Grow your holiday profits with these free business tools
THE Christmas season may have begun in September in the Philippines but the real holiday rush for gift shopping is more often than not felt in the two or three weeks leading up to December 25. This is the perfect opportunity for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to increase their profits, not just for those in the retail and tourism sector, but for all other industries for which December is the busiest time of the year.
Some SMEs may find that they do not have enough people, inventory, tools or resources to fulfill bulk orders or serve a larger volume of clients efficiently and smoothly. Others may not be seeing the expected bump in sales due to larger competitors or crucial gaps in operations. Either way, the free tools listed below can improve your brand awareness, expand your market presence, increase the efficiency of your internal processes or even augment your working capital.
Wix.com
There are 73 million online active users in the Philippines alone and you’re missing out if you don’t have an online presence. In particular, business-to-consumer (B2C) companies have a potential online market that discovers products and services through search engines. Thus, having a website will increase your chances of showing up on Google search results for relevant keywords. Wix.com is a free website builder that lets you create your own website easily through a variety of templates and drag-and-drop tools. You can create a website in an hour or two without needing any design expertise.
Google Business Profile
When you’re competing with search engine-optimized websites, building a website is no longer enough to appear in the first pages of a Google search. To increase your reach without spending months optimizing your website for search engines, you can also create a Google Business Profile at google.com/business. When leads search your business name on Google, your Google Business Profile will automatically show up on the right side of the search results, making it one of the first things the leads will see. Aside from letting you immediately display information about your business, such as your website and contact information, having a Google Business Profile also makes your business seem more legitimate.
Google Workspace
Google houses a range of apps that you can use in any aspect of day-today operations. You may already be using Gmail to correspond with customers or Google Meet to speak to clients and colleagues online. However, there are other powerful tools in Google’s arsenal: Google Forms lets you create your own order forms and download answers while Google Docs, Slides and Sheets are online versions of Microsoft Office tools that can be used when members of your team need to collaborate on a project or document simultaneously. The products are also free to use as long as you have a Google account.
Cococart.co
Cococart.co is a free e-commerce store builder specifically for SMEs. It features an order management system that lets you accept online orders, see earnings and add new products to sell. Setting up your own store is free and will only take minutes with its user-friendly interface. Aside from being able to share your Cococart link to anyone who wants to shop, you can also connect your social media accounts to Cococart so customers can order straight from your Facebook or Instagram page.
In the Philippines alone, there are 67 million active users on the platform — a lot of potential customers that use Facebook Marketplace to purchase products, Facebook groups to crowdsource recommendations and Facebook Messenger to interact with local businesses. Having a business Facebook account and an automated Messenger chatbot lets you automatically answer queries and provide additional information about your products or services to leads until your customer service team can deal with them personally.
Canva.com
Marketing is an essential edge this holiday season, but not all SMEs have the budget for branding and marketing. A temporary workaround is using Canva, which lets you design graphics, videos and other digital or print marketing materials for free. With thousands of templates in premade sizes to choose from, you can simply choose the platform you are publishing for, pick a template that matches your business aesthetic and change the details to make it your own. It’s easy to drag-and-drop elements like shapes, vectors and text into your design, and you can draw inspiration from pre-made artworks saved on the site. From there, you can export artworks to post on your social media or website or send the soft copy to digital printers.
E-payment facilities
In 2020, digital payments accounted for 20.1 percent of financial transactions in the Philippines. The pandemic has encouraged more Filipinos to go cashless and support a digital economy. Catering to this market, especially if you are a B2C company, can increase a preference from your brand over other competitors. Signing up for an e-wallet like GCash or Maya is free and as soon as you verify your account, you can send QR codes to clients as a faster payment option.
Credit lines
The holidays generally lead to increased operating expenses for inventory, staff and 13th month pay, which can strain working capital and lead to cash flow gaps. However, the short-term nature of these gaps means that a typical term loan is overkill: aside from waiting a while to get your funds, you don’t really know how much is needed to tide your business over the holidays, which can lead to borrowing too much or too little.
To resolve short-term funding concerns before they even happen, a revolving credit line is a better business loan option. A credit line is a pool of funds that SMEs can dip into whenever a business need arises, similar to a credit card. You only pay interest on the portion you use, which makes it a good emergency fund option for your business. Credit lines start at 1.39 percent per month and can go up to P5 million. Choose a provider that does not charge application fees so you can have flexible, ongoing access to funds and not have to pay anything in case you don’t utilize your credit line over the holiday season.
There are endless lists of free tools for SMEs out there, all designed to improve efficiency and visibility during the holiday rush. The tools above are the most user-friendly even for business owners that are not very tech-savvy, in addition to being the industry standards that more competitive businesses use to achieve their goals.
Before using a business tool, just remember to identify if it actually suits your most urgent needs and deliverables. This will help you efficiently fulfill and serve customers during the holidays without making the tool a business operations bottleneck.