Our team uses a lot of business software and services.

Every week we’re asked about our recommended software and/or services for consultants and companies in the wide Human Resources industry.

Here are our recommendations.

Note that this article may contain affiliate links. We have used and/or researched all tools and sites mentioned. Still, we suggest you consider all options carefully and remember, in these recommendations as in life, caveat emptor.

Recommended Software Tool & Services For Your HR Business

Let’s get into the recommendation software tools and services now.

Marketing Software & Services For HR Businesses

Email marketing software (inbound) for HR businesses

Inbound email marketing software is what you need to collect emails from website visitors. Look around the Get More HR Clients website and you’ll see lots of opportunities for website visitors to ‘opt-in’ with their name and email address in exchange for valuable advice and information.

You should be doing the same.

We use Mailerlite for email marketing but most of our clients in the consulting space use Mailchimp (we think Mailerlite is far superior but both are fine).

If you find email software a little overwhelming then you may find Aweber a little easier to use. Aweber isn’t as fancy as the other tools but it is very easy to use. It also is very good for making simple auto-responder sequences which can be so powerful.

If you’re a larger firm or a tech company, Keap is an excellent choice.

Email marketing software (outbound) for HR businesses

Outbound email (often called ‘cold email’) is very powerful. Just make sure you follow GDPR/anti-spam rules and never send cold email to private email addresses such as Yahoo or Gmail addresses. You should set up a separate mailing address for cold emails and use a mailing tool to manage the follow-ups.

We’ve used a few outbound email platforms and the best is consistently Woodpecker – it is very easy to use and the tracking is excellent.

SEO software (to rank high on Google) for HR businesses

The vast majority of consulting firms (in all industries, not just HR) write blog posts that are not SEO-optimised. This means you’re putting in valuable time and effort to produce good content for your audience but Google is not rewarding you for your efforts.

By subscribing to an SEO research tool, you’ll have a much better chance of appearing in the top results of Google for your chosen keywords than if you blindly post content.

There is a bewildering range of SEO options with the biggest and the best probably SEM Rush but it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. Your simplest option for research and ongoing tracking is probably Mangools.

If you just want a simple tool to find keywords to rank for on Google, you can use KWFinder.

HR Website For Exposure & An SEO Backlink To Your Website

Gain exposure to an international HR audience and improve your website SEO with a backlink.

Contribute an article to this HR website (click to open pdf).

My advice would be to contact them and then write up a quick article on a topic that matters to your local target market.

Once it’s published, put the article link on your LinkedIn profile and share it around as much as you can. It looks more impressive when your article is on a third-party site. Then, leverage that article to move up the value chain (ie. offer to give webinars, write articles, etc, for larger companies and potential referral partners).

Video creation software for HR businesses

We’ve used various online video editing tools but have found them to be glitchy due to file size issues.

10 Tips for Human Resources Consultancies

To record the short video titled 10 Clever Ways That Other Consultancies Are Bringing In More Clients, we used Camtasia which is a solid piece of software that you install on your computer.

You can use Camtasia to make screen capture videos (like the one above where only the slides are on-screen), talking head videos where you’re talking to the camera, or a combination of both.

Video hosting for HR businesses

You already know that video is a powerful medium for marketing. You can create a video but you’ll need to store it (host it) somewhere so that people can watch it on your website or on social media.

YouTube is the free and obvious way to host videos but there are some major downsides to consider. The biggest is the fact that YouTube may run advertisements at the start, at the end, or even right in the middle of your video. These ads may even be run by your competitors – not a good look!

Instead, we use a video hosting service (Spotlightr) to host our videos.

We use Spotlightr to host the short video titled 10 Clever Ways That Other Consultancies Are Bringing In More Clients.

Graphic design for HR businesses

For graphic design, your three best options are:

  1. Hire a real-life graphic designer
  2. Find a designer on an online marketplace such as Fiverr.
  3. Do it yourself using Canva – the amazing online design template website.

Free stock photos for HR businesses

Bad website images are not going to kill your business but if you could choose between corny stock photos versus realistic images – go for the latter. You’ll find plenty of high-quality free photos you can use on Pexels and on Unsplash.

For a laugh, check this out: ‘Vince Vaughn Is Now Appearing in Free, Cheesy Stock Images You Can Download.’

Virtual conference software for HR businesses

We used HeySummit to run our successful virtual summit, the HR Consultants’ Online Conference.

HR conference

The HeySummit platform let us host nearly 40 different speakers from around the world for a 4-day online conference attended by over 1,000 people.

Transcription software for HR businesses

For transcribing videos, Zoom calls, and podcast episodes, we use Happy Scribe for transcribing the A Better HR Business podcast and other such recordings.

Social media posting software for HR businesses

If you want to preschedule social media posts such as LinkedIn and Facebook posts, both Hootsuite and Buffer are good for the job.

A really clever social media tool we use is called MissingLettr. It lets you take your existing blog posts and automatically turn them into ‘evergreen’ drip campaigns on social media that go out over the year without you lifting a finger.

Drip campaigns help you create up to 12 months of social posts from one blog post and so bring more traffic to your website.

When we publish a new blog post, we go into MissingLettr and click to approve the series of social media posts it automatically creates for us (yes, automatically – very cool!). Occasionally we edit the posts the system writes for us but then we sit back and relax. The system gradually drips the content out over the year to social media accounts to maximise its impact and audience potential.

