We all know there are powerful marketing technology tools available today. That’s great, you say? Just because I have a hammer does not mean I can build a house (or hammer a nail without smashing a finger)! How can I take advantage of these tools without making my life harder?
More importantly, how will these marketing technology tools change (and improve) what I am already doing?
Here are six ways that marketing technology changes your marketing:
1. Dive into more social profiles. You may not know exactly where all your customers and potential customers hang out. They may not know where you hang out. Explore another social platform and see what it brings. Using a social media management platform like Hootsuite helps you manage multiple social media platforms, profiles and pages from one place so adding one more takes virtually no more work.
2. Be an expert. Generate new visibility along with solid, current news using quick surveys of your customers, prospects and contacts. You might find some fascinating, revealing or enlightening findings about your market that helps your business. Take these findings and distribute a report of findings supported by a press release to local business journalists or organizations. Try the survey tool from Constant Contact.
3. Do more events. Whether that is parties, seminars, focus groups, conferences or webinars, your business will always benefit from bringing together various groups of people. Imagine what you could learn from a group of past customers, current prospects or potential vendors. Any time you can get face-to-face with people, you are guaranteed to learn something that you did not know before. The people you bring together will remember the invitation, appreciate your interest in what they have to say and provide you with new ideas. Today, people expect to find out about events and register for them online. Learn more about Constant Contact’s event management system.
4. Get your team involved. It’s more fun when you do it together. Take turns finding interesting posts or challenge each other to create better content (or snappy responses to interesting posts). How does marketing technology help here? Social media management platforms like MarketMeSuite help teams work together, find new conversations with people you may not be connected to and track social conversations all in one place. To better coordinate all activities related to customers or prospects, use a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Results Software, which integrates with Constant Contact.
5. Produce leads out of thin air. Don’t wait for referrals, generate your own leads using landing pages. If you spend any time online, you have the opportunity to generate your own leads. The goal is simply to move people efficiently through the buying process, and to do so as quickly as possible. Set up processes that drive people to signal their own interest by using dedicated landing pages with compelling offers (offered free of charge in exchange for their contact information) that highlight very specific products or services. Now you can contact people you likely don’t know that have a specific interest in something you offer.
6. Post at optimal days and times. Social media is a powerful complement to your other sales and marketing activities. Some might say an essential part of your marketing in today’s wired world. Someone on your team can take
30 minutes every week or two and schedule all your social posts for the next week (or two). Does that seem like too much? Using Hootsuite you can schedule posts to any or all your social accounts and distribute them at appropriate days and times for the next week. Why wait until the right time to post on Facebook when you can do all your posts Monday morning and have your posts hit all your accounts at optimum dates and times throughout the whole week?
These are just a few ways that marketing technology can change what you are doing today and streamline the time it takes to improve your marketing activities. We will share more ways that marketing technology can help your business. In the meantime, feel free to contact us if you’d like to talk about how we can help identify the right marketing technology for your business and help you implement and manage your marketing technology tools.
Erik Bunaes is president of Endorphin Advisors LLC and the Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert serving Upstate New York. Learn more at www.EndorphinAdvisors.com.