One of the biggest challenges that freelancers face is scaling their customer base while also keeping current clients happy.
So, what’s a freelancer to do?
This is where growth hacking tools come in.
Growth hacking is all about using your creativity to find cost-effective and scalable ways to acquire and retain as many customers as possible. It may sound like an intimidating concept, but at the end of the day, it’s really just a process of experimentation. You come up with an idea, test it, track it’s effectiveness by analysing the results and work on making it more efficient.
We’ve experimented with many ideas and used many tools. Here are a few of the tools that we’ve found essential in growing our business and brand:
AeroLeads
AeroLeads is a prospecting and lead generation software. This is the software to come to your rescue if you ever want to contact someone but don’t know how to reach them. It is a light and easy to use product, not coming in loaded with multiple databases like other directories but instead referring to the biggest repository of data available – the internet.
You type in the name, position, location, company name and other relevant details (the more filters you provide, the quicker it will work) into the software and then let it do its magic. It will mine the required contact details from the internet and then gather it into a directory for you to peruse through. AeroLeads can save a lot of time for freelancers looking for the contact details of potential clients as it separates the required data from the internet and cuts through all the noise.
Asana
Asana takes simple task management to the next level and it is a highly scalable tool. From 5 person start-ups to multi million dollar companies with thousands of employees all use Asana for their project management.Crowdfire
You can either schedule the posts to go up at the time of your choosing or go with Crowdfire’s ‘Best Time’ which suggests the best time to post for maximum visibility. It also recommends articles and images that it feels your audiences will like.With additional features that let you track your recent unfollowers, new followers, fans, inactive followers, etc you can easily gauge and prune your social media strategy based on the analytics provided.
Hootsuite
HootSuite is one of the most comprehensive social media management tools out there. It allows users to schedule and post updates to any page or profile over various social media networks. It collects all social media profiles in one place – the HootSuite dashboard. From there, you can monitor what people are saying about your brand online by viewing streams of multiple social media networks and reply instantly.
If you are a freelancer who has multiple avenues, each having its own, separate social media profile then you can use HootSuite to monitor all of those profiles from one place itself. Not only that, you can post updates on multiple profiles on the same social network at once using HootSuite.
Hunter
Hunter allows you to find email addresses of any company in seconds. This is a great example of a growth hacking tool that does one thing, and does it very, very well. One simply needs to head to Hunter, enter the domain of who you want to contact, and instantly, they’ll present you with different email address associated with that domain.
The domain search lists all the people working in a company with their name and email address found on the web. With 200+ million email addresses indexed, effective search filters and scoring, it’s the most powerful email-finding tool ever created. Hunter tries to give you verified email addresses whenever possible, however, when that is not possible they provide a confidence score listing the likelihood of the email address being correct.
MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most widely used marketing automation platforms by freelancers and companies alike all over the world. Its all about sending better email and assisting its users to find their audiences, engage their customers and build their brand. They have an intuitive campaign builder which makes it easy to create an email marketing campaign that best suits your message.
Pre-built marketing automation allows you to keep a personal touch to your email while removing excessive manual tasks from your to-do list. Along with tracking clicks and views, MailChimp also gives you customized tips to improve your email strategy.