At time of writing, you can get 50% off the sale price for the first 3 months for MissingLetter here.

Online survey software for HR businesses

When we conduct customer surveys or do a deep-dive assessment as part of our business coaching, we use Google Forms.

Outgrow

For something a little fancier, we’ve also used Typeform.

If you want to create online quizzes and calculators that you can embed into your website for potential clients to use in exchange for their contact details, you can use Outgrow.

VPN software for HR businesses

If you use a virtual assistant to post content for you on social media (or other such tasks) or you just want to protect your online passwords and identity, you may want to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network). A VPN redirects all your internet traffic through a heavily encrypted tunnel so you have greater privacy and so location-related restrictions are removed.

Marketing Services For HR businesses

HR consultancies & HR Tech companies: Growth & marketing service for HR Tech firms and consultancies in the HR industry.

Solo consultants: Growth & marketing service for solo consultants in the HR industry.

Start Your HR Business: Online course to help you start your HR business.

Sales Software & Services For HR Businesses

Calendar scheduling software for HR businesses

Once you start using an online calendar booking system like Bookafy, you’ll never look back. It’s such a time-saver.

Work / Sales proposal software for HR businesses

Most consultants take far too long to write and send new sales proposal documents. The trick is to move away from old-school MS Word documents and, instead, use beautiful, easy-to-produce sales proposal template software.

A favourite of ours is PandaDoc which lets you set up your favorite sales proposal templates and then quickly turn them into ready-for-signing online proposals and work agreements.

You’ll impress your new clients and you’ll shorten the sales cycle.

Sales training course for HR businesses

Check out the B2B sales resources and support in the HR Business Accelerator.

Website Software & Services For HR Businesses

Website address & website hosting for HR businesses

Having a website and starting a business blog helps you build up contacts, develop future sales content, sell advertising space, or build up your mailing list.

There are three aspects to setting up a new website:

  1. Get a website address. You can buy a website address from here for .com and other such websites or here for .co.uk website addresses.
  2. Get website hosting to store your new website address. You can get quick, trustworthy website hosting from here to make your website go live and be visible.
  3. Get the website designed to look good and attract sales leads.

Website design for HR businesses

Having a website and starting a business blog helps you build up contacts, develop future sales content, sell advertising space, or build up your mailing list.

Alternatively, you can make a new blog or website using Wix which has low-cost templates you can put over the top of your website address. They tend not to convert as well as a properly designed website but they’re not too bad.

Online training course software for HR businesses

There is a bewildering array of online training course platforms out there to choose from if you want to launch an online course. We have tried most of them – membership platforms, WordPress plugins, online portals, etc.

Your two best options are Thinkific or New Zenler. We use New Zenler for our online programs but you might find Thinkific a little easier to use (but just as good).

Financial Management & Operations Software & Services For HR Businesses

Bookkeeping & accounting software & services for HR businesses

Freshbooks is a very good, well-known online accounting system. If you want to do things yourself, we’d recommend using their online software.

However, will you and your business be the success you want if you’re spending half your working week trying to wrangle complicated accounting software?

Is your time best served by you doing your own accounting or by winning & serving fee-paying clients?

A better use of your time is to outsource your bookkeeping to low-cost experts.

In the US, your best choice is probably Bench – America’s largest professional bookkeeping service for small businesses.

Crunch in the UK.

JustDone (for sole traders and partnerships) in Australia, and similar companies in other countries.

Invoicing software for HR business for HR businesses

If you just want to send online invoices, you can use Novo in the US or, elsewhere, use Revolut Business to request payment.

Freshbooks is also international and very easy to use.

Bank accounts for HR businesses

In the US, Novo is a good choice, particularly with its special feature of letting you store away money in ‘reserves‘ for future tax bills and dividend payments. Novo also lets you send online invoices to clients which makes it much easier to collect your cash.

In Europe, N26 and Revolut Business are both good choices, particularly with their special features of letting you store away money for future tax bills and dividend payments.

We’ll add banks for more countries here soon.

CRM software for HR businesses

There are so many CRM (Client Relationship Management) database systems to choose from and the technology keeps on improving. An example of the new wave of CRM systems that have taken things up to the next level is Freshworks CRM which helps you segment your sales leads and customers for easier sales.

Work procedures / SOPs software for HR businesses

If you want to increase profits, impress your clients, and scale up your business, you will need to have clearly defined systems and processes. These are typically known as SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures).

Rather than let procedures gather virtual dust on an MS Word document somewhere, put them into a well-organized system and make them available to specific members of your team.

We recommend putting your work processes into an online tool like Trainual.

Personal Development For HR Business Owners

Mindset coaching & training for HR businesses

Check out Beat Your HR Business Blocks.

Sales training for HR businesses

Check out the B2B sales resources and support in the HR Business Accelerator.

Business coaching for HR businesses

Check out the marketing services and support for HR-related businesses here.

Start your own HR business

Check out the Start Your HR Consultancy Business online course.

Company Creation Services For HR Businesses

You can check out the new company formation companies and online accounting firms such as:

More countries being added soon.

US-only: Get an EIN (Employer ID Number) for your LLC or corporation. Secure the 9-digit employer ID number (EIN), also called a Tax ID Number, from the IRS so you can open a bank account, hire employees, and protect your personal assets.