Covid-19 means businesses that can stay operational during this crisis are having to learn how to do so in isolation. They are having to adapt fast, which means embracing new digital tools and processes. Unfortunately, this can compound the confusion for some teams!
As a tech company, we understand it can be daunting for businesses to sift through all the digital tools out there to help you stay productive and in communication through remote working. As well as staying operational, you’ll no doubt want to adjust your medium to long-term plans and adapt your marketing campaigns with this in mind.
So to help, at MirrorWeb we’ve picked out five of the best digital tools that could help your organisation catch up, survive and – hopefully – thrive in these uncertain times.
5 digital tools you should consider
HubSpot
HubSpot is a popular marketing automation system that helps businesses manage a full suite of digital marketing requirements. In these testing times, it’s vital to maintain a slick marketing operation and build customer trust, ensuring you retain your customers through this challenging period. It's also clear that businesses are very hesitant about spending money on BAU marketing campaigns or agency support.
Fortunately, HubSpot lets you really own your marketing process, especially if you're primarily an in-house operation (you can read more about the rise of DIY marketing in financial services here) allowing you to manage your website, publish blogs, schedule emails, amongst many more features. Fortunately, it’s very easy to use and has its own academy full of handy tutorial videos to help you get up to speed quickly.
They also offer a Sales Hub which means marketing and sales teams can work much more closely, building reports, pipeline and track their connected activities all in one place.
Due to Covid-19, HubSpot has cut their costs across their growth suites, with numerous other tools being made freely available.
Also, many of the HubSpot support team work remotely and are therefore available 24/7 to support business continuity and your needs during this time.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a popular collaboration tool that allows teams to work together remotely. As well as letting you and your colleagues access and work on the same files, this program has a great video conferencing solution! Video conferencing has exploded in popularity, but several platforms have been exposed as suffering from security issues...
So far, it seems Microsoft Teams has handled the recent jump in traffic well. The company has invested in greater capacity and security measures, with its cloud technology allowing the service to quickly scale up to this greater demand. An added benefit is Teams is free for Microsoft users and, in response to the crisis, new business accounts can benefit from a six-month free trial.
Administrators on business plans have access to security, management, and compliance tools. Teams can share files up to 1TB per user and collaborate using desktop Office programs and SharePoint Online.
Slack
Slack is a remote messaging service engineered to replace email for everyday communication within organisations. It’s filled with features to allow collaboration of ideas, sharing media and communicating remotely with as much ease as possible.
In response to the ongoing crisis, Slack has launched several new features (such as shortcuts to access apps and workflows within the program and the ability to group messages and channels by topic) and has made a handy library of working from home resources available.
This includes a series of webinars on how to use the program fluidly and any new users can get an introductory 20-minute call to talk them through the app. Also, Slack is available for free (there are differently-priced tiers of service) for any teams working on response or mitigation of the virus itself!
SEMRush
This is a must-have for the modern marketing team. SEMRush is an extremely useful analytics platform, bristling with important diagnostic features. As well as using it to analyse the success of your website and online content, SEMRush generates keywords to support SEO strategies and boost online rankings.
During a lockdown, you may find you have more time on your hands to get around to tasks you had put off before, with an audit of your business's online presence being one of these. With SEMRush, and a clearer calendar, you can quickly health-check the visibility of your business’s online presence and set about improving it with a new strategy.
SEMRush has also responded to Covid-19 and opened up to new users, allowing them to access many features for free such as lead generation products, social media scheduling and competition-tracking features. To help out further, SEMRush has made access to its academy courses – full of handy tutorials on how to get the best out of SEO – free of charge.
Box
Communicating and staying in touch with your team is one thing, but being able to collaborate simultaneously will really help your business weather this uncertain period. There are many solutions on the market but Box has a particularly wide functionality.
This platform allows for seamless storage and collaboration on documents in the cloud, as well as organisation and delegation of duties. Handily, it syncs up with many third-party apps such as Slack so it can be used in tandem with these communication tools.
Like the other platforms, Box realises how much it will be relied upon in the coming months. The service boasts a 99.9%+ uptime of its servers and new users can now benefit from a free three-month trial (including access to all tutorials and academy resources).
At MirrorWeb, whilst being a tech company that already harnesses a whole suite of digital tools, we’ve had to adapt like everyone else and our entire team is now working from home. We already use some of the systems above helping us to collaborate, communicate and keep sane (!) but the challenge extends beyond technology.
Marketing compliance was an ongoing concern for many before the current crisis and whilst immediate priorities have shifted, the regulations that previously stand still do. To help through these challenging times we’ve created a complete guide to help you stay compliant, simply click below to grab your copy:
