ON STRATEGY || Using Technology Tools for Business Effectively

Technology is an enabler.

At least for now because AI supposedly takes over and could think more strategically than the human brain can. Until that time, technology tools are business tools you need to think about strategically to figure out how you can use them to improve your business and achieve your objectives.

One important note most business owners neglect to ask themselves is: what do I want the business tools to do for me? In other words, what's your business objective for using this tool? 

The easy answer would be ‘more sales’, but before the sales action takes place, many other considerations and actions take place. 

First, the prospect needs to be aware of your service and/or product.

Second, they need to decide they are interested in your offer.

Third, if they are interested they will try out your offer and see if it works for them (some companies don’t offer this trial period, which could potential lead to more conversions)

Fourth, they decide to buy from you.

This may still be a parred down process of all the thoughts a prospect goes through before making a purchasing decision, especially for higher-value purchases such as homes, cars, and other sizeable investments, but roughly this lays out the key decision-making phases every buyer goes through.

Knowing this, how does each of the tools you use help you get closer to step 4, where the user adopts your product? Are you using social media to achieve awareness for Step 1? Using newsletters and landing pages to get users to try your product for Step 3? Think about how each tool adds value, and if they don't, they why are you still using them?

So, if I asked you the following questions, how would you answer? 

1. What do you want your social media channels to do for you? Be specific for each channel
    
2. What do you want your newsletters to do for you? 
    
3. What do you want your website to do for you? 
    
4. What do you want your sales team to do for you? 
    
5. What do you want your direct mailers to do for you? 

Let’s take newsletters for example. If your answer is: “I want our newsletters to drive traffic to our new product landing page and we update our new products every 2 weeks.” 

Your newsletter should align with this objective, with the content leading with the new product announcements, and then corresponding landing page links to the page. The timing of your newsletter should also be aligned with your product release schedule; if your new products are refreshed every Thursday, you should send out a newsletter Thursday morning to encourage traffic that day to shop your new releases. 

Understanding how technology works is just the first step, putting on your strategic brain to figure out how it can work for YOU is what will make technology a great supporting tool for your business.