Today the world is as competitive as ever, and the only thing that can keep a freelance business afloat is smart work along with hard work. One in three freelance businesses doesn’t survive long in the industry and close up before making their big shot. 

For a freelance business to succeed, you need to work smarter and use the right resources. Managing everything on your own can be enough as you start your business, but it might not be enough as you try to scale it up.

This is when you can use tools to enhance your management, marketing, financing, etc. The latest tools in the market will help you keep track of your business and ensure its growth at all times. But how exactly do the tools help in promoting business growth?

How Tools Aid in Business Growth?

Listed below are the things that tools can facilitate and make business upscaling easier and successful. 

Tracking Engagements

As you imagine dealing with a newer array of clients, frequent engagements and meetings will become a regular scenario. But to ensure your preparedness by getting timely reminders, you can use calendar tools like Calnedly, Google Calendar, etc. 

This is an optimal way to track your deadlines and manage your schedule and appointments effectively.

Cloud Storage

The traditional storage devices won’t keep up with the bulk of files of a growing freelancing business. As you scale up, your data will scale up too, and you will require massive storage spaces. 

For this concern, you use Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. To sync and store your files. Their cloud storage facility will also eliminate the risks of losing important files due to system inadequacies.

Email Marketing

Upscaling of freelancing business requires you to pitch in a lot of potential customers through emails. Also, you will need to keep maintaining your already existing business contacts. However, it will not be feasible for you to manage it on your own at some point. 

This is where tools such as Hunter.io and Boomerang can simplify and automate the task for you. Apart from saving time, this will amplify your reach, retain previous customer-relations, and boost your sales. 

Contracting or Legal Concerns

While freelancing business offers freedom, it also demands professionalism as you set off to amp your business. This also includes adding a legal edge and using contracts in your dealings. It will ensure that you set necessary boundaries and operate professionally. 

Instead of hiring lawyers and staff to do that for you, you can also use certain tools. Bonsai or LegalZoom here offers you templates of legal documents and contracts to make your work simpler.

You can create, edit, review, and even e-sign the documents and cut the conventional hassle.

Proposal Drafting

When you gain enough experience, applying to job posts through job boards won’t be enough. You will need to seek potential clients and create opportunities for yourself. Thus, you will need proposal drafting to add a professional touch to your freelancing business. 

Putting effort into the same is essential, but easier when you have Draftsend or Prospero like tools at hand. You can easily customize appealing proposals, integrate them, and make use of other valuable functions as well. 

From quoting the price to checking how well the proposals are received, you can use them for the best.

Project Management

Delegating work and collaborating with a small staff can be manageable on your own. However, once you start expanding and get more people on board, collaborating and delegating can become difficult to manage/track.

To make the work time-effective, optimal, and allow easy collaboration, you must try tools like Trello and Asana. With their robust features, you can easily communicate and assign tasks to multiple teams or employees and stay updated.

Designing

Every business owner understands the importance of branding their company. From logo, website, social media to various other aspects, you will require graphic designing. This is when you can use InVision, Canva, that offers easily customizable templates.

Other than these, you can choose to hire freelancers for lowest rates from anywhere across the globe. Tools like Upwork make this possible by providing you a platform to connect with international freelancers for collaboration.

Social Media Management

A firm social media presence that promotes your services is something you might consider to boost your reach. However, juggling multiple platforms is not an easy task. While hiring someone can be considered, but it might be rather expensive for a small business.

This is where tools like Hootsuite, SmarterQueue, etc. Come to your rescue. These powerful tools can schedule all your posts and publish them as and when required. By automating everything, you can manage it effectively and reach potential clients too.

Financial Tracking

Finance can be a tricky thing to track and manage when you have hundreds of things to take care of. However, to make sure that you are accomplishing your goals and making a profit, tracking finance is necessary.

Tools such as Quickbooks or Freshbooks can easily sync your bank account and manage the task for you. They will analyze your financial status and give you a clear report. Also, you can directly pay off your expenses, employee salaries, etc. using them. 

Others

Besides the above-listed tools, you can also find automated tools for designing your website and creating appealing portfolios. You can manage your productivity using IFTTT, Pocket, etc. and maximize your efficiency.

You can also track the amount of time spent on multiple platforms to set limits for every platform. This can be done by using Harvest tools that can integrate with all your applications and generate reports.

For your particular freelancing field, you can also find applications that enhance your efficiency. For instance, you can utilize the Yoast tool for content writing firms to check SEO efficiency and Grammarly tool for grammar.

Final Takeaways

A lot of freelancing businesses shut down too early because of multiple possible reasons. But it mainly boils down to surviving by maximizing productivity in minimum but adequate investments.

In addition, when you have the right tools to boost your productivity and management factors, why not utilize them well? With them, work not just harder, but also smarter to turn your dreams into reality!