Category: Marketing Automation

Forums provide the opportunity to build an online community that allows your audience to connect in a place where they know their interests are shared. This sense of connectedness is more important than ever in a time where more work, communication, and socialization is being done online. 
Online communities are particularly beneficial for businesses because they allow customers to interact with each other in a smaller circle than they could via social media, which increases engagement and brand affinity.
For instance, let’s say one of your customers has a very unique problem with your product or service, and posts about it on your forum. That post is much easier to find than it would be on social media, where millions of users are talking about a million different things.
Even better, maybe another forum user has faced that same problem and can answer their question before your service reps even see it.
There is an incredible amount of value in reaching and building your community using a forum. Here, we’re going to explore the best forum software to get you started.

1. WordPress (With Plugin)
Price: Free (plus the cost of hosting)
Using a multi-purpose platform like a CMS to power your online community allows you access to many different software options in the form of plugins and applications. For instance, you might use the bbPress plugin to create multisite forums, and maintain them from one dashboard within your WordPress site. This is a great option if you want to set up a regular website and forum together.
There are many options to choose from using WordPress, all of which will provide you with the basic forum features you need, plus plenty of useful extras.
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2. Joomla!

Price: Starts at $99 per year (plus development and hosting costs)
Joomla! Is a CMS software like WordPress, but requires more attention to detail and management. This is a robust CMS that will power your forum plugins like Kunena or EasyDiscuss, which are specifically created for Joomla!’s system. The price point comes from the open-source content management system, which will allow you to build powerful online applications alongside your forum software.
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3. Discourse

Price: Starts at $100 per month (plus cost of hosting)
Discourse is open-source forum software that you can in tandem with your existing website and CMS platform. Not only can community members use it on their mobile devices,  but they’ll also get dynamic notifications, badges, emoji, and more. Best of all, there’s a built-in moderation system to help you protect your community from spam and abuse.

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4. Vanilla Forums

Price: Variable based on your needs
Vanilla has an abundance of features — one of the most notable being the intuitive dashboard that lets you manage every aspect of your community forum. You can view stats, manage users, and use an advanced editor that recognizes HTML, BBCode, and Markdown using this software.
Additionally, Vanilla gives you the ability to adjust permissions of forums or members if you’re looking to control access. The software enables customers to submit, view and vote on ideas to drive innovation for your business, or use the Q&A option to connect with and help each other get more out of your products or services. Best of all, Vanilla offers an on-boarding process with useful checklists, training materials, and help from one of their support reps.
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5. Codoforum

Price: Free
Codoforum is forum software that has a fresh UI with modern design. It’s simple, clean, and easy to use. Codoforum is built with PHP using the latest coding patterns and is fully compliant with new PSR standards. This software provides a responsive layout structure for mobile and desktop, SSO and integration, as well as mention notifications for users.
Since it’s free to use, Codoforum is a good option if you’re still testing out forums or aren’t sure whether they’ll be useful for your own website and community.
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6. phpBB

Price: Free
PhpBB is a forum platform that has a typical and intuitive board set-up where users can post public or private messages. With phpBB, you can create as many internal messaging boards as you want without any additional costs.
Additionally, you can use extensions to add new options to your forum community. This makes the software very customizable, and allows you to adapt the software to the growing needs of your audience.
Among other things, phpBB lets you create password-protected forums for added security, sub-forums, the option to display active topics at the top of your forum, and the ability to add forum rules at the top of a forum to ensure your community abides by set guidelines.
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7. VBulletin

Price: vBulletin 5 Connect $249, $15/month
Over 100,000 websites are built on vBulletin — including NASA, EA, and Sony Pictures — so it’s a popular option for hosting your forum. The software includes tons of great features, including built-in SEO, security, and responsive web design. With VBulletin you can have an unlimited hierarchy of forums as well as private forums.
Best of all, VBulletin provides fun and unique features for your community members, including private messaging, a friends list, member birthdays (shown on the Forum homepage), and the ability to see who’s online.
VBulletin is not known for being the fastest forum, but its design is clean and it offers quality support for its users.

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8. Invision Community

Price: Varies for forum size/data needs, but starts at $45/month for 65 online visitors
IP Board was a very popular forum software that has since expanded to Invision Community, which includes a forum application in addition to its other offerings. According to the Invision Community website, the forums module powers thousands of message boards around the web, and Invision Community has many other community management apps to help you interact with your audience.
The software allows your users to take control over their own online communities, which you can monitor at your discretion. For instance, Invision Community lets users create and manage their own communities, called “Clubs”, which are fully integrated with your website — these clubs get designated Club Leaders, who can add new forums, calendars, or galleries to the community.

