Best Online Tools for Business; Tools I Can’t Live Without in My Online Coaching Biz

When you first start an online business, analysing the operations and the backend of business can sometimes get side-lined.

Yet there are so many paid and free online business tools out there that will help you run your business incredibly efficiently. 

I’ve used a lot of tools over the past 3+ years. Both running my Virtual Assistant/Social Media Management business and now in my Online Coaching business. 

If you’re looking to scale your coaching business to financial freedom (or your service-based business – I help entrepreneurs do both), then tapping into these tools will make the journey a whole lot easier. 

Online Business Marketing Tools

Let’s start with your online marketing tools. 

As a Business Coach and Marketing Strategist, tools help me to streamline my marketing workflow and scale with simplicity through automations and funnels. 

Side note, I don’t agree with people who say you don’t need funnels in your business; I’ve made over £100,000 in my business from email marketing supported by funnels. 

ConvertKit for Email Marketing

So whilst we’re on the topic of email marketing, ConvertKit is my go-to email marketing provider. 

It’s a paid service, although depending on the number of subscribers you might be able to access a free version too.

One of the great features of ConvertKit is that you can build lots of sales funnels, tag people that click specific links, and funnel them to the best nurture sequence for them. 

But the one downside is that it’s very text focused and the templates aren’t that “aesthetic”.

However, when it comes to email marketing, I wholeheartedly believe the most important part is knowing and understanding your ideal client, then speaking to them through your copy. The aesthetics don’t really matter that much.

Canva Pro for Graphic Design/Content Creation

While an overly aesthetic Instagram grid is officially out, it’s still important to weave your visual branding through your content every single day. This is so people can recognise your content immediately. 

I use Canva Pro pretty much daily for my Instagram posts, Pinterest Pins and for things like slide creation on my masterminds, CCA and my online course Freedom Course Creator. 

Having the pro version unlocks so many extra benefits too, like resizing, which is perfect for content repurposing (my secret to posting over 200 pieces of content per month). 

Showit for my Website 

My website has definitely been a journey and I’ve tried a few platforms until I found something I really love. 

I previously hosted my website on WordPress using Elementor but it was really slow and had lots of glitches so I switched to Showit. It’s incredibly user friendly and perfect for business owners who also don’t want to wear the hat of Web Developer, too.

It’s a drag and drop builder and allows you to easily make your website responsive. Fun fact – over 60% of my web traffic in the last month has been from mobile devices so this is important.

Flick – For Instagram Hashtags and Insights 

To be honest, I don’t think we should be spending tons of time worrying about things we can’t control on social media, like the algorithm, how a platform’s SEO works, why hashtags are driving you crazy, etc. Because although they’re a factor in how well your content performs, they won’t fix a poor content strategy. 

Nevertheless, a great tool for your Instagram marketing is Flick. It actually categorises hashtags for you based on how competitive they are to rank on, rather than just the number of people posting on that hashtag. It also has a bunch of analytics and it’s also an online scheduling tool, too. 

So in just a few minutes, you can schedule a post knowing that it’s been teamed with hashtags that are more likely to perform for you. 

Repurpose.io – For Effortless Content Repurposing

I love repurpose.io, simply because it saves me and my team so much time repurposing across multiple platforms and the great thing is that it’s all automated.

Every time I upload a video to TikTok, it saves them without the watermark in a Google Drive folder for me so that my team can edit them according to the platform and schedule.

Repurpose.io also has an option to autopost, but I like to tweak the captions and hashtags before I post.

Despite this, it’s still worth the money ($25 a month) because downloading all my TikToks without the watermark manually would not be a good use of my team’s or my time.

Tools for Managing a Remote Team

Speaking of teams, this brings me to the tools I use to manage and organise my team. 

Leading a remote team can present some challenges, but with tools like ClickUp and Slack, no matter where everyone is, you can communicate with your team effectively to see where they’re at with projects. 

Both ClickUp and Slack have free and paid versions but the free versions are so robust that you may not need to upgrade unless you’re looking to access more complex tools and features to manage your online business. 

In Slack you can have multiple different workspaces too which makes it great if you want to have a dedicated channel for individual clients; perfect if you’re an online service provider. And it can be a more intentional option for group chats if you’re a business coach running a minimind or mastermind. 

ClickUp is my main project management software for team tasks. You can set due dates, leave comments, add voice notes and there’s even a mobile app if you want to approve things on the go. It’s far more user-friendly than a spreadsheet 😅

Plus, the more your business grows, the more you can use it as a business hub where you can utilise features like the dashboard to have an overview of what’s going on in your business in an instant. 

Course Creation Tools for Your Online Business

I did a whole blog post on what it costs to become a Course Creator and in there, I’ve included most of the course creation tools out there if you’re an aspiring course creator. I recommend checking it out.

But the one tool I want to highlight in today’s post is ThriveCart. 

ThriveCart for Course Creation

I’ve tried lots of course creation platforms, so many that I reviewed a bunch of them to help your decision making process.

ThriveCart has by far been the winner for me recently. 

A robust option for aspiring course creators or those of you ready to scale your business and build some passive income streams. It offers so much functionality from just one place. 

There’s landing pages/sales pages, order bumps/tripwires, membership integration and more. 

Plus it’s just a one-time fee and you have access forever – I highly recommend checking out all their features here.  

Zoom – Hosting Masterclasses, Masterminds and Everything Inbetween 

Before I wrap things up here, I had to mention Zoom because it’s such an integral part of my operations. I use it to catch up with team members, to host live events/webinars and also to host my Freedom CEO Accelerator calls. 

I hope this post helps you navigate the number of amazing online business tools out there designed to make growing your online business easier. 

If you have any questions around the tools I use in business or the tools you think you might need to start growing and scaling online, drop me a comment below. 

Claudia xx