Six Products to Make Your “Small” Business Appear “Big”

As a small business owner, it’s easy to feel inferior. There are much bigger brands and organizations in your industry and you probably feel like a small fish in a big pond. Thankfully, there are some pretty awesome tools that can make your business appear bigger than it really is. Start by checking out the following:

1. DialMyCalls

How you communicate with customers says a lot about the professionalism of your business. But what if you don’t have an elaborate and expensive phone system? Reaching out to customers with your personal cell phone just doesn’t feel right. That’s why you need a tool like DialMyCalls to give your business communication power.

“With DialMyCalls you can control the phone number that appears on the caller ID – this way all calls look like they are coming directly from you or your organization,” the company explains. You can also send messages in SMS format, set up unique call back numbers, and automatically leave voicemails if customers don’t answer. It’s a cost-effective tool with dozens of applications.

2. Help Scout

Do you feel like your customer service efforts are lacking? Trying to maintain a united front without a team of help desk employees can seem impossible, but all you need is Help Scout.

With Help Scout software, you get access to classic help desk features with high-level personalization. This means you get to enjoy hands-off automation, while customers feel like they’re getting very personal and human interaction.

3. Plum

Hiring the right employees is a major decision. One recruiter estimates that the real cost of onboarding is $240,000 per new employee. And when you take into account hiring the wrong employee – adding in compensation, severance pay, legal fees, etc. – you’re looking at somewhere around $840,000. In other words, you don’t want to hire the wrong person.

Meet Plum. This cloud-based hiring tool lets small businesses implement hiring processes that are similar to big businesses that have vast resources. Plum claims its customers spend 80 percent less time reading resumes, 60 percent less time interviewing, and 67 percent less time training.

4. Wordy

One very small thing that big businesses do well is catch and eliminate errors. When they produce content, you’ll rarely see misspellings and grammatical blunders. This is because they spend top dollar on skilled editors and proofers. Don’t have the budget to hire an editor? Let Wordy stand in. Wordy is a simple tool that matches you with human copy editors in real time. All you have to do is pay a low fee based on the number of words you need to have reviewed.

5. Unbounce

Well-designed landing pages are the key to appearing professional in the digital world. But just because you don’t have your own talented web developer or designer on staff doesn’t mean you have to settle for low-quality landing pages. Unbounce lets you quickly build custom pages with no design experience whatsoever.

6. HARO

Help a Reporter Out – or HARO – is one of the more interesting and helpful tools around. This online service is designed to mutually serve journalists and brands. Journalists on the site have connections with PR outlets but need stories. Businesses like yours have stories but need connections. Thus both parties work together and help each other out.

Make Your Business Look Bigger

For most small businesses owners, there will come a time when the advantages to appearing bigger will be important. People on the outside associate “big” with “experienced” and “reliable.” Thankfully, these products let you enjoy the best of both worlds.