As a business owner, you’ve probably got countless things niggling at the back of your mind. If you’re like the rest of us, one of those these headaches is going to be modern technology. We’re living in a time where technology is racing ahead, and there are so many different business tools around that knowing what’s really going to be useful to you can be extremely hard. Hopefully, this post is going to clear up the whole subject for you! Here, we’ll look at some of the most talked-about types of marketing tech, and what they can do for your business.
First of all, sales force automation software. As I’m sure you’re aware by now, marketing isn’t something that you can do as a one-off and then never think about again. In order to make your brand as visible and as widely trusted as possible, you need to be evaluating every little piece of marketing your business attempts. In order to do this, you need to make sure you know everything possible about your customers and prospects, and how they became customers or prospects in the first place. When you buy some salesforce automation software, and integrate it properly into your business, you’ll be able to manage the sales process, track your customer’s behavior, and finalize orders much more efficiently. If you’ve ever wanted to see the direct impact your marketing is having on your business’ revenue, then some sales force automation software is certainly for you.
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Next, you should be looking to start using a good social marketing platform. At one point, social media was something completely new; a pure novelty which one or two small businesses would use as a kind of marketing gimmick. Less than a decade later, it had totally exploded, and businesses of all sizes and industries where scrambling to figure out how to use social media as effectively as possible. I don’t need to tell you how important audience development and content distribution is in the realm of social media. To make sure you’re pushing your brand identity on the right people, and driving them to your website, you need to know the best ways to reach out to your target market. This is where modern social marketing platforms come in. These kind of tools make it so much easier for your marketing team to study and manage the community engagement you’re getting, and see how your various campaigns impact this. It will also allow them to engage with your customer base in real-time across a range of different social networks, all from one clearly set out interface. Aside from that, your marketing team will be able to track which content you’ve placed on which networks, and see which content assets are doing better on which networks. Most importantly of all though, you’ll be able to monitor how all of your content is impacting your engagement, and tweak your strategy accordingly. Check out Sprout Social for one example of a handy social marketing platform.
A well-oiled and constantly monitored website is another tech essential that can really breathe life into your company’s marketing efforts. While I’m sure you have a website, you may not be using it to its full potential. If your business is like many others in 2016, then your site is going to be the one thing all of your leads have to go through. Of course, this rule isn’t set in stone. Some prospects may be direct referrals or people who happened to see your stall at an expo. By and large though, most people are going to go through your website whenever they want to make a purchase. Part of why the marketing landscape has changed so drastically in recent years is prospects are beginning to do their own research more than they ever have in the past. If anyone wants to find out more about a business, they simply pull out their phone and tap the screen a few times. They’ll have various questions that they’ll want answering, and information about certain tools or products they’ve never used before. Today, almost all of this process happens through web browsers. When your target market start asking those questions, you need to make sure of two things. Firstly, that your site is optimized well enough to actually be seen by your prospects. Secondly, when they reach your website, they need to be able to find the information they’re looking for and make a purchase with no trouble at all.
Source: Pexels
Even when you have all these tools in place, there are going to be certain aspects of your marketing which may slip through the gaps. Your brand exists outside of your website, products and social platforms, albeit in slightly less obvious ways. To ensure you’re keeping tabs on all of these things as much as possible, you may want to consider investing in a brand management platform such as Chatmeter. These tools allow you to cover all the miscellaneous factors from your marketing that you may have a slightly tenuous grip on. You’ll be able to set up review alerts, telling you whenever someone talks about your brand online. You’ll also have access to various tools for spying on your competitors; benchmarking their important marketing moves and seeing how yours compare. Some even have what’s called “sentiment analysis” tools, which track how positively or negatively people see your business. One particularly handy feature is that many of these platforms let you track how your business is appearing in online “local listings”. This will let you narrow down and correct any inaccuracies that may be in the important details about your business. Brand management can also help with tracking your local SEO ranking, which is an increasingly important metric.
If you’re concerned that your marketing isn’t keeping up with modern standards, then do a little research into these marketing tools. True, not all of them may be the most cost-effective decision for your business at this stage in its growth. However, it always pays to review your options.
