10 Business Tools That Are Not Market Leaders But Should Be
Or how curiosity got me deep knowledge about useful tools.
One day, me and our customer success champion (Mustafa) were talking about how there are some tools that deserve to be leaders in the market and are not market leaders yet for one reason or another but should be.. (The best CRM software comes to mind, right :P)
We mentioned some tools right then and there, but Mustafa did an interesting thing.
He went on to Reddit (the front page of the internet) and asked the Entrepreneurs community what’s their take on the subject.
As you can see, he got a lot of comments there and we wanted to share some of them with you.
Furthermore, I’ll add my two cents on the subject with some of my favorite tools. At the end, we’ll give tell you what we are doing to become market leaders and what others are doing.
Underdog Tools that Reddit users mentioned
The Marketplace is the best judge of quality and it’s almost errorless. Meaning: “The best products always come up on top no matter what.” That being said, there are a few situations in which quality doesn’t win – at least hasn’t won yet.
- First situation: The market is too young
- Second situation: Competition uses dirty tactics
- Third situation: The company has poor marketing
- Fourth situation: The company is too young
All of these are self-explanatory and I’m sure you’re able to think of a company for every situation above. Actually I feel for those companies because I believe Ninjodo is definitely one of them. I would say we’re still a young company.
We’ve made a lot of ground from an extremely bootstrapped beginning and our fans love what we’re doing and how we help them.
But there is much much more on the road ahead still to come.
🙂
All kidding aside, here are top tools that Reddit’s Entrepreneur community suggested.
#1
Mailerlite
Mailerlite is a simple email management tool. You will get “all you need to power your email”. Mailerlite is simpler, yet more powerful alternative to the competition.
By far the most appreciated suggestion was Mailerlite.
Here is what a Reddit user wrote about it: “You will hear no one recommend it because they give $20 credit for referring a customer, Vs the ridiculous and recurring commission of the other providers.I was giving close to 500 bucks a month to aweber, mailerlite is so much better is not even in the same league. But nobody recommends it because there’s nothing in there for them.”
Just a side-note. Affiliate deals, try doing that. It’s a win-win situation for you and your affiliate.
#2
Zoom
Zoom is a popular video conferencing software. With Zoom you’ll easily set up and conduct meetings with people all around the world. All you need to have is an internet connection and an account on Zoom. It’s mostly used for all kinds of business meetings. It has similar features to Skype.
A Redditor said: “I’ve been a user of Zoom https://zoom.us/ since 2012. In every way, shape and form it’s better than Skype/S4B and whatever Google is calling their video chat service this week.”
Zoom is premium Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Screen sharing app.
Personally, I love Skype because it’s so simple. We have meetings often and most of them are conducted on Skype. But to be honest, we had to use Zoom once or twice when Skype betrayed us.
It’s definitely worth checking out and the thing about it I like the most are the screen sharing options.
#3
Stamped
Yotpo is easy to use software for displaying the love you’re getting from your clients.
Here is what a Redditor said about Stamped: “Stamped instead of yotpo for reviews. Costs about half as much and has very similar features.”
We all know the importance of social proof. We all have some kind of testimonials on our site. Testimonials are a great way of increasing our chances to make that sale. That’s where Stamped, product reviews question & answers, comes in.
On most online reviews, Yotpo is still ahead. But not for long probably, as soon as Reddit starts talking about something, it trickles down into reality fast.
#4
MindMup
Visual type people will love this one.
“Personally, I really like MindMup – it’s a great mind mapping software, it’s free, easy to use and integrates with Google Drive nicely.”
Mind mapping is a great way to visualize your thoughts when you have a whole lot of things to memorize.
I used to use this in school when I had too much to study. It’s a pretty effective tool. Btw I still use mind maps ex. When we write big blog posts like these, or when I’m making an internal Ninjodo document.
#5
Slack + Toggl
Here is an odd one :S …
“I would say Slack for internal team instant messaging, but it’s already getting quite popular 🙂 Same applies for Trello for project management, Toggl for time tracking… “
I do agree that all three of these tools are great. But the problem is they are already Market leaders.
I decided to put it into this blog post because some of you might not be familiar with all three of them.
In that case, here is what they do in a sentence:
Slack – a beautiful tool for communication between coworkers
Trello – a Kanban looking tool that’s helping people around the world managing projects
Toggl – Time Tracker – now you’ll always know where your time went
#6
Miro (formerly RealTimeBoard)
“And finally, one of my most recent discoveries – Miro (miro.com) – awesome tool for teams, who need to do a lot of creative work online.”
Miro is simple project collaboration software. You will get a whiteboard on which you AND your team members will be able to brainstorm a lot of ideas for the future.
This is a relatively newer tool.
Btw don’t you love people who are like this from Reddit thread? They are usually first to discover your product and promote it wherever they can.