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9. Flarum

Price: Free
Flaurm has a streamlined design that is extremely easy to navigate. Forums using this software are fully responsive, and features include smooth animations and available swipe features for mobile optimization. Flarum was built by the developers of esoTalk and FluxBB, two of the fastest forum platforms, and has great performance reviews.
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10. MyBB

Price: Free
MyBB is a free and open-source forum software that powers thousands of communities. It features hundreds of plugins and themes for you to customize, and the users that exist on the forum will help you establish your own community. Users have also contributed to the translations available for the content on the software. Now, forums are available in over 30 languages to help you grow a more global community.
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11. inSided

Price: Variable based on your needs
inSided is a full-featured Community Platform aimed at Customer Success and Community professionals looking to increase engagement, advocacy, and effectively gather product feedback. 
They have a killer combination of a customer community platform, a knowledge base, and in-app support. What sets them apart from other platforms are integrations with software like Zendesk, Salesforce, Mixpanel, and Gainsight so that you can connect your community to your entire tech-stack and create a 360 degree view of your customer.
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Ways to Build Your Community Using Forum Software
People notice when brands listen to and converse with their customers, and they especially notice when brands foster their own communities. How? Through the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Customers who view themselves as valued members of your community are much more likely to talk about your brand to their friends.
Here’s how you can build a strong community using your forum software.
1. Spread the word.
Nobody will join your online community if they don’t know it exists. Spread the word about your new forum by including CTAs to join your forum in email newsletters or social posts. Ask your brand ambassadors or loyal fans to start posting about the forum, and post content on the forum so when other users join, you already have an established presence on the channel.
2. Listen to and check on your community regularly.
Reviewing your forum and responding to what your audience has to say is a crucial part of community building. Your customers are far less likely to continue to interact and engage on your forum if they feel as though they are being ignored. Responding to their feedback shows your users that you value their opinions and care about their experiences with your product.
Additionally, it’s your job to make sure everything is running smoothly on your forum. Checking on your community regularly will help you dissolve any service escalations, and give people the support they are seeking.
3. Foster a helpful discourse.
A forum should be a safe place for your customers, prospects, employees, fans, and audience to interact, ask, and answer questions. By establishing a helpful ethos early on, or creating community guidelines that prioritize patience and kindness within responses, your community will grow without the need to constantly monitor it 24/7.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

If you’ve ever came across Tim Ferris’s iconic book on how to just work four hours per week, you’ve probably dreamed of sipping a Mojito on a beach while your money worked for you in the background. One of the main ideas he constantly talks about is the concept of passive income.
After all, having an income chart like this is the main goal of many online entrepreneurs:

For many entrepreneurs looking to build an online business or marketers looking to monetize their web traffic, affiliate marketing is often how they got started with generating income.
Affiliate marketing is one of the world’s most popular methods of generating passive income online, and it continues to grow. In fact, affiliate marketing spend is reported to increase to $8.2 billion by 2022 — up from $5.4 billion in 2017.
If you’re looking for a complete guide to affiliate marketing, read more to find out how you can promote products as an affiliate to create an additional source of income.

There are typically four parties involved in affiliate marketing:

Affiliates: The promoters of the product

Product creators: The creators of the product

Networks: The networks managing the affiliates

Consumers: The end users of the product

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You don’t always need a network to become an affiliate, but the other three parties (the affiliates, the product creators, and the consumers) form the core of an affiliate program.
Who are the affiliates?
An affiliate, also known as a publisher, can be an individual or a company. Typically, these are other bloggers or content creators operating in the industry of the product they are creating.
They help promote the product or service by creating content like blog posts, videos, or other media.
They can also promote their content to get transactions by putting up ads, capturing search traffic from SEO, or building an email list.
When one of their visitors creates a transaction, which could be a purchase or submitting a lead form, the affiliate gets a commission. How much commission is structured depends on the affiliate program terms.
Who are the merchants?
A merchant, also known as the product creator or advertiser, is typically the creator of the product or services. They offer revenue sharing and commissions to people or other companies (affiliates), which have a significant following on their brand.
The merchant can be a company like HubSpot, which offers a commission to every affiliate who’s able to get their visitors to make a purchase.
Or it can be an individual like Pat Flynn, who offers an affiliate program with his podcasts.
The merchants can be anyone from a solopreneur to a big company, as long as they are willing to pay their affiliates to help them gain a transaction.
Sometimes the merchant does not even have to be the product creator, as in the case of the Amazon Associates Program.
Who are the affiliate networks?
An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between the merchants and their affiliates. In some cases, a network is not necessary, but some companies choose to work with a network to add a layer of trust.
The network manages the relationship and provides third-party checks and balances. Third-party checks can be important because they bring down fraud rates.
Some popular networks include ClickBank and ShareASale.
Some merchants choose to work with an affiliate network because they lack the time or resources to track, report, and manage payments to the affiliates. They might also choose to work with multiple affiliates or publishers within the affiliate network.
Who are the consumers?
The consumers or customers are the ones who makes the transaction. They are the ones who purchase the product or submit the lead form in order for the affiliate to gain the commission.

