Technology, applications and tools have a larger appeal if they are simple to use and at the same time solve the user’s purpose within reasonable time. The world around us is changing and so is our way of working – be it solving a problem or deciding upon on the next course of action.
Mindsets, methodologies, technologies and tools are evolving and are amalgamated with each other to meet our present-day needs.
Let’s put things in the context of the marketer. Marketers have to be extremely agile in today’s digital world. Agility results in responsiveness to the customer’s needs and the brand’s business requirement. Decisions have to made quicker.
With this evolution of digital mindsets and behavior, come various benefits. Here are some new age marvels that a marketer must possess in his/her marketing toolkit –
Collaboration and Accountability
We no longer work in silos and the best products, services or experiences that are designed are through continuous collaborative efforts. Tools are available to improve and capture team communication on the go. Large organizations use platforms such as SharePoint, mostly manifested as a document storage and management system.
Yammer can create a social network for the organization to collaborate on projects. Marketing and product management teams can use elaborate project management tools such as JIRA to monitor the progress on new product development initiatives.
For Start-ups and SMBs, other relevant alternatives are Slack and Trello – for messaging among team members. Collaborate with not just the inside world of your organization, but also with vendor and external stakeholders with these easy to use and easy to scale tools. To share and store files, platforms as Google Drive and Dropbox are the most popular options.
Rapid Prototyping
A good brand must deliver an impactful user experience and for brands in the consumer technology, Fintech or ecommerce space, it is all the while essential to test what has been built before it is launched.
With InVision, you can test the user navigation flows of high fidelity designs and provide an almost real simulation of the App that you are developing.
It allows you to sketch wireframes and take views from multiple team members at the same time on what has been shared. It also works great when your presenting designs to your management team.
If you’d like to know what users are viewing on your web site, then Hotjar with the help of clickmaps, heatmaps and scrollmaps show you exactly that. It’s an effective tool that is used at the prototyping stage as well.
Who is talking about your brand?
With this digital explosion and the democratic use of social media, there is a cosmic amount of content that is scattered over the web.
Conversations, sentiments and opinions of your brand are shared at this very moment. Social listening tools such as Hootsuite can provide insights into conversations around your brands. Implement hyper-localized social media campaigns. Capture the popular hashtags used and identify content that is relevant to your brand.
Instant customer Feedback Â
It’s important to continuously capture customer feedback on a product, service or campaign. With simple tools such as Google Forms, you can create a questionnaire, poll or quiz and share it with a targeted audience. Collation of feedback received is also easy and integration with excel or spread sheets.
Google Analytics
Analyze the performance through traction of your content on your web properties. Data is categorized the basis of Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions. Drill down to see the channels, geographies that drive the traffic to your sites.
Capture the amount of time users spend on specific pages of your web site. Determine the areas that require optimization due to slow loading speed. Improve conversion rates by going through conversion reports.Â
Personalize email marketing
A good automation tool can do wonders to managing your email campaigns. MailChimp is a marketing automation platform that allows you to segment customers on the basis of buying behavior and preferences.
Email campaigns can be targeted to multiple segments and easily tracked. Know who has open your email and who hasn’t. There is no design or coding acumen required to get your personalized campaigns rolling.
Mail Chimp can also be used to A/B test a specific campaign among a small group before launching it to a larger audience. If you’re seeking a simple tool to email trackable newsletters to a large number of customers at the same, then Sendy is your answer.
Map customer experience journeys
You may find multiple purposes for this tool, but it is best used to create and share mind maps. XMind features mind maps, fishbone diagrams, tree diagrams, organization charts, spreadsheets, etc.
To conclude, there are many technologies and tools that can enable you to deliver a particular marketing activity. However, there a few considerations while choosing the right tool or technology.
Credentials of the service provider
A few questions that require attention – Is the tool widely used? How many subscribers of the tool are there till date and are there use cases that are similar to your business?
Cost of the tool or technology
Some of these tools are at no charge. There are others that are priced as per a feature-list plan. There are various pricing models available and the common ones are Pay-per-use model or monthly SaaS (Software-as-a-service) fee.
Little or no dependency of tech support
Seek tools that can be activated instantly like a simple plug and play, tools that you can learn quickly. Before opting for a price plan, you start using the trail version to test the tool.
Most of these tools can be used on the go and provide the user the agility to make a decision as and when needed. Spend time in understanding the best tool that can help you with your marketing challenge. It’s worth the investment.
Also Read:
Need of Digital Marketing Solutions for Quicker Growth
10 Digital Marketing Assets You Need To Invest In Today
How to size-up the opportunity with the right CRM?
(Disclaimer: This is a guest post submitted on Techstory by the mentioned authors. All the contents and images in the article have been provided to Techstory by the authors of the article. Techstory is not responsible or liable for any content in this article.)
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About The Author:
Amit has two decades of extensive experience in Marketing which has stemmed an ability to view a business holistically. He has worked with large MNC and large Private sector companies namely Reliance, Shell, Kansai and Nerolac Paints. He holds a successful track record of consulting and nurturing start-up companies across diverse categories. He has also partnered with companies across South-East Asia to build their brand equity.
Amit’s role at Genuus is to make it as the preferred Marketing Technology Company for brands that desire to build unique and impactful experiences.
