The Top 5 Tools Every Business Owner Should Be Using

The Top 5 Tools Every Business Owner Should Be Using

Welcome to episode 181 of The Determined Mom Show. Today we wanna talk about the five tools that every business owner should be using. So no matter what your business, no matter how you run it, no matter what kind of business, all of these five tools are going to work for you and are going to make things easier

So that is why you should be using it. So let’s talk about the first one. Keywords. Everywhere. Every single meeting that I have where I share my screen with a client, they are always asking me, what is that tool? Can I use that tool? You know, is it expensive? All of these things. It is crazy, and inexpensive. It used to be free

But it’s a Google Chrome plugin, and what you do is you install it and then you pay, I think like $10 for a hundred thousand credits. And what a credit does is it allows you to enter a search term into your Google. Search bar and whatever that term is, it’s going to tell you on the right-hand side in a little panel, any related searches, it’s gonna show you the traffic.

You can choose from like 30 days, or seven days. You can choose from a year. You can choose from multiple years. It’ll show you the search volume for that particular term, and it’s also going to show you related terms and their search volume. You can only find their search volume if you. To use your credits

So what it’s gonna do is use your credits. So if you have like five results, then it’s gonna use five credits. In the years that I’ve been doing this, I have never gone over a hundred thousand credits in a year, and I do it every day. I use it heavily every day.

So I would highly suggest investing that $10 into the Google Chrome extension called Keywords Everywhere. The second tool is gonna be Google Analytics, and I know I keep talking about Google Analytics.

 The reason that it’s important is that it will help you to figure out how your website is performing, where your traffic is coming from, what you should be focusing on if your campaigns on social media are working or not, and all of those other things.

I mean, it’s just such a powerful tool for you to be able to figure out what’s working, and what’s not. And how much traffic you have right now, especially if you’re at the beginning of a campaign or at the beginning of, you know, a big push or launch or something like that. You need to know what the baseline is for your website

You need to know where you’re starting, so then that way you can track it as the campaign goes on. The next, and this is my favorite, of course, the next tool that you should be using is Google Business Profile. So this used to be called Google My Business, and it is an extremely powerful tool that is free, just like Google Analytics, and it helps you

To get in front of the actual people that you want to be in front of that are ready to buy. That is the biggest difference between Google My Business or Google Business profile, as it’s now called, and any other social media platform you may be in front of people that you think might wanna buy. But let’s face it, most of us have asked all of our friends and family to like our business page

We are just trying to get those followers and they’re not necessarily people that are interested in our product or our service. So that is a really important thing to remember on social media because likes do not equal customers. And when Google, Clicks and views, and all of those things do equal customers because they are searching for the terms that you need to show up for to sell

So that is why Google is so powerful. It is absolutely the best free tool online, and it is absolutely the best free tool that’s underutilized online as well. So if you have not claimed your Google My Business or Google Business profile, you have to do that

Number four on the list is a scheduling tool and a digital calendar, or I guess, I don’t know what you would call it, an online calendar. I use Google Calendar and ACU. A lot of people use calendly. There are so many different other scheduling tools out there, but whatever you use, just make sure you’re using it.

Put all of your personal information, and your appointments, and block everything out that you know, you know you can’t have a meeting during that time. And then literally just hook it up to your acuity, your calendar, and make it easy for people to meet with. It is incredibly hard to go back and forth between emails, on the phone, and in person

Even, let’s say you attend an in-person networking meeting and you’re trying to figure out when would be a good time. All you have to do is the text that person your link. You could even create a QR code for your meeting link on your phone. Show that person the picture, they scan it with their phone and they’re scheduling a meeting with you.

It shouldn’t be hard for people to schedule a meeting with you and talk about business or talk about networking or any of those things. So if you are a business owner and you’re not using a calendar system and a scheduling tool, then I highly recommend you start that today.

I’m gonna give an example of a hair salon. So hair salons. The best time for them to send a review request to their, you know, client, if you will, is the same day of the haircut because they have a haircut. There is a high that anybody has right after they get their haircut and right after they get their hair done

It is just that day because we all know that the next day our hair looks different and we can’t do it the same way our stylist did it. So that’s why it’s really important to figure out when that high is that purchase high for your client.

So if it’s a new car, maybe it’s like. On Monday, the Monday after they buy it when they’re driving to work and they get to work and they see your request and they’re like, oh yeah, I love my car. It’s so much fun.

I had a great weekend in it, you know, and now I’m driving to work for the first time. It’s amazing. You have to really. Think about your client, and their buying experience, and think about when that sweet spot is for you to ask for a review. The second part of that is you need to automate this process so you’re not taxing yourself and taxing your staff

You know, an additional task that is not necessary to do manually. There’s Zapier that can help to integrate with review generation tools, and it will make it so, so easy to collect reviews. And the great thing about review generation tools, at least the one that we have in our agency, is that it also does review

So if you have someone, I’m gonna use a hair salon again, who had a bad experience if you’re using this. Process. What’s going to happen is if they rate you one through three stars, you are going to get an email with the information that, what they didn’t like about the service.

So they’re going to tell you directly instead of getting a link to leave a review for you, if they leave a four or a five star, then they’ll get a link to go right to Google and leave you a review. This is important. The reason that it’s important is that it helps you to stop getting negative reviews.

It also helps you to give your clients better service, and figure out what you’re doing wrong before they tell the world what you did wrong. It allows you to fix things before that Google Review is left

So Google Review generation tools are extremely important. It can also be called a reputation management tool because it is managing your reputation online and reviews are so important, and we’ll talk about that in another episode coming up. But I hope that you enjoyed this episode and that you are using all five of these tools.