Let’s say you owned a popular knitting blog that saw 100,000 hits per month, and a knitting supply company contacted you about promoting their needles and yarn on your website. As an affiliate, you’d place links to their products throughout your blog content. In this case, you’d receive affiliate income if a visitor landed on your blog and took an action — either a click, form submission, or purchase.
We’ll talk more about getting paid in the next section. In the meantime, here are some common affiliate marketing models:
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): The affiliate gets paid for all clicks that were generated, regardless of whether a lead or sale happened. This is fairly rare since all the risk is on the product creator.
Pay-Per-Lead (PPL): The affiliate gets paid for every lead they generated. This could be an online form submission, trial creation, or any pre-purchase. This is a shared risk on both the merchant and the affiliate.
Pay-Per-Sale (PPS): The affiliate gets paid for every sale they generated. This is the most common model since all the risk is on the affiliate.
Now, let’s talk about how to get started with affiliate marketing.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, most people think it’s a process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products.
While affiliate marketing can seem straightforward — just find a product you love, promote it, and earn a piece of profit with every sale you make — there are actually a few moving parts you need to a monitor.
1. Choose a platform and niche.
To be an affiliate, you need to have influence. Establishing a website or blog that specializes in a niche is the best way to establish influence. Whether you focus on finance, personal health, business, or even cats, a niched blog or website will help you gain influence and build an audience.
Affiliate marketers build audiences through blogs (on WordPress or HubSpot),via newsletters, or even on YouTube or other social media channels.
2. Build an audience.
A large, engaged audience is a highly valuable asset for any blog or website. Having people who read, view, and engage with your content can help you make affiliate income.
The best way to build an audience is to first establish who your target audience is, and you can find your target audience by researching competitors, monitoring your traffic, and conducting first-hand research by talking to subscribers and customers.
Once you establish this group, grow and cultivate your loyal online audience through targeted content and emails. Give your audience a reason to read and engage with your content, and they’ll find a reason to purchase your recommended products, too.
3. Sign up for an affiliate program.
The best way to get started with affiliate marketing is by signing up for an affiliate program like the Amazon Associates or HubSpot Affiliate Program. After signing up, you will get an affiliate link that contains a unique ID. You can then use this link in your content.
There are typically no upfront costs when it comes to joining an affiliate program, but your variable ongoing costs will depend on how you want to promote the products. If you choose to outsource content or run ads, those are costs that will come out of your pocket.
4. Choose which products to promote.
Choosing the right product to promote, working with the right company, fostering relationships, and updating content are all core essentials of excelling at affiliate marketing.
According to Pat Flynn, one of the pioneers of creating passive income through providing value to his audience, there are two important rules when it comes to affiliate marketing:

Only recommend products as an affiliate that you’re extremely very familiar with. If you are not confident in the product and do not feel it will help people, do not promote it.
Never tell anyone to directly buy a product. Always recommend products based on your experience and in the context of what you’ve done.

When it comes to choosing the right products, David Gonzalez — founder of an affiliate management agency, suggests that you should think about these three components when choosing a product to promote:

Your audience: Will the product resonate with them and make them grateful you promoted it?

Product quality & value: Would you advocate your best friend buying it?

Profitability: Does the offer have highly competitive conversions & payouts?

After reading these recommendations, do any products come to mind?
5. Create remarkable content that promotes your affiliate products.
To see the best success with affiliate marketing, you need to create genuine and remarkable content that promotes your chosen products. Write a roundup blog post of your favorite products. Create comparison charts that discuss the merits of similar products. Interview other users and fans of the products to showcase different opinions.
Regardless of what kind of content you create, ensure it features authentic reviews and mentions of your affiliate products. Avoid discussing and promoting products you haven’t used yourself.
6. Optimize and track.
Whenever your visitor clicks on your unique affiliate link, a cookie is inserted in their browser to track actions.
When they make a transaction that is a qualified action (could be a sale or lead form submission, depending on the terms of the program), the merchant is able to record this action and attribute it to you as an affiliate so they can make a payout.
You should track your own affiliate content, too, to see what has performed well and what you can improve and promote. Understanding what content resonates best with your audience will show you what to focus on for future affiliate marketing opportunities.

