As digital marketing becomes more and more important in an increasingly tech-forward world, businesses are starting to see the need to adapt. If you’re a small business owner, you might be overwhelmed by the number of platforms, software, and cloud-based systems that exist to “help you grow” or “convert more leads.”
It’s true that these business tech solutions are valuable, but when you’re making an investment that big, you want to make sure you’re going to get something valuable out of it. So as you embark on your 2022 revenue goals, consider these business technologies that really make a difference for their users.
CRM SOFTWARE
Customer relationship management software is a business’s best friend. It helps you tackle lead management in a streamlined (and often automated) workflow. Your CRM will track contacts through their entire buyer’s journey, from the moment they enter your sales funnel to their first purchase and beyond. No more integrating multiple services and spending hours inputting data just to track your customer lifetime values or acquisition costs. Your CRM does it all in one spot.
Another huge benefit to using a CRM is that it can organize your customer communications. For example, your CRM can assign queries and help tickets to individual customer service representatives, set due dates, and send reminders so no customer issue falls through the cracks.
AUTOMATION & AI
Some business owners are hesitant to rely on automation for anything in their business, but the truth is it can save you significant time and money. Automation is a way to free up your staff to focus on more important things, like making sales and helping customers with unique needs. You can automate your email nurture campaigns, responses to specific questions that come through customer channels, and even your shipping and distribution process.
Artificial intelligence is another form of automation with more of an intuitive side. You can use AI to facilitate some of your simpler customer relations functions, such as a chatbox on your website. The AI can populate common questions and provide answers when a customer selects their issue from the list. More advanced AI can even have conversations with customers and provide answers based on pre-programmed keywords it will scan for in the customer’s messages.
APPS FOR SOCIAL POSTS
People are constantly scrolling through social media platforms and to keep up, you have to push tons of content their way. This could mean having an employee or even a team that only manages social channels. Depending on the size of your budget, that could make a huge dent in your bottom line.
Instead of adding more people to your team, get an app that manages your social posts for you. These apps help you plan, schedule, and post to various social media channels so you never have to worry about falling off someone’s feed. All you have to do is plug the post information into the app—which you can do in bulk—and then let it do its thing. This turns a full-time job into a single employee’s side responsibility, saving you lots of time and money.
REMOTE COLLABORATION SOFTWARE
More people are searching for remote work than ever before and plenty of businesses are coming around to the idea. Whether you’re a fully remote company or not, you’ll likely find yourself in need of a few platforms that make it easy to communicate and collaborate with people who aren’t in the office.
Zoom is one platform that took the stage as the leader in videoconferencing for small businesses that couldn’t invest in larger tech like Cisco. There are messaging apps, such as Slack, and even project management platforms such as Asana, ClickUp, or Basecamp. Finding one that works for your team is an easy way to bring remote employees into the fold and create a seamless hybrid work environment.
This year will be a big one for technology, so get your business ready with these tech solutions.
