Thanks to advances in technology and growing wealth, businesses can now benefit from more services for free than ever before. This development is making it more straightforward to become an entrepreneur and set up a firm that generates substantial cash.
What is surprising is the sheer range of free stuff on offer. Companies are benefiting from more choices than ever before, even in Liverpool.
So what free innovations are we seeing? And how could they help give entrepreneurs a leg up and make them more successful?
Online Business Listings
Online business listings are a critical free service that enables companies to get their name out to the public. These solutions make it more straightforward to announce the start of a firm and advertise it to prospects, particularly those in the local area.
These days, there are numerous free listing services on large platforms that increase visibility tremendously. For example, Yelp, Hotfrog, Superpages, Manta, Foursquare, and Yellowpages.com.
You can also list your business on the big search engines and social media sites. For instance, Google offers Google Business Profiles, which is a service that enables you to post information about your brand in Search and Maps, making it show up whenever users type in commercially relevant searches into the search engine.
Adding a business to online directories is helpful for SEO and getting found. Search engines can cross-check your enterprise’s details, building up a clearer picture that makes them more confident to display your contact information to users and rank you higher in page results.
Social Media
Speaking of social media, that too is largely a free service (though you might want to pay for a Blue Badge on X). These platforms let you reach and target your audience without having to go through traditional channels that adopt an untargeted scattergun approach.
You can use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to build an audience and increase your brand exposure. You can also use tools to help you post more efficiently and effectively on these sites, getting a larger return for your time.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is another free tool that businesses should use. Getting the message out to customers using this channel is more straightforward than ever, thanks to mass-sending software.
Curiously, email marketing remains under-used by many firms. Companies understand the benefits, but only a small fraction are putting them to good use.
Email marketing makes sense because it is efficient and it lets you market to people who already want to use your products and services. It also helps firms avoid some of the pitfalls associated with relying on platforms that could shut you down at any moment.
Business Accounts
As BusinessFinancing.co.uk points out, it is also now possible to get free business accounts. While these have been around for a while, it is interesting to note that banks are now changing how they price them, removing high subscription fees in many cases.
“Choosing a free business bank account is pretty easy these days, once you understand how they work,” says Business Financing.
Business accounts come in various shapes and sizes, with some even offering international transactions without any fees. “Doing this research,” says Business Financing, “we’ve been impressed by the quality of accounts we have seen. Many of these offer premium services but without charging any monthly retainer like conventional business accounts.”
The cost, of course, can rise significantly once you start using all the services on offer. However, it doesn’t need to go that high.
Online Learning
Online learning is another free service that’s making starting a business considerably more manageable. Entrepreneurs can hop on courses and find out how to break through any intellectual or psychological barriers that are preventing them from doing what they want to do.
For example, it is now easier than ever to go on courses that prepare you emotionally for business. These help you break beyond your limiting beliefs and set you up for success in the future. Many provide entrepreneurs with a sense of energy and passion that drives positive decision-making and ensures that they can move beyond what they think is possible.
Others offer more specific or technical skills. These help entrepreneurs learn the nuts and bolts of doing business, ensuring they don’t make mistakes that could lead them to go out of business.
The best approach is to combine these courses. Big personalities dominate the former while government agencies and even local colleges offer the latter. Having the big and small pictures in your mind can help you adopt a world-beating approach.
Project Management Tools
Project management tools are another free resource that is helping to make running a business more feasible. Options like Trello, Asana, and Monday.com offer free elements, allowing people in your business to collaborate with each other.
However, even if those solutions aren’t helpful, you can still leverage numerous productivity options. Google, for instance, has an entire suite of applications any company can use for free, as have some other services.
File Storage
Related to this, businesses can also take advantage of various file storage options. These provide plenty of space for projects, files, and databases, enabling companies to operate in the cloud, and freeing them from costly physical premises.
Good examples of these include Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. These offer free services while you are small, then ask for small monthly premiums for extra storage later on if you need it.
Accounting Software
You can even get accounting software for free these days. These tools make it easy to track payment movements in and out of your business account.
“There wasn’t a time in history when businesses could access the full stack of services free of charge as they can now,” says Business Financing. “Historically, companies could have stored money in vaults and hired teams of accountants to do all their paperwork for them. However, that’s not what we see today. The digital revolution is reducing many of these time-consuming services to near-zero marginal cost, just like email or plastic bags.”