7. Get paid.
There are different structures when it comes to payout, which varies based on affiliate program terms.
Commission payouts by the company are usually given on a monthly basis, but this varies depending on the affiliate program terms.
It could be a weekly payout or a monthly payment for all the leads or sales you’ve made.
You’ll want to pay attention to the payout structure when choosing an affiliate program to join, which ultimately depends on the goals you have.
You might want to understand the commission structure of the company or product creator. Are you looking for a commission per sale or commission per lead generated? Are you looking at a recurring commission or a one-off payment?
Depending on your goals, this will affect which product you choose, how you plan to promote the product as well as how much time & resources you want to invest.
For instance, if you choose to promote your content via paid ads, then that’s a cost you have to account for. You will have to compare how much you’ve spent to promote each piece of content or to generate each purchase against how much commission you’re getting for each referred sale.
Or, if you have a blog and website, then you will have to pay for hosting. In this case, this should be a flat fee spread out across all your referred sale.
Use this marketing plan generator to calculate how much you need to invest to get a basic marketing plan up and running.

How much can you make from affiliate programs?
You might be wondering, what are established affiliates earnings? (established affiliates are those working full-time.) Well, that varies. I’ve seen super affiliates earn upwards of $100,000 per month.
Making money from an affiliate program is more about the profits than the revenue you’re getting.
An affiliate making $5000/day might be worse off than another affiliate making $500/day with no cash outflow because the former might be spending most of his revenue on paid acquisition.
At the end of the day, before becoming an affiliate, you have to align your expectations to your earning potential. What kind of industry or niche you operate in, and what kind of work you do depends a lot on how much you want to make.
If you focus on ads like Adwords or Facebook to promote your affiliate products, how much money you invest is as important (if not more) as how much you make.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Too often do I hear this misconception: affiliate marketing is dead.
In today’s landscape of online marketing, people often mention that some variant of X is dead — SEO, email, mobile, etc.
The test of time is a pretty good test; if something has stayed around for a while, there’s a better chance of it sticking around for a while.
Everything evolves, and there are tactics that don’t work the exact same way as they did before. Affiliate marketing, of course, is no exception to that rule.
Affiliate marketing has evolved from a get-rich-quick scheme into something that requires you to build real trust with you audience to reap the rewards of the work that you put in.
At the end of the day, becoming a successful affiliate marketer as a beginner requires you to nail down the fundamentals of marketing. Authenticity is hard to fake, especially when it comes to building your own personal brand.
A brand that promotes products incessantly without any regard for bring real value to its audience will find affiliate marketing to be a short-lived source of income. Choosing the right products to promote, stemming from a true passion for what the product does, forms the basis of all your promotional activities.
While there are many tactics to scale your promotion, the golden rule of affiliate marketing stays the same: only promote products you love and treat your audience like humans.
Build your own brand, choose products that you love, create authentic content and you will be on your way to building a real source of passive income.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Trying to decide between GetResponse and Campaign Monitor for your email marketing software? This article compares features and pricing so you can make the right choice.

submitted by /u/Kloudportal7 [link] [comments]

Most businesses still see email marketing as the most cost-beneficial and conversion-rich way to develop relationships with potential customers or clients and promote their products or services. What makes it such a powerful tool? The numbers speak for themselves. A recent study holds that the median email marketing ROI is 122 percent. So far, no…
The post Why You Should Care About Email Testing appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

As a marketer, you know how important it is to have a marketing strategy.
You also know how important it is for your strategy to align with your audiences’ needs and interests, and the required approach for each channel you use, whether it’s social media or email. Having a marketing strategy also helps you create the content your audiences want to see and share it where they’re most likely to see it.
But, when you have this strategy, how do you figure out what to say in the content you share with them? What you need is a marketing message, and it’s just as important as your overall strategy.
You can think of it like this: if you know you want to post about a new product launch on Instagram, how will you prove to your audience that they need to buy this new product? Your marketing message. Essentially, no marketing message means no way to execute your strategy.
In this post, we’ll define what a marketing message is, give real-life examples from businesses, and explain how you can create your own.

Because of this, you should craft your marketing message with care, specifically for the audiences you’re trying to reach. It should also address their pain points and present your business as a solution.
When your message speaks to their needs, you’ll build trust with your audience and inspire customer retention.
Every business engaging in marketing needs a marketing message, whether you sell B2C or B2B, software as a service (SaaS), or clothing.
Marketing Message Examples
Successful marketing messages attract leads and convert them to paying customers. Below we’ll go over some real-life examples of effective marketing messages.
Nike
As a clothing and apparel brand, Nike is committed to providing equipment to everyone who needs it, regardless of the sport they play and who they are.
Their marketing message is “Where All Athletes Belong,” and it speaks to their target audience and lets them know that they have something for everyone —from professional athletes to first-time players.

