How technology might be hindering your marketing and why you need to fix it

As they say – live and learn. As much as we love learning and growing here in our (Marketing) Greenhouse, last month we had the biggest aha moment of the year (so far). Of course it all leads to technology. Technology is awesome, and it helps us to stay connected and it allows us to do all these amazing marketing tactics, however.

How technology might be hindering your overall business's success and you may not even know it. #freshcoolgrow Click To Tweet

Here’s what may be happening to you. (And I am sure one of these things is definitely happening, you just are not aware of it. Read on and see for yourself.)

Email Issues

Boy oh boy. This is my biggest dream. Can’t wait for the day when emails are completely eliminated from our lives. The problem is, not only, do we use emails so much in our every day, that we can’t simply survive a day without an email. We also rely on them too much, giving them the priority over all other type of communication. So if you, for some reason, stop getting emails (exactly what happened to us last month) from key people in your business (and you don’t even know about it) – your communication is hindered and you might not even know what opportunities you had missed.

The other issue is customer service emails. Having reliable email systems in place ensure you never miss any customer support emails. If you run an e-commerce business, ensuring your customers get all emails that are related to their purchase (order confirmation, shipping info, etc) is critical.

Ask yourself, do you have a strong understanding how your emails are received, viewed and how your (service) emails and newsletters are being displayed on your  customers’ devices. This may cost you a lot of money and frustration if your promotional emails are not being received, viewed or acted upon. Be vigilant with your reports – know your numbers, and never assume, never stop testing and improving.

Unreliable Hosting

This goes without saying. You rely on your hosting provider 24/7 – make sure it’s a good one. Ok let me correct myself here. Make sure you have a clear picture of what your needs are and see how your current service provider supports you.

Are you in charge of an e-commerce business? (This applies to all businesses, but especially for e-commerce businesses. Naturally.)

• Is your website fast enough?
• Do you have backups running?
• Is your server secure?
• Do you update your backend and have all plugins up to date (especially for WordPress websites that run a WooCommerce shopping cart).

These are just the fundamentals that you need to make sure you have covered, but trust me, you will be surprised how many businesses don’t have these in place, or think they do but they don’t (especially the backups of their websites).

Internal processes and file share

In business, everything is interdependent. If you don’t have marketing programs running, you don’t have prospects calling you. If you have your marketing running, and prospects calling, BUT you don’t have the internal processes in place to support the workflow, this might be costing you a lot of money right here and now. The bigger your company gets the more procedures and processes you create/require. Updating your systems on a yearly basis is a wise decision.

For instance, how connected is your marketing team with your sales team? What happens with all that website traffic that your marketers drive to the site? Do your sales people check social media, or know what’s happening on social media and how they can use it to their benefit? Connecting all of the internal processes  will affect the effectiveness of your marketing. Or rather, you will truly see the results of your marketing if you ensure all the marketing/sales dots are connected.

Marketing automation

Tracking all of your marketing efforts is step one. And you might be doing this already. However, how often do you review the steps? There are so many things that can be done, we have more and more marketing tools, apps, and platforms being born every single day. Make your life easier by automating some of your marketing efforts (and review them often).

A few things to consider and review today: 

• Auto replies to your customers when they contact you via your website
• Retarget your visitors with AdRoll (ads are shown to those people who’ve visited your website, but have not made a purchase)
• Review your customer support emails (anything that being sent to your customers during/after they purchase from you)
• Review your email subscription messages and auto replies (this is your chance to get really creative and provide extra value to your customers when they subscribe to your email)
• Set up “follow up” emails/notifications when people download any literature from your website, or purchase products online
• Create awesome web experiences with new web design technology (e.g. CSS3 – more to come on this on our blog 😉 – keep people engaged with dynamic, relevant and custom content

The bottom line is – think where you are spending so much time on marketing and how much return you get on your efforts. Is there any room for improvement? See where you can automate things, that will not only free up your plate for more innovative marketing ideas, but will also provide a more customized experience to your customers.

Stay open-minded. Seek new solutions. Never settle. Sometimes, a little change brings huge results. Want to talk about it? Give us a shout or stop by our (Marketing) Greenhouse on Robson Street in Vancouver. (We always have chocolate!)

P.S. Looking to improve your relationship to technology? Talk to our friends at Quicktech. They are awesome!