Invest in Basic Martech Knowledge
In recent years, disruptive technologies have enabled small business owners and start-up entrepreneurs in all industries to streamline their processes and increase operational efficiency. Acquiring and applying the right technology solutions can go a long way toward lowering long-term overhead and growing the bottom line. Sales and marketing are two areas where technology is evolving at an accelerated rate, creating opportunities for informed business professionals to promote their products and services in ways that simply weren’t possible 10 or 15 years ago. While well-established companies and industry leaders may budget millions in traditional advertising channels like television, radio, and digital ads, savvy social media marketers can create nearly the same level of reach and brand recognition with very little cost to the business.
Most social media platforms offer small business owners the ability to identify and target very specific groups and subsets of potential customers. And the cost is typically a mere fraction of a single advertising campaign with traditional media. The barrier to reaching customers in a meaningful way on social media is not usually cost, but creativity. Engaging, insightful, and timely messaging is difficult to create for most people and it takes time to develop the skills and the feel for how best to create it within the framework of your business’ brand and customer profiles.
The time investment to acquire the skills necessary to become a successful marketer for your business may be significant, but it won’t cost you very much, if anything at all to acquire the skills. This isn’t the sort of in-depth technology study that network architects engage in, but the marketing technology (martech) that most modern businesses can and should become familiar with. And once you have them, you will be able to make your business as visible as you want to the exact people who are most likely to be interested in your products and services. This doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a successful business, but it does ensure that your business will have a legitimate opportunity to succeed.
Business Processes Tied to Customer Experience
Once you’ve mastered the tech necessary to bring customers to your business in a cost-effective manner, it’s important to make sure your business processes deliver the best possible experience for your customers. Ensure orders are processed accurately, wait times are minimized, and employees have the tools they need to make all your first-time customers come back for more. Unfortunately, there is no special trick to identifying the best technologies to improve your specific business’ performance. And similar to learning social media, there is a time investment required to research and identify the best tech tools for your needs.
But this is a daunting task and researching technology for your business may force you to look at some of your business processes and objectives in ways you hadn’t previously. Ultimately, the right technology should fit seamlessly into your existing operating procedures, even if you tweak some things to better incorporate the features of the new tech. And while there will likely be a cost to acquire the right technology for your organization, proper research will ensure that your money will be well-spent.
Engaging and embracing new technology can be intimidating, but simple web searches and even instructional videos will help you acquire a working knowledge of most tech solutions within a relatively short amount of time. The sooner you get started, the faster you’ll be able to identify and apply the technology that will help your business do more with less.