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Black Girl Sunscreen
Black Girl Sunscreen targets an audience often left out of sun safety discussions: women of color. Their message lets that market know they’re there for them: “Protect your melanin. Sunscreen is always in season.”
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Chipotle
People with dietary restrictions or food preferences that don’t align with mainstream ideas of nutrition are often unable to find food they can eat at fast-food restaurants.
Chipotle’s marketing message, shown in the image below, reads “Find your plant power.” The brand is speaking directly to those with diverse needs, inviting them to try their expanded menu with plant-based options and letting them know that they recognize the gap in the market for their needs.

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Lab Muffin
Ingredients in beauty and cosmetic products can be hard to understand if you don’t have a scientific background or relevant experience. Lab Muffin’s marketing message speaks to those who want to understand the chemistry behind the products they use: “The science of beauty, explained simply.”

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Zoom
Zoom is a virtual meeting tool that allows users to connect virtually. It markets to an audience who wants to continue having fulfilling conversations, regardless of their physical location: “Meet OnZoom. A marketplace for immersive experiences.”

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All in all, these marketing messages capture attention and, in just a couple of words, explain why their business is the best fit to meet their audience’s needs.
How to Craft a Marketing Message
As mentioned above, a well-crafted marketing message converts your audience into customers. All businesses should aim to have one, and below we’ll discuss how to create a compelling marketing message for your own business.
Know your target audience.
Just as with most marketing practices, you can’t begin creating your marketing message without identifying your target audience. When you know who they are, you’re not marketing to customers you think are interested in you, but rather to those you know are interested in you.
In brief, your target audience is a group of consumers with similar characteristics and purchasing intent, and stand to gain the most value from your products. While your overall target audience is probably defined by the industry you’re in, it’s important to have a deeper understanding.
To learn more about your target audience and narrow down who they are, you can conduct buyer persona research, analyze your competitors, practice social listening, and invite people to participate in focus groups or interviews.
Overall, what you want to learn from identifying your target audience is understanding what they “look” like. This can be simple demographic information, like age and location, to what they like, desire, and want from the businesses they buy from.
Having this information then makes it easier to personalize your strategies and create a marketing message that will resonate with them, especially when addressing their pain points.
Understand your audience’s pain points.
Your persona research should tell you about your audience’s pain points and challenges.
As a refresher, pain points are issues that affect your target audience’s day-to-day routines, business tasks, or general life desires. These challenges are typically things that your audience is actively seeking solutions for.
For example, if you’re a business selling marketing SaaS, you may discover that your audience has trouble managing their campaigns because they use multiple platforms throughout their process. When you create your marketing message, you should speak to your ability to streamline their efforts with your easy-to-use, all-in-one platform.
If you’re a B2C business that sells eco-friendly clothing, a customer pain point could be that they struggle to find brands without significant environmental impact. In your marketing message, you should speak to their desire to minimize environmental pollution through sustainable shopping opportunities.
When you understand pain points, you don’t have to guess why your customers need you — you’ll know why they need you. As a result, you can create a marketing message that addresses their needs.
The first two steps on this list involve gathering the necessary background information, and the following steps will help you begin crafting your message.
Make value propositions.
Value propositions highlight your product or service’s unique value and tell customers that your brand is tailor-made to meet their needs. It clearly says why they should do business with you instead of a competitor, and that is precisely the point of a marketing message.
When creating your message, present your product or service as a cure for their pain points, and prove it. Continuing with the eco-friendly business example, you can specifically mention that your clothing is locally produced, separating you from the competition that mass produces its goods abroad.
This message tells consumers that you’re solving their pain point, which is a lack of sustainable clothing brands, because you design ethically produced and environmentally friendly products.
Prioritize clarity and concision.
Even though your marketing message needs to say a lot, you need to say a lot while saying a little. You shouldn’t beat around the bush. Instead, get to the point and explain how your product is a solution.
Customers should read your message and find answers to their questions without needing to overanalyze your statements. Prioritize being clear, concise, and easily understood, as you want your words to speak for themselves. To reiterate, get to the point.
You can think of it like this: I said a lot in this explanation just to tell you to get to the point. If this were a marketing message, you would’ve moved along already. However, if I wanted to follow the tips I’ve mentioned, I would simply say, “Tell me why you’re the best – no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Use familiar, conversational language.
Even though your customers are in your industry, you shouldn’t assume that they know or understand the technical jargon related to what you sell. Therefore, it’s important to sound conversational and use language that is familiar and palatable to most audiences. Your message copy should be simple, straightforward, and not require an industry-specific dictionary.
For example, you can use technical terms to describe the features in your latest automobile model. Still, car enthusiasts would be the only ones that genuinely understand what it means to have a 600 horsepower engine and AAA uniform tire quality grading (I certainly don’t know what this means).  
Aim to write as people speak during conversations, maintain a friendly tone, and make customers feel welcomed. Robotic and technical language may be confusing and lead them to think that doing business with you will be complicated and confusing as well.
In sum, by being conversational and familiar, you’re reaching everyone, from first-time industry customers to seasoned CEOs.
Showcase your brand’s originality.  
Your marketing message’s overall intent is to attract your target audience, but it’s also to set you apart from your competitors. Given this, a key pillar of your final message is originality.
Run-of-the-mill marketing messages seem like they could belong to any of your competitors, and original ones showcase what makes you unique. This can be your brand’s personality, the features that set you apart from your competitors, or a combination of the two.
Your marketing message is unique to your business, your solutions are unique to your business, and your words should prove that.
Use user-generated content (UGC).
Consumers are 14% more likely to trust recommendations from someone like them (another consumer) over a brand employee. With that in mind ,using UGC in your messaging, like testimonials and reviews, can help you support your products’ value.
As your target audience likely shares the same challenges, seeing that someone like them has benefited from your product can help them make their final decision. For example, you could say, “95% of our customers love [xyz], and you will too.”
Appeal to customer emotions and logic.
There are a variety of consumer behavior models that explain how people make purchasing decisions. Some models say that it’s through logical reasoning, and others say that it’s purely emotional. In reality, it’s probably a combination of the two, and you should use this to your advantage.
Through tactics like humorous copy, you can showcase your brand’s uniqueness to appeal to customer emotions, and use value propositions to appeal to logical reasoning and show customers how you’ll solve their problems.
Use Your Marketing Message to Speak to Your Customers
The key takeaway here is that your marketing message should convince your audience to do business with you.
Focus on showcasing your brands’ individuality, creating an emotional connection, and clearly showing your customers what’s in it for them. If you do this, you’ll likely find yourself with a marketing message that speaks directly to your target audience and helps you grow your list of clients.

