As children of the digital era, technology has become an irreplaceable part of our daily lives. If you think about it, we rely on technology to automate pretty much all of our daily activities. From using your GPS to find the nearest grocery store to ordering items online, technology has come to improve our lives significantly.
The same need for technology in the marketing process has created a new form of technology known as MarTech.
MarTech includes all the technology tools that are meant to help marketers meet the needs of competitive modern marketing. And SMEs include all small and medium-sized enterprises – which represents 99% of all businesses in the EU and US.
Read on to see why all SMEs need to build a solid MarTech stack in order to compete in today’s digital landscape, and 4 types of software that should most definitely be part of your marketing strategy by the end of 2019.
Why SMEs need MarTech
MarTech can benefit SMEs long-term expansion and growth beyond measure. Investing in great marketing technology tools will help you achieve your goals faster and surpass your competitors.
The right MarTech can make your business smarter, more efficient, give you extra time to complete pressing tasks, and increase your chances of dominating the competitive marketing landscape. And if you’re a SaaS platform, it can help you increase your ARR and reduce your MRR churn significantly..
4 tools for your SME MarTech stack
1. Video creation tool
Video content has long been crowned as the king of marketing. While text alone can deliver powerful incentives, using visuals to enrich your text can have a great impact on the effectiveness and relevance of your content.
As visual creatures, modern consumers are influenced greatly by content that will offer them a multi-sensory experience. A great way to start is to create amazing video content that will perform better than your images. To create powerful videos that will convert, you can use a tool like Wibbitz.
Wibbitz gives you flexible video customization options to tell your story and enhance your customer experience, with content that will stimulate their senses and drive them further down your marketing funnel. Here’s a video from The Vitamin Shoppe created with the Wibbitz tool:
Ready to create more video?
2. Email marketing automation tool
Emails still reign supreme, with the number of global email users set to reach 4.4 billion users in 2023. With the right email marketing tool, SMEs can build nurture strategies to connect with a massive number of prospects, and reach them through one of the most popular marketing channels out there.
The market offers a lot of alternatives to Mailchimp like Moosend – with great features and reasonable pricing – to enhance your SME email marketing strategy and see results in the most cost-rewarding way.
Moosend has a responsive email campaign editor and easy drag-and-drop feature that makes it easier to create your email campaigns. Moosend also offers some pre-built email newsletter templates to help you save time and guide you through your email set-up. Here’s a real-time example of the drag-and-drop campaign editor:
3. Social media management tool
Another type of technology to keep in your MarTech Stack is a social media management tool – one that can make it easier to reach your social media followers across different platforms.
If social media marketing is already a top priority of yours, then you already know that creating and posting content can be a full-time job. SMS tools allow you to reply to comments, posts, and messages on different social profiles and schedule your next big post that will wow your followers.
SocialPilot, in this case, is a great Hootsuite alternative for SMEs that want to spend less but enjoy the benefits of pricier tools. Here’s a quick look at the interface:
4. Conversion rate optimization tool
When it comes to your website, there are a few great tools available that help improve your conversion rate and profit. The right CRO tools – for example, Hotjar – can measure the value of your customers, help you increase your brand visibility and give you better ROI and revenue. It can also help you test your new website and reduce the risk of going back to the old designs.
Hotjar has an easy to navigate dashboard that allows you to optimize your conversion rates through heatmaps, visitor recordings, polls, and feedback. Here’s an example from Hotjar’s Instant Visual Feedback feature:
For marketers working at an SME, it’s imperative to take advantage of the great MarTech available on the market. While the selection process might be difficult, choosing the tools that will suit your needs can ultimately provide you with cost-rewarding solutions that will help you multiply your efforts tenfold.
Marilia is a Content Writer for the email marketing software Moosend.
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