If you’re a consultant or freelancer, you’re most likely looking for tools and resources to help you in your business. Sometimes you might have a monthly or yearly budget for these applications, and other times you might want a great free option that does the job.
In this blog, we’re highlighting some of our favorite free and paid tools for:
- Project Management
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Scheduling
- Lead Management and CRM’s
- Graphics and Design
- Video Editing
Project Management
When you’re a consultant, managing several projects and clients at once can take up a lot of brain space. Different deadlines and overlapping project timelines can become confusing if you’re not carefully tracking and monitoring them.
Project management tools are one way to make managing your deadlines and tasks easier.
At Elevate, we also use project management software to execute our marketing plan.
Here are some top picks for project management solutions:
ClickUp
Ultimately, Click Up’s goal is to make you more efficient by keeping all of your tasks and boards in the same place, eliminating the need for multiple project management systems, and reducing the number of clicks you need to handle a job.
Free Option — ClickUp has a free option where you can use a few boards.
Paid Option — It also has a $5/month option where you can get unlimited storage, dashboards, integrations, and more.
Trello
Here’s what Trello says about its services: “Start with a Trello board, lists, and cards. Customize and expand with more features as your teamwork grows. Manage projects, organize tasks, and build team spirit—all in one place.”
Free Option — Trello’s free option includes unlimited cards and up to 10 boards.
Paid Option — Its paid option starts at $10/mo and works best for teams up to 100.
Asana
Asana is similar to both Trello and ClickUp, but this option uses a work graph data model to help teams reach their goals.
Free Option — Asana’s free option includes unlimited tasks, projects, messages, and storage.
Paid Option — The paid option starts at $10.99 per user/month and offers everything included in the free option and team project trackers.
Elevate’s Choice — ClickUp
This year we discovered ClickUp, and we can’t say enough good things about it. Not only can we outline and monitor client-facing tasks, but we also use it for Elevate‘s business needs, such as: tracking proposals/leads, planning our marketing, and more.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best ways to market your business! More people have email than any other medium. According to Neil Patel, “…email has nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined? That’s a whopping 2.9 billion.”
Not only that, but it is also known to have a great ROI compared to other mediums. “Email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing strategy. On average, every company that spends $1 on email marketing can expect to earn $38 of revenue in return.” – Snovio Labs
Here are a few email marketing tools you might decide to use:
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a commonly used email marketing tool known for its free plan and user-friendly interface.
Free Option — Mailchimp’s free plan allows you to have up to 2,000 contacts and comes with one audience.
Paid Option — The paid option starts at $9/mo and allows you to have up to 50,000 contacts and comes with three audiences.
ActiveCampaign
Active Campaign focuses on software for customer experience automation, such as email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM.
Paid Option — Active Campaign starts at $9/mo and has plans as high as $229/mo, depending on your needs and company size.
Flodesk
Flodesk places more emphasis on the design of your email marketing. It prides itself on being an email marketing service provider “built for creators, by creators.”
Paid Option — Flodesk does not have a free plan, but it does have a 30-day free trial. After that, they only have one flat rate of $38/month.
Constant Contact
Constant contact combines email marketing, ecommerce, websites, and social marketing so that you have ‘constant contact’ with your audience all from one place.
Although, each of these offerings has a different pricing plan.
Paid Option — Constant Contact has various pricing options, with various amounts of each service. Prices range from $10/mo (website builder) to $45/mo (Email Plus).
Elevate’s Choice — Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign
Depending on your needs, I might recommend Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign.
If you’re looking to do regular, highly-designed newsletters, Mailchimp might be a good fit. But if you’re looking to create automations, have landing pages, and highly segment your list, ActiveCampaign might be a better option. You can’t really go wrong with either—and another benefit is that both of these have easy ways to integrate with your website.
Social Media Scheduling
Posting consistently on social media is one of the biggest keys to social media success. But consistency can be challenging as a consultant or freelancer. Writing and creating content takes time especially if you’re trying to do it day by day.
One technique we use with our clients is to create batches of social media posts and schedule them out over time. If you’re struggling with consistency on social media, this method might work for you.
If you want to try this out, here are a few social media scheduling tools.
Hootsuite
Free Option — The free Hootsuite plan allows you to have two social profiles and schedule five total social posts at a time.
Paid Option — For $49/month, Hootsuite will allow you to have up to 10 social profiles and an unlimited amount of scheduled posts at a time.
Buffer
Free Option — The forever free plan at Buffer lets you connect to 3 social networks and schedule 10 posts for each network.
Paid Option — The next level up is the Pro plan, and it starts at $15/mo for eight social networks and up to 100 scheduled posts.
Content Studio
Paid Option — Content Studio has a bit of a pricier range for those who have the budget. Their plans start at $49/month and go up to $299/month. Their $49/month plan gets you 10 social networks and unlimited posts/month.
AgoraPulse
With AgoraPulse, you can have your social media inbox, publishing tools, monitoring, and reporting all in one place.
Free Option — Their free option allows you to have three social media profiles and one user.
Paid Option — Their paid options range up to $159/mo for 25 profiles and four users.
Elevate’s Choice — Buffer
This one was a hard choice since this list contains a lot of similar offerings. As far as pricing goes, Buffer seems to have the most competitive prices while offering similar features. Our best advice is to pick a tool that fits the number of platforms you’re using and the number of posts you’d like to schedule (while also not breaking your budget.)