Over the past year, marketers got a crash course in remote work.
As 2021 approached, many of us had already invested in at-home desks, workout equipment, and other tools meant to make work-from-home a little easier.
At the top of that list? Video conferencing software.
Video conferencing tools saw a 500% increase in demand in 2020 as a result of the worldwide pandemic. And, as the workforce continues to shift to a more flexible, hybrid model, it’s critical your business invests in equipment designed to foster collaboration regardless of an employee’s location.
But video conferencing software isn’t always cheap, and the fancy bells-and-whistles aren’t always necessary for small businesses looking for a simple, effective solution.
Here, we’ve compiled 10 of the best video conferencing tools for small businesses, ranging in price and features, to help you find the best fit for your needs.
But first — what are the benefits of video conferencing software, and do you need it, anyway?

Video Conferencing Benefits
Video conferencing offers opportunities for collaboration, productivity, and increased engagement with colleagues, stakeholders, and customers — all without the hassle (and cost) of traveling to an in-person location.
I could write a whole blog post about the benefits of video conferencing, but for our purposes, let’s focus on four:

Video conferencing is a cost-effective opportunity to have face-to-face interactions with colleagues, prospects, stakeholders, or customers. It’s more personal and engaging than a phone call, and it’s much cheaper and more efficient than paying to commute — or fly — to a physical location to meet someone for an in-person conversation.
Like mentioned above, video conferencing offers an opportunity for more personal connection. Eye contact, facial expressions, and body language are cues we use to effectively communicate with one another on a daily basis — and those cues are all lost in a phone or email conversation.  
Video conferencing can increase your team’s productivity, since it limits the amount of time you spend running to conference rooms in-between meetings, driving to meet a client, etc.
Video conferencing can foster increased collaboration, as opposed to email or Slack. For instance, if I hear an interesting project a colleague is working on, I’ll ask them to join a quick Zoom call with me so we can discuss opportunities for collaboration — which is much more efficient than emailing about it.

