In this age of modern awakening, people have evolved to attain a more sophisticated taste in their lifestyle and living. On the other hand, businesses have become more responsive to changes, varied preferences, shifting scenarios and modern needs of man. Together, these buyers and sellers have embraced new opportunities to enjoy a whole new perspective of what a market is.
The rise of the digital market era is one of the products of the information age. There exists convenient and time saving ways to purchase. It is where information about different products and services are accessible on-demand. It is a place where there is a free exchange of ideas, feedback and suggestions about trends, innovations and future advancements in any field in the industry. It is where the marketing has expanded to new and exciting ways to promote their products, and even intelligently predict emerging market trends. The digital market era paved a way for business intelligence tools to emerge, to enable businesses to have leverage in giving the demands of the consumers, as they want it.
The Digital and Information Age
After the growth of the digital era, we are now facing the information age. People have started to clamor for more knowledge and development in terms of technological advancements and innovations that aim to increase a person’s efficiency and productivity in his/her activities or routine. The demands of the high technological economy have now surpassed the books, and people are now discovering how to keep up with all the growth and expansion. People have become more intelligent as data and information is within easy access, due to the rise of the internet, which revolutionized the information age. People have become more aware of his needs, wants and preferences, and he wants to have it, now.
In the business, executives and managers have found ways to allow them an ease in making crucial decisions and maximized their time and output, making them more efficient individuals. They have seen solutions to lower the costs of innovating and developing useful and valuable products to sustain the fast paced and shifting demands of the consuming public. Businesses started to capitalize more in knowledge and learning, as well as employee productivity and business tools. They see these as worth investments to present economic scenario, as well as a preparation to meet future demands in the market.
Marketing and Digital Data
The continuously growing demands of people in all walks of life have enormously contributed to the expanse of the marketplace. It paved for more opportunities for small and medium scale businesses to enter the market scene as well. The digital and information era opened a new dimension of a marketplace called e-commerce. E-commerce utilized the internet as its virtual marketplace, where sellers and buyers exist and make use of virtual payment methods such as online banking and credit cards. It also has its own method of advertising via websites, pop up ads, blogs, email, and other web based media.
As an alternative to the legacy phone systems, it also use the VoIP, or the Voice over Internet Protocol to engage in live conversations should the potential customer wanted to know more details about the product he is eyeing. Other methods of communication are available as well like online chat and email. This is another dimension in the revolution of business and marketing. The use of virtual platforms to expand the market coverage and promote convenience and ease in purchasing and service availment.
Through the expanded market platform via the e-commerce, the demand for more comprehensive and extensive marketing strategies have grown tremendously. Many businesses wanted the upgrade right away, while more start-ups were using it already. There is a sudden increase in demand for software based business systems in communication and operations management as well. More have started to see the impact of the information revolution in educating the consumers about necessity, value and investment. Consumers have become smarter shoppers who are not only buying and spending, but also investing.
Marketing and Communication
The consumers have long since expanded their purchasing power through the advancements in marketing and innovation. The young generation has also become one of the leading sectors that consume technology, generating more leads in a business. The ease in communication enabled many gateways to engage in research and comparisons between products before making purchasing decisions. Now that there are more effective marketing campaigns, the more that people communicate with businesses through the use of different methods.
In a market research conducted by Google in mid 2011 (cited in the Both Sides Of The Table website), they want to know what is the most preferred medium used by consumers in communicating with their prospect business or product provider. It arrived to 61% of calls over other means like the more popular web based options. They express more satisfaction when all concerns have been conveyed and answered right away. On the other hand, businesses prefer the email in response to customer inquiries and complaints. They said, that email is a more affordable and convenient way of communicating because they can better manage their time in answering, and at the same time, can utilize their time for other office work as well.
The different values that these market researches just reveal that consumers value, excellent customer service alongside their purchases, while businesses wanted to improve their productivity and time management skills to become more effective in their marketplace. The solution? Business Tools.
Business Tools
Employees nowadays, especially the younger ones who went into the corporate world just in time of the flourishing of the digital and information era, have developed stronger values when it comes to his/her professional affairs. They have become more driven due to a strong sense of competitiveness, have wanted more recognition for their work, and at the same time expect that their employers will give them plenty of opportunities for more learning and development. To top these demands, they are striving a balance in their corporate and personal life as well. With these values already ingrained in the modern culture in business, many were longing for a way to increase their productivity, adaptability, flexibility and efficiency, while maintaining leverage in the competitive world we are in.
What are business tools? Business tools are business solutions, that when applied with technology, will be able to provide more efficiency in serving its functions and features. It is generally used to improve the employees’ skills, productivity, efficiency and decision making ability in their respective jobs and workplaces. It serves as an aid to have a sort of a “meeting point” where customers’ and employees’ needs were met. Business tools use a set of system and techniques to implement its variety of functions and features in an organized way.
The most important upgrade in business tools is the application of technology to it, to create business intelligence tools. The term “intelligence” implies to automation of operation, or doing more complex functions in a shorter period of time. It also means that its functions can help businesses in crucial decision making and important performance evaluations. Business intelligence tools are particularly useful in businesses that prioritizes speed and efficiency. But it is generally helpful in all aspects of a business.
Marketing and Data Analytics
In marketing, the researches, surveys and evaluations are very vital in its normal operation. Any marketing campaign that will be implemented should be accompanied by in depth study of the market and customer behavior in general. Marketing accumulates huge volumes of data from different external and internal sources, which are being used by marketing analysts in assessing the current, as well as predicting future, trends in the market. The data are filtered, analysed, and processed to discover potentials and opportunities in it. It can also be an effective gauge of marketing performance for both the marketing campaigns and the team members as well.
Data analytics have long been applied by marketing analysts to unstructured and structured data that the company accumulates over time. These data deal with historical and current data, to be able to see patterns and correlations in it. These discoveries help analysts to turn data into metrics form, so its reports can be better visualized and understood. Data analytics are helpful in making evaluations and assessments of the company’s growth in general. In marketing, it helps in generating leads and in evaluation of marketing campaign’s effectiveness. It also “pulses” its market, so the marketing can predict future market trends and products that the market needs.
Data analytics is