The Role of Technology in Transforming Business Operations

Technology is transforming the way business is done, especially in the arena of small business. As a small business, you have a unique advantage to your larger competitors in that your cost for adoption of new technology is minimal, and the difference the technology can make is invaluable. Aside from being able to connect and communicate with a local consumer more easily and more efficiently than before, technology can also enable you to expand your business’s horizons – what started as a local “Main Street” type business can expand into a regional, or even international, player.

Both paid search and social media have been steadily incorporated into many business strategies, but if you have not integrated these two powerful marketing tools, you may find you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Inasmuch as the return-on-investment, conversion-obsessed world of paid searches can seem a world away from the viral and community-based marketing seen in social media, their differences are exactly what makes them complementary.

On the one hand, paid search is all about...

Whatever method(s) of marketing you choose to use for your small business, you are generating data. A huge plus for online marketing methods is that you can easily gather information on the effectiveness of you campaigns by seeing what ad or set of wording draws in the most leads. You can see what promotions drive the most traffic to your site and/or the most sales to your business. In addition, you also have data such as unique site visitors, whether those visits were made by clicking on a link or typing in your URL, etc., as well as the information you gain from social media.

With so much data available, it can be difficult to know what is worthwhile to track and how to apply the data from tracking those variables in a way that creates real investment decision value, as opposed to an arbitrary historical or industry comparison.

WHAT TO TRACK?...