However, video conferencing software can be expensive, and if you work for a small business with limited resources, it can be difficult to persuade leadership that it’s a worthwhile investment. Fortunately, you don’t have to break the bank to test it out — in fact, a few of the tools in this list are free forever, and others offer free trials.
Let’s dive into the most impressive video conferencing tools we’ve found for small businesses.
10 Best Video Conferencing Tools for Small Businesses
1. Zoom 

Pros: If you’re on a tight budget, you can’t beat the free option you get with Zoom, one of the highest-rated video conferencing tools available. The tool offers clear audio with background noise suppression, an option to share your screen, and a recording function to save and send the meeting to those unable to participate.
Additionally, Zoom has a few fun, engaging tools for increased participation among attendees — including filters, reactions, polls, hand raising, and chat. Plus, you can schedule a Zoom meeting right from your Outlook, Gmail, or iCal email calendar.
Zoom is also part of the HubSpot ecosystem and connects seamlessly with your CRM.
Cons: Outside of meetings, Zoom doesn’t offer any collaboration tools such as file sharing or messaging to follow-up with colleagues — additionally, the links you might’ve shared in the Zoom chat aren’t saved anywhere for later viewing. You also can’t add a meeting agenda to the invite from the app itself.
Overall, Zoom is a great option for small teams, but as you scale, there are some growing pains. For instance, you can get 100 participants in a meeting for 40 minutes with the free version, but if you have a company of 100+, you’ll need to pay more to increase participants.
Price: Free for Basic, which includes the ability to host up to 100 participants, up to 40 minutes of group meeting time, and unlimited one-on-one meetings. $149.90 per year for Pro version, which is recommended for small teams, and $199.90 per year for Small & Med Businesses version.
2. Jiminny 

Pros: Jiminny offers a ton of unique, impressive features that can be particularly useful if you’re hoping to use your video conferencing tool for your sales team or for client-facing purposes.
For instance, the software offers a “Themes” feature, which means your meeting recording will be automatically broken up into important parts like “Next Steps” — for anyone who’s ever scanned an hour-long meeting recording looking for a two-minute conversation right in the middle, this can greatly increase efficiency with follow-up materials.
The recording feature can integrate with your CRM to automatically input data from your recordings, enabling you to reduce the time-consuming task of manual note-taking. The software also offers metrics such as ratio of talking versus listening to improve your sales reps conversation (and listening) skills.
Cons: The company is in the early-stages, so as they continue to iterate and improve on their product, you might experience some growing pains. Additionally, if you’re not planning on using the video conferencing tool for prospect/customer-facing purposes, some of these features might be unnecessary for your internal marketing team.
Price: Pro plans starting at $75/month per user if you sign up for a full year; that goes up to $95/month per user if billed monthly.
3. Google Meet

Pros: Google Meet is an incredibly cheap and easy-to-use video conferencing tool for small teams. In fact, if you’re not interested in recording or storing meetings, the tool is free forever for up to 100 participants.
Google Meet integrates with other apps and even lets you build a custom app using Apps Script. The tool also comes with unlimited Google Drive storage.
Additionally, the tool offers a speech-to-text real-time captioning feature for video chats and meetings — ideal for hearing impaired participants, non-native speakers, or participants with noisy backgrounds.
Cons: The free version doesn’t offer the ability to record or save your meetings, which means you’ll need to upgrade if you need either feature.
Google doesn’t offer personalized setup or training, and it doesn’t offer the same robust features as some of the other options in this list. It also can’t support more than 250 participants, so it won’t work if you plan on hosting larger webinars or conferences.
Price: The app is free for up to 100 participants and an unlimited number of meetings. However, if you want to record or store meetings, pricing starts at $8/month per user.
4. Bluejeans 

Pros: Bluejeans, a video conferencing software created by Verizon, offers impressive features such as the ability to use AI and voice recognition to automatically take notes, create action items, and identify key moments for later follow-up. Additionally, engagement is a breeze from within the tool with features such as screen sharing, polling, Q&A, and chat.
Bluejeans integrates with messaging, scheduling, and productivity tools, and offers impressive security and scalability requirements.
Cons: Bluejeans doesn’t offer file sharing capabilities, and if you only purchase the Me plan, you’re limited to 25 hours of recordings. Additionally, support is limited.
Price: $13.99/host per month, up to 75 participants and 25 hours of recordings.
5. GoToMeeting 

Pros: LogMeIn’s video conferencing software has some impressive features, including a “Smart Meeting Assistant” transcription service that automatically transcribes the meeting so you can search through and share detailed notes with others.
You can record the meeting and store the recording locally or in the cloud, and participants can join the meeting on desktop or through a mobile app.
Overall, GotoMeeting’s HD video and audio software is high-quality and integrates easily with Google Calendar or Chrome for increased efficiency.
Cons: GoToMeeting requires an error-fee data connection to work well, and some reviewers have noted the mobile app isn’t as user-friendly as they’d like. Additionally, the Professional plan doesn’t offer the transcription, note taking, or drawing features.
Price: $16/user per month, for up to 250 participants, for Business plan.
6. Skype

