5 of the best tools to expand your startup business

Launching a startup business can be both exciting and frustrating – you have a distinctive product to offer customers, yet can’t seem to get enough traction to pay bills. The bad news is that it’s thought that 9 out of 10 startups fail. 

Although this statistic is scary, the good news is that there are tools that are designed to help you succeed and many of them are relatively low-cost. We’re going to give you a list of 5 tools that you should consider using to help expand and grow your new startup business. 

Keep reading for some helpful insights! 

Sharepoint and Powerapps

Depending on the nature of your business, you may already be familiar with Microsoft’s SharePoint and PowerApps programs. If you’re not, here is a quick breakdown: 

• SharePoint is a cloud-based document management tool. It allows for all of a document’s versions to be seen, shared, and located easily. 
• PowerApps is a tool that can be used by non-technical people to build apps for your company without the need for coding knowledge. This program works within SharePoint which makes it easy to collaborate with other users as the app is built. 

Whether you are just learning about these programs, have recently started using them, or have been working with them for a while, it is always helpful to gain outside knowledge of how these programs can better work for your business. One way to do this is to research PowerApps consulting services.

A good consulting service will look at your use of these tools and help you determine how your startup can better implement all of the features offered as well as expand. Additionally, consulting services should help you plan for the future of your business, showing you what tools you can use now and in years to come! 

Gather customer feedback

Don’t you wish you could read your customers’ minds when it comes to your products and website? Unfortunately, technology hasn’t advanced quite that far yet, but there are ways that you can get some decent insight. 

One such way to measure your customers’ happiness with your business (and thereby the likelihood of recurring transactions) is by using customer satisfaction metrics. While you can have a ‘contact us’ button on your webpage, this won’t always prompt customers to tell you what’s on their minds unless there’s a major problem. 

With a well-worded survey, you can ask about specific products or how users enjoyed using your website. You can learn if there were minor issues within the website if the buyer liked the packaging of the product and if the product met their needs and expectations based on it’s the description.

This information will help you identify the issues that could negatively impact a customer’s willingness to return to your site or shop with you again. It also allows customers to feel as though they are being heard and lets you know what you’re doing well! 

VoIP phone services

Whether your business is using cell phones to operate or has a full phone system at the office, if you’re not using a VoIP service, you’re missing out! VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, which basically means you’re using your internet connection to make phone calls. 

Using a VoIP phone service comes with many benefits including keeping your call costs down, not needing multiple phone lines, and the fact that you can choose to forward your calls to whatever location you happen to be working from. Additionally, this type of phone service is reliable and can make conference calls incredibly easy!

Because this type of phone service is so popular, you will have a wide selection of providers. Sometimes, it can be difficult to determine which service company will best fit your needs. This is where using a VoIP phone service buyer’s guide will help. 

A buyer’s guide will allow you to figure out which features and tools your startup currently needs to expand and compare the costs of various providers. These guides will also help you avoid features that are practically useless to your business, which can help eliminate high costs. 

Instagram automation

You already know that crafting a perfect Instagram post takes time. You need the winning combination of a beautiful photo, interesting caption, relevant hashtags, and the ability to engage with your customers. There is a fair amount of psychology involved in this process but your engagement also has to do with when and how often you post. 

One day, you might have plenty of time on your hands to create and post to the platform, then for a week, you don’t post at all. This can affect how many people see your future posts and may even cause you to lose current followers. 

There isn’t an app that will create Instagram posts for you, but there are multiple apps that will allow you to create the posts you want and schedule them to automatically post throughout the day, week, or even month. 

You can choose to post multiple times per day or keep it to two-three times per week. You can also see the most popular hashtags as well as keep track of which ones have worked well for you in the past. The greatest part is the fact that you can choose to have your posts scheduled for when the majority of your users are active – whether this is 3 in the morning or 8 in the evening! 

Content creation & SEO

SEO is short for search engine optimization. If you’re unfamiliar with this, it is a huge part of how your business is found online and if your website is ranked within the first page of search results or on later pages. 

Most often, SEO uses keywords and phrases that match your content to a user’s search. In order to increase the likelihood of this match occurring and to give your website ‘authority.’ This means that your site is trusted by users to have correct and reliable information. It also helps your search engine results ranking. 

Whether you choose to outsource the writing of your blog or do it yourself, you definitely need to ensure that it is SEO-friendly and links to other high-authority sources. Having content also will increase the likelihood of other sites backlinking to yours. 

Of course, choosing to create content yourself will be the cheapest route. However, you should remember that having quality content is worth paying for! 

Learn what works for you

The biggest key to growing your startup business is knowing where you need to focus your efforts and what areas are working well. As you grow, you will need to continuously re-evaluate each component to ensure that your company doesn’t become stagnant. 

By using one or all of the tools listed above, you will ensure that your startup continues to expand at a steady rate, keep your costs down, and develop happy, loyal customers.