Lead Management/CRMs
CRM stands for customer relationship management, and it’s when a business administers interactions with its customers. CRMS use data analysis to study large amounts of client information.
Using a system or software to track your interactions with customers or track where customers are in the sales pipeline can help make your customer interactions more efficient and effective.
Hubspot
With Hubspot, you can “get an up-to-the-minute view of your entire sales funnel on a clean, visual dashboard. You can sort deals won and lost, appointments scheduled, contracts sent over, and track performance against quotas you set in one simple view.”
Free Option — Hubspot has a free plan that gives you contact management and contact website activity insights, as well as tracking, storing, and management for companies, deals, and tasks/activities.
Paid Option — Their paid plans start at $45/mo and can go up to $1,200/mo for the enterprise plan.
Monday
Monday helps you organize your contacts, sales pipelines, and marketing for small businesses up to enterprises.
Paid Option — Their pricing starts at $24/month for a team of 3 at their basic level while their pro-level is $48/mo, where you get a complete CRM platform where you can “manage your sales cycle from A-Z with powerful tools and automations.”
Freshworks
Freshworks is a CRM where you can “segment your contacts, run multichannel campaigns, convert website visitors to leads with chatbots, make calls & send emails, create custom reports, visualize your deals pipeline, identify & prioritize deals that are likely to close, and automate repetitive tasks.”
Paid Option — Its pricing begins at $29/user/month and goes up to $125/user/month in their enterprise option.
Elevate’s Choice — Hubspot
Hubspot is the CRM we’re most familiar with at Elevate. We’ve found it to be a user-friendly option for many. One thing we like is the ease of integration between Hubspot and our Gmail accounts. Another benefit is that Hubspot offers free courses and certifications around their platform and digital marketing in general.
Graphics & Design
Consultants can use graphic design software in various ways, such as: creating one-pagers, business cards, social media posts, email headers, and more. If you want to have a polished, professional brand, you’ll want to make sure your marketing materials are cohesive and well-designed.
Canva
Canva is a website that allows you to design social media, marketing materials, videos, documents, and more through a user-friendly layout. If you’re not a professional graphic designer, Canva even offers free courses on the basics.
Free Option — Canva has a free option with limited design features and image usages.
Paid Option — Its pro option is $9.99/mo, which allows you to easily resize graphics, and gives you access to premium stock images and designs.
Pablo by Buffer
Pablo is Buffer’s image creation tool. This tool is easy to use, and no design experience, money, or sign in is required to use Pablo. However, it’s very limited in terms of design options.
Free Option — This option is completely free and best for users who want a quick fix.
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign
If you want to hang with professional graphic designers, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are the tools for you!
Paid Option — These tools take more time to learn, and each starts at $20.99/mo. Or, if you want the full Adobe Creative Suite, you can get a bundle for $52.99/mo. If you want top-of-the-line design software that you’re willing to learn, this is the option for you.
Befunky
Befunky is for photo editing, graphic design, and collage making. You can use templates for social media, banners, flyers, cards, and more.
Free Option — They have a free version with most of the features.
Paid Option — But, they have a small fee of $4.99/mo for access to all of the premium features.
Elevate’s Choice – Canva
This was a hard choice. While we use the Adobe suite for our Build Your Consulting Brand package, you can find us using Canva everyday to create graphics for emails, social media posts, blogs, one-pagers, and more. In terms of ease of use, Canva has the Adobe suite beat.
However, as we mentioned, if you’re a professional designer, you’ll most likely lean towards Adobe.
Video Editing
Did you know 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video? (HubSpot) Or that Social media posts with video have 48% more views? (HubSpot)
For these reasons, video can be an important tool for any kind of business on social media, but especially for consultants, who work in a relationship-based business.
iMovie
iMovie is a free editing software that comes on most Apple Devices. You can trim, cut, and paste videos together or add transitions, titles, and credits.
Free Option — This is a solid free tool to use for any Apple users out there.
Final Cut Pro
This is another Apple product, but it’s a step up from the free iMovie software. Final Cut Pro’s benefits include superior HD video capabilities, multi-channel audio and video, commercial quality DVD authoring, a large number of third-party plugin options, and professional light and color correction.
Paid Option — Final Cut Pro starts at $299.00.
If you’re an Apple user and want great high-quality video, this is a great option.
Adobe Premiere Pro
“Premiere Pro is the industry-leading video editing software for social sharing, TV, and film. Creative tools, integration with other apps and services, and the power of Adobe Sensei help you craft footage into polished films and videos. And with the Premiere Rush app, you can create and edit new projects from any device.”
Paid Option — Adobe Premiere is part of Adobe’s creative suite and starts at $20.99/mo.
Elevate’s Choice – Adobe Premiere Pro
At Elevate, we love the versatility and video editing excellence that Adobe Premiere Pro offers. However, this software might be over-the-top for your needs. So depending on the types of videos you’re looking to edit, you might consider another option we’ve listed.
Need Help with Your Marketing?
Now that you’ve reached the end of this list of tools, you might feel overwhelmed by all you can do to improve your business’s functions and ramp up your marketing.
Here’s what you should know — you don’t have to implement all of these at once, and you don’t have to do it alone.
At Elevate Online, we’re here to help. We help consultants create stand-out brands and reach their ideal clients through branding services, marketing plans, and digital marketing support. Want to learn more?
Click here to schedule a free consultation with Elevate’s founder, Katie McNamee.