How much change has your business experienced in the past several months? Probably more than you’ve seen over the past few years combined! When a new technology comes out, there are early adopters, middle-of-the-road adopters, and the so-called laggards, those who finally come on board to use them.
Literally overnight in March, many companies were forced to accelerate their rate of becoming aware of and adopting tools to allow their businesses to continue to operate effectively and efficiently in our new environment. Here are some of the tools you may have already adopted or currently need, or some you might consider implementing to remain client-centric.
Video conferencing: Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, Webex…these are just several of the video conferencing platforms available. They allow you to see and hear each other, as well as share documents or video content on-screen – as close as we can come to in-person meetings. Companies are holding virtual meetings with internal teams, as well as existing and new clients.
Effective email marketing: Clients and prospects need to hear from you! Periodic email campaigns allow you to educate and inform various audiences about the status of your company (open and serving clients?), your services that can help them, relevant industry happenings, thought leadership, and team member updates.
Live chat: Also known as live support, visitors to your website can initiate questions to one of your designated team members for service or marketing purposes. Ask a question, get an answer in real-time. Beyond having a live person on your end, there are also artificial intelligence programs that can attempt to recognize typical questions and provide “canned” answers, even when a live person isn’t available on your end. Needs, benefits, and appropriate platforms and technology vary per company.
Text messaging: More and more people expect to be able to interact with companies via text. Again, it’s about giving answers to questions and providing information to those who either are or may potentially be doing business with you. Having text messaging access to your business can help remove a barrier to improved client service or capturing new business.
Marketing automation: Marketing automation is a process where technology is used to automate several repetitive or sequential tasks that are performed on a regular basis in a marketing campaign. For example, if someone signs up to receive periodic informative emails from your company, you can create a collection of emails with such content that will be automatically sent to that recipient over a period of time. A tool that allows marketers to design, execute, and automate a time-bound marketing workflow is called a marketing automation platform.
Reservation and capacity management: In the new COVID-19 business environment, social distancing and lower building/room occupancies are going to create frustrated and annoyed clients and customers. This smartphone texting technology turns what would normally be a line or full lobby into a series of mobile time slots. This allows you to manage capacity at any given time, and ensure that demand is spread out throughout the day. Customers and employees need to know you care, they need to feel safe. Be ahead of the curve by implementing this technology.
When thinking about these kinds of tools, consider that you personally may not want to “venture there” quite yet, for whatever reason, but those who interact with you may want and expect to be able to interact with you in those ways. Some of these enhancements, client relationships, and sales tools could or should be tactics within your overall strategic marketing strategy.
If you would like to discuss or need assistance navigating tools such as these, please reach out to us. Stay well and safe.
Celebrating this Memorial Day weekend will be a little different this year. We hope you’ll be able to enjoy time with family while honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. They have helped keep us safe and preserve the freedom we so treasure.
Quote of the week:
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men and women who died. Rather we should thank God that such individuals lived.
George S. Patton