How to Manage Both Marketing Strategy & Software
As a small business owner, pulling together an online marketing strategy – and the software tools that are meant to support it – can be a challenge. If your business is big enough to need a robust marketing effort but too small to hire an in-house marketer, a hybrid solution might be right for you.
We all know the modern paradox. Our tools make us efficient and accurate. But managing the tools and information takes more time than it saves.
It’s easier than ever to create a comprehensive, 40 page business report filled with data, graphs, and analysis. But this ease means we have more 40 page reports to read. More meetings needed to uncover data that’s valuable.
Unfortunately these 40 page reports don’t come with a bubble of time to fit into a 40 hour work week. Software creates action-items, but it doesn’t provide you with someone to carry them out.
For many small businesses who market online, this results in guesswork and half-measures. The bottom line strategy is hope. Sometimes you seem to reach your target audience, sometimes you don’t.
This is not a way to build out long-term success.
Hybrid Online Marketing Solution
A hybrid marketing solution is one that combines internet marketing software with human expertise to guide it.
It’s both software-as-a-service (SAAS) and marketing services.
For the small business, this is the best of both worlds. Not only do you get the best marketing and SEO software, but you get execution with strategy and collateral.
The SAAS/service hybrid is fit for small to medium sizes businesses that:
- Estimate that they have a significant target audience they can reach online via search, social media, online advertisements, and website marketing.
- Don’t have the time/skills to manage the marketing themselves nor the budget to hire in-house staff.
With a centralized marketing platform, you get transparency. You get understandable data that correlates results.
With a consultant, you get interpretation that guides improvements over-time.
The second one is vital. Internet marketing is dynamic. The critical thing that separates successful campaigns from mediocre ones is that data is analyzed and modifications are made over time. That process is essentially what online marketing is.
Software provides insight, but it can’t make changes or take action on behalf of your business.
Data by itself is useless. Fancy reports that nobody reads – much less acts on – provide no value.
Most SMBs need an internet marketing strategy. But despite all the technology, it starts and ends with people. Whatever your approach, make sure you’ve got the right ones in the mix.
