One thing is certain; business markets will continue to change. Unlike shifts that occurred in the business world three decades ago, changes that are happening today are coming at a faster rate. Smart entrepreneurs, whether they are solopreneurs (a one-woman outfit) or owners of large corporations, need a healthy appetite for risks taking. Fast markets and unexpected industry shifts demand that entrepreneurs also have vision.
Bringing a vision to fruition, of course, calls for creativity. It also calls for the right automated marketing tools. Without these tools, entrepreneurs can expect it to take them two or more hours a day to build and distribute email marketing campaigns, lead capture deliverables, event management and social marketing.
For example, automated marketing tools use a company’s existing web forms to capture new leads. Automated marketing tools also empower entrepreneurs to assign owners to web form leads, add leads to pre-built trigger email campaigns and review and analyze visitor tracking analytics.
Surveys built into automated marketing tools make it possible for entrepreneurs to build a survey in a matter of minutes. People operating a business today might be happy to learn that marketing tools also give business owners the resources to streamline social media marketing campaigns.
With these resources not only can entrepreneurs publish content like videos, pictures, motivational quotes, daily business facts and short films to social media networks they have accounts on, they can also track how well their published content is performing at the social media networks. To entice visitors to their business’ social media page to stay longer, digging deeper into content provided at the page, entrepreneurs can easily add widgets to their online content.
It’s these types of action steps that help keep business owners on the cutting edge of digital change. And staying on the cutting edge is critical, because as leaders at the Singapore Management University share, more changes are coming. More specifically, the leaders say, “2014 will be the year that wearable technology goes mainstream. We have seen the much-hyped introduction of Google Glass, Samsung Galaxy Gear and various Minority Report-inspired products. Many companies will jump on the bandwagon. I expect to see continuous innovation and companies daring to push the next frontier as they attempt to introduce the next product that the world will employ as an indispensable tool.”
In fact, changes that may be headed the world’s way have a strong chance of shocking even the rarest visionary. No business owner has the time to get bogged down in manual marketing campaigns, the types of campaigns that rely solely on spreadsheets, print presentations and traditional forms of marketing. Time spent working on manual projects erodes the time that entrepreneurs could be spending on introducing their products or services to prospects.
It also robs entrepreneurs of the time they could be spending on training newly hired employees on how to better market to consumers via direct marketing methods. But, more importantly, it may help entrepreneurs to combine their creativity, vision and sales goals into winning propositions.