Chanlder Garden Marketing: How to master the changing social environment and stay relevant as a business

Saturday, March 4, 2017

How to master the changing social environment and stay relevant as a business

While running a small business, you may feel like you have threats coming from all sides. Competitors copying your concept, innovators on the rise, and a constantly changing world will test even the best businesses. The fast-paced social environment is another aspect for small business owners to consider. As everything shifts around you, it is normal to feel like your company is being left behind. Here are a few ways for your business to stay relevant.

Stay informed

The technology section of your local newspaper will give you a beat on what is happening on the digital landscape, and there are specialized websites for everything from social media marketing help to improving your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to gain ground in Google rankings. Tech conferences and marketing forums also highlight developments in the business world and society.

Another excellent way to keep on top of societal changes is by talking with your children or anyone who is young. What makes it into the newspaper and what the kids are saying do not often meet halfway. Have a source with an ear to the ground to stay informed about changes in social life. You may learn nearly as much by watching the top 10 YouTube videos of any given month.

Find out what works

While small business owners may feel overwhelmed by social media strategies, you have more tools at your disposal than ever to measure what is working. Twitter campaigns work for many businesses, but if you do not see any increase in followers, favorites, or retweets after months of activity, then your best bet is to change course and try another network.

Each social network has a way for you to see how your marketing efforts are performing. A skilled marketer will suggest ways for you to move the needle and expand your brand's reach, but you can take a look for yourself whenever you have doubts. The changing social environment is making it harder for marketers to tell companies tall tales of their success. Everything is verifiable.

Hire young

Those who say great recruiting is an exact science suggest you hire employees to address weaknesses in your company. In order to keep up with changing times, you may consider hiring a younger candidate to offer tips in social strategy and help you grasp what a new generation is looking for from your company.

Ignoring the fast-paced social environment was the downfall of many companies, like Blockbuster and Tower Records. In both cases, shifting habits and trends among younger consumers eventually made their products obsolete. By the time these businesses tried to adjust their approach, it was too late. Even the smallest business can learn from companies on that scale.

Outsource your concerns

As you try to keep your business model relevant, you may want to look for help outside your company. Business coaching, social media strategy, financing options, search engine optimization and help for other concerns are available through UPS Store professional partners. When you are having trouble with one area of your business, hiring a new employee may not be the most practical solution.

Outsourcing has the potential to solve your company's pressing needs without a large commitment in money or the valuable time of your staff. Businesses operating with a tight-knit group may not have the advantages of larger companies, but the number of freelancers and one-off professional service providers is allowing small businesses to close the gap. Before taking on more payroll, consider your outsourcing options, which require far less commitment.

A rapidly changing social environment should not intimidate a small business owner, no matter how long you have been in the game. Let The UPS Store partners help make your website mobile-friendly or give you the edge in any other area where you feel like you have fallen behind.

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The 5 Business Processes of Marketing Resource Management (MRM)

Planning and Budgeting: - At the forefront of a successful MRM implementation is the planning stage. The planning of an organization’s marketing strategy ensures all 3 MRM components; people, process, and technology align. Although budgeting also plays an important role, the planning stage revolves highly around scheduling and resource optimization.Planning, and having an overview of all your ongoing marketing activities, increases overall campaign visibility and ensures uniform resource distribution. These resources are spread across campaigns in order of their complexity, priority, and allocated budget. These three key drivers will allow for more efficient marketing budgets across your different lines of business.Additionally, when it comes to mature MRM implementations, historical data such as past budgets, resource efficiency, and campaign ROI are taken into consideration.
Business Process Management: - Often misjudged, the importance of a robust process management system will ensure the success of an effective MRM implementation. An important component in this stage is across-the-board traceability of all marketing related processes and resources.Merging these elements together into a process management system is achievable with the use of workflows. These workflows provide an efficient way of consolidating tasks, resources, and creatives in a centralized location; giving executives visibility into approvals, milestones, and project completion.
Approval: - Approvals, another important part of a process management system, ensure proper accountability throughout the entire project. Large scale MRM systems will often require several stages of approval cycles. So whether it be creative, legal, or financial, most marketing collateral will go through multiple approval stages before moving into production.Predefined management procedures are the driver behind the definition of workflow steps. However, approval processes tend to vary across organizations and industries. Therefore, they usually are the reason for many cost and time efficiency gains.As an organization evolves and adopts a mature MRM approval procedure, a change management system can play a significant role in achieving even higher process efficiency gains. Through tracking changes, executives can maintain visibility. This encourages transparency and typically yields greater results with both your marketing campaign returns.
Reusability: - As a median MRM value, reusability is one of the best techniques for improving business processes. With today’s digital marketing world, marketing objectives gear towards personalizing and tailoring down communications. Consequently, this creates multiple versions and variations for each piece of collateral. When managing the high volume of creatives, along with their approval processes, it is important to have a digital asset management system integrated within the MRM solution. While we often associate reusability with assets, it also significantly improves the efficiency of various other marketing components like campaign briefs and financial information.
Measurement - A successful MRM framework depends on performance measurement methodologies to track the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities. These performance efficiency gains are tracked across resource, process, and budgetary levels. Measuring resource capabilities goes from tracking the role of a particular resource to managing entire marketing teams. To properly track these marketing activities, the measurement concept requires the use of metrics and KPIs. These marketing metrics and KPIs are defined by corporate objectives and vary depending on the industry. These represent campaign-specific metrics with ROI, response rates, the number of impressions, and offer conversion rates – amongst others.After completing this stage, compare the results to the estimates you initially identified in the planning phase. You can then feed those results back into the planning stages of future campaigns. These iterations will help with resource optimization and to ensure proper budget allocation.