last week we talked about the three essential questions every current or future business owner should ask now to get clear on what their audience and business needs to sustain — thrive, even — during and post-pandemic. This week we’re talking about how to prepare your business for the interwebs so you can stay top-of-mind with all the customers you worked so hard to gain. 

Nearly every business can engage with their audience digitally and succeed doing it. Don’t believe us? As of late, hairstylists are sending scissors to clients and setting up one-hour hair-trim tutorial appointments; personal trainers are Zooming clients through their daily workouts; and wardrobe stylists are offering online closet clean-outs to help homebodies declutter with style. The opportunities really are endless if we think creatively and have the right tools. 

We’ve outlined our favorite tools and platforms for every business to create a sustainable online presence so you can keep building momentum. Whether you’re looking to scale your business, go online, or double-down on marketing and content creation, we’ve vetted the right tool for you. 

Grow: Tools to Scale Your Business 

When you scale your business online, there are no limits to the amount of customers you can serve and how much you can prosper, which means more flow and less hustle for your business and your life. 

Teach and share your expertise: 

• Teachable makes it very simple to create an online course. It’s so simple it’s practically fill-in-the-blanks. Plus, it provides the infrastructure so you don’t need to be a digital whiz to launch your classes quickly. Teachable allows you to be anywhere and still deliver your teaching or training services perfectly. 
  

Make tutorials, lectures and how-to videos: 

• Camtasia is perfect for taking a training session digital. It takes the pressure off feeling like you need fancy camera equipment to make professional videos by allowing you to brand, cut and edit anything straight from your computer. 
  

Create or update your website: 

• Shopify is DesignGood’s favorite platform to build all our clients' ecommerce websites because it’s streamlined and holistic in its approach. If you want to sell a product online, it has everything you need — all the way down to shipping labels and inventory management. 
  

Promote: Tools to Market Your Business & Create Content 

It can cost up to 25 times more to earn a new customer than retain an existing one. In a time like this, don’t waste your precious energy floundering in the digital sphere. Create content and connect with the audience you’ve already acquired, and serve them in meaningful ways. 

Stay top-of-mind with customers: 

• There are tons of email marketing tools but we recommend MailChimp because it’s user-friendly and you can create beautiful branded emails that get noticed. You can build a template once and use it thereafter, and you can set up automatic actions unique to individual customer behavior, like if they visit your website or leave items in their cart. 
  

Stay relevant with thoughtful social media content: 

• It can be hard to think of great social media content on-the-spot. Instead, when you’re inspired take it as an opportunity to write and plan content for the month. Later let’s you schedule your content so posts go live automatically once you queue them up. 
• While we might have extra time right now, there’s no point in wasting it. BuzzSumo lets you know what topics and content are performing best online and on social media in real-time so you can focus your energy on the content that will best capture your intended audience. Work smarter not...well, you know. 
  

Share your expert point-of-view:

• Forget expensive sound equipment, with Anchor you can record an entire podcast episode directly from your phone or computer, and edit, publish and track right through the app. 
  

If you have the gift of time, you have the opportunity to emerge from the pandemic in a more sustainable place, and these tools will do the bulk of the work for you. 

In our next post we’ll be talking about how to streamline your business and double-down on your bottom line. We’ll share our tried-and-true tools to help manage operations and finances, and run projects for remote businesses. 

Win a 1-Hour Business Clarity Session

Feeling inspired to take your business digital but still feeling like you need a little more clarity on where you’re going? I’m giving away four one-hour Business Clarity Sessions. Winners will discover if their business idea is the right one for them if they’re just starting out, or established business owners will gain valuable insight on how to pivot their business and build momentum. Enter here!