Pros: If you have a tight budget and you’re often calling people from across the globe, Skype could be a great option for you. The software is free to use, and doesn’t charge users for calling anyone from anywhere in the world. Video calls can also include up to 50 participants at once. The tool is easy to install and use.
Cons: The audio quality isn’t always great with Skype, particularly since Skype’s audio quality is based on bandwidth, so if users have a slow speed ISP, then audio quality will be negatively affected. Additionally, since Skype calls occur over the internet, there’s always a possibility that data will be intercepted. This makes it a less secure option than some others in the list.
Price: Free
7. Microsoft Teams

Pros: If you’re planning on hosting large webinars or conferences with over 250+ attendees, Microsoft Teams is a good tool for you to consider. The software allows up to 10,000 participants to meet at once, and lets you host with anyone inside or outside your organization.
Additionally, Microsoft Teams enables you to organize different departments or groups into “Teams” (which can be up to a few thousand people) — within those Teams, you can have separate channels of conversations and focus on different projects.
Microsoft Teams provides a few impressive features for increased engagement, including notifications, mentions, comments, GIFs and emojis in chats, and the ability to chat one-on-one or in groups. The software also offers advanced security features.
Cons: Microsoft Teams is an inclusive option for ensuring everyone within a given “Team” automatically has access to all the files, notes, and channels in the Team. Unfortunately, that means you don’t have permission settings to inhibit certain users from accessing files within a group, and you also can’t invite guest users to selected channels.
Price: Microsoft 365 Business Basic is $5/user per month (annual commitment) and allows for 300 participants, but doesn’t include the advanced security and compliance features, administration, or support. Microsoft 365 Business Standard is $12.50/user per month (annual commitment), and Office 365 E3 is $20/user per month (annual commitment) and includes everything Microsoft Teams has to offer.
8. RingCentral Video

Pros: RingCentral offers HD video and high-quality audio, and it’s a cost-effective option for an unlimited number of users, video meetings with up to 100 participants, and up to 24-hour meeting duration. The software enables you to hop easily between mobile and desktop devices, and provides seven layers of security.
Additionally, RingCentral provides personalized onboarding training and 24/7 live support, so if you feel your team might need support getting set up or in the future, this is a good option to consider.
Cons: RingCentral offers a recording feature but it’s only available as an offline option, meaning you need to download the recording as a local hard disk rather than a publicly available folder like Dropbox. The software also doesn’t come with its own calendar and task management function to integrate video meetings with your calendar events — for that, you’ll need to download the company’s Glip app.
Price: $24.99/user per month for the standard version.
9. Zoho Meeting

Pros: One of the most cost-effective options in the list, this is a good, user-friendly video conferencing software for small businesses. Users don’t need to download and install any software, since Zoho is hosted on a web browser, and the software offers all the basic features you’d need in a video conferencing tool, including screen sharing and meeting recordings.
Aditionally, you can use 100+ local dial-in numbers and 55+ toll-free numbers to join from different countries. Best of all, the interface is easy to navigate and use.
Cons: Zoho Meeting limits attendees to 100. If you need more participants than that, you’ll need to switch to Zoho Webinar. You also need to purchase an add-on if you plan on storing over 10 recordings.
The tool doesn’t offer some of the fancy features we’ve seen elsewhere in this list, including a smart assistant or cloud video recording. Still, this is a good option for smaller teams who don’t need all the bells and whistles.
Price: $2.50/host per month for 10 participants, $5/host per month for 25 participants, and $10/host per month for 100 participants.
10. Intermedia AnyMeeting

Pros: Intermedia AnyMeeting has a clean, easy-to-use interface and offers an impressive array of features — including an AI-powered smart assistant for meeting transcriptions, and screen annotations so participants can direct attention to key points on a shared screen — for a relatively low cost.
The software integrates with plenty of popular office tools including Outlook, G-Suite, and Slack, and offers unlimited recording storage and sharing capabilities. With the Pro version, you’re also able to create custom branded meetings with a company logo and personalized background.
Cons: Intermedia AnyMeeting doesn’t have end-to-end encryption of ongoing calls, which could raise privacy and security concerns. Additionally, some G2 reviewers have mentioned the audio quality could be better.
Price: $9.99/user per month for the Lite version, which enables up to 10 participants. $12.99/user per month for the Pro version, which enables up to 100 participants.
Remember — when choosing video conferencing software, it’s critical you keep your own team’s needs, resources, and requirements in-mind. If you’re still unsure after reading through this list, consider testing out a few demos or trial versions to see which feels best-suited for your brand. 

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