Behind the Scenes: The Essential Tools That Keep Our Business Humming

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It's no secret that investing in the right software for your business is crucial to your brand experience and business productivity. With the sheer amount of software available on the market, the perfect business tools should be out there, but finding them isn't always so easy. So, when we strike gold with business software, we like to share these with you, and we hope you'll drop us a line to tell us about your finds too!

Back in 2016 (how is that 2 years ago?), I wrote a similar post about some of our best business investments. While that article is still pretty bang on the money, since then we’ve discovered more time-saving gems that can help you level up your business, and I’m so excited to share them with you today.

Autopilot

Unfortunately your gmail account isn’t going to cut it when it comes to creating automated email sequences and managing your email list, so you’re going to need some email marketing software.

We started out using Mailchimp, then moved over to ConvertKit when we realised how simple their automation software was. But when we found Autopilot, with its visual journey builder, easy as pie setup, amazing support and integrated Headsup software, it was love.

Autopilot have a 30 day trial so you can try it out and loads of tutorials in their flight school to help you build the perfect marketing funnels and customer service journeys. 

If you’re not already building an email list, then here are all the reasons why I think you should start, sooner rather than later!

Calendly

We were so sick of trying to tee up meetings or re-schedule meetings in long email conversations and when we tried Calendly, it completely streamlined our meeting booking process. We can block out days or times when we aren’t available, and any meetings we add to our Google calendar are automatically made unavailable in Calendly. 

Our clients can choose to book an in-person meeting, video call or phone call, and are automatically sent a calendar invite with the details. If they can’t make it, they can just re-schedule using the same process. You can try it out for free here.

Planoly

Planoly makes curating and pre-scheduling instagram posts and stories a walk in the park. I try to batch a bunch of our instagram posts in advance, so that even when I’m feeling really uninspired and can’t be bothered, I always have something relevant and on-brand to post.  

And, now that instagram has allowed auto-posting, you could batch ALL your posts weeks, or months and have Planoly post on your behalf. Planoly also gives you hashtag ideas, saves your favourite hashtags and lets you browse for photos to repost within the app. They have a free account option for you to try it out too.     

Xero

Xero makes managing our books, tracking our invoices, sending reminders and preparing BAS statements oh so easy. It’s also simple to share reports and figures with our accountant. Having some sort of program to keep track of your finances is really important, and because Xero is so widely used, finding an accountant who uses it won’t be difficult. Check out Xero.

Webflow

You may have read about my love of Webflow already in this recent post, so I won't deep dive into it too much here. It is my favourite website content management system (CMS) because it is user-friendly, is completely customisable and takes care of our hosting and backups automatically. After using various custom CMSs as well as Wix, Drupal, WordPress and Squarespace, Webflow is the first one that feels intuitive and that I actually enjoy using. You can sign up for a free Webflow account to try it out here.

I hope these tools can help you to level up your business! If you found this article helpful or know someone who could benefit from it, please share it with them. And, I’d love to hear about your favourite tools and programs for saving time and enhancing your brand experience in the comments.