Thanks Reddit for everything! <3
Ok, now that you’ve read all the Reddit suggestions, it’s time for me to pitch in. As always, I will only talk about the things that deserve to be on top of my list.
Both of these are rising stars.
Business tools – my suggestions
As a business person, you probably have your favorite tools. Tools that you can’t imagine your life without. I have two of them for you today. I know it’s hard for you to find trustworthy people in this online world. It was like that for me as well, but I’ve come to realize I need to trust some people.
People to trust in this chaotic world are rare. They are those action takers that will first show you and then talk to you.
My thing is action, and it’s always been like that. I like doing way more than talking. But there comes a time when you need to talk. By talking and teaching others, you improve yourself at the same time.
Pay attention to the following two underdog tools, that are most certainly worthy of your attention.
ThriveThemes
Ok, guys, I’ve been a business owner for 7 years now and I’ve done multiple pieces of research about biggest pain points business owners have. Hands down, the biggest issue is lead generation.
Let’s be honest here, your website is not there just to look pretty. It’s there to convert visitors into subscribers, fans, customers, and clients.
Thrive themes are conversion focused WordPress themes and plugins. We use it to build our mailing list, offer lead magnets, improve our content and so much more.
Actually, I mentioned Thrive Themes in a blog post about “how to build and manage a website for your business with 4 simple plugins”. You will find additional information about ThriveThemes there.
Also check out ThriveThemes blog – for me it’s one of the best blogs out there.
HotJar
A word of caution. If you don’t have resources to change the appearance of your website right now, don’t read this paragraph. Skip it right away.
When you start using Hotjar, you will have an irresistible urge to change some things on your website.
Hotjar enables you to see what your visitors are doing on your website. You will do this by using Heatmaps, screen recordings(of every visitor) and various survey tools.
When we started using Hotjar, in a matter of weeks, we completely overhauled our homepage and did multiple tweaks within Ninjodo. We are getting so much more leads, fans, customers and clients, it’s ridiculous.
It’s pretty addictive to see what a visitor does and where he/she clicks on your website. Hotjar is possibly one of the best marketing tools I’ve ever encountered.
See, we recommended only the top notch tools in this blog post. Maybe there are a few others worth mentioning, and if we missed them ping us over at marketing@ninjodo.com.
I wanted to talk to you about one final thing before you go. After reviewing all these tools, I got curious about how to get out of this “undeserved 3rd place” situation.
I will tell you about two steps that have had a great impact on our business. You can apply both of these today and improve your business…
Two action steps to become a market leader
It’s all about differentiation. To be honest, Ninjodo is in that stage now where we’re sure we have everything that’s necessary to lead the pack. Here is our current strategy that we’ve been implementing for a couple of months and it’s getting us pretty good results.
Take following tips and strategies with a grain of salt because every company is different. The process of us getting to this was as follows.
First we sat down and wrote down every one of our strengths. We decided on a pretty broad strategy of growth. Being, as Grant Cordone would say it, omnipresent. We experimented with all kinds of tactics and strategies for a couple of months and concluded from the first-hand experience what works and what doesn’t.
A side tangent here: Most of the stuff you’ll read in popular blogs and from popular authors are rubbish. Most of those are schemes to get you to purchase their online marketing courses. Instead of listening to their words, take time and see what they are doing. Then copy that.
Now, after we set our course straight, here are the best ways to become market leaders …
Content marketing (written content)
Hands down the best strategy for us so far was implementing content marketing. By doing this we increased our number of subscribers, free trial users and paid customers.
And all of that was done with a small team. Actually, if you’re new to content marketing, we have a raw document on how we do it.
It will give your staff a clear path to writing great content, channels of distribution, getting ideas for a blog post, and even how to edit the blog post in WordPress.
This is a document we use daily and when we want to onboard a new employee. If you want to get access to this document email us at marketing@ninjodo.com (No strings attached!)
Growth hacking
Growth hacking has become a buzzword. And when something is a buzzword, that means that trend is usually gone.
Well, not in the case of Growth hacking. The simple reason for this being that there are new ways to growth-hack every day. For great inspiration, tips and tricks in regards to growth hacking we urge you to join growth hacking community and “Hackapreneur”(He’s big on LinkedIn right now).
Check out this video for great tips
We still use tactics like these every day. It works guys. Growth hacking can be very simple. As a matter of fact, all of the 7 growth tactics for your small business in 2017 are growth “hacks”.
Check them out. And don’t forget to implement them, that’s kinda the point. 🙂
So there you have it. A lot of great tools to try out, two action steps and a cute little story from us.
If there is any tool that comes to mind for you, feel free to ping us over at marketing@ninjodo.com. This blog post might be updated in the future.
Also, if you liked the blog post, grab a copy of the 6 Figure Growth Strategies playbook, it’s 6 essential shortcuts to go from fledging small business to breaking well into 6 figure territory, PLUS we’ll let you know when the next blog post is ready to read. And make sure to share this blog post on your strongest social media profile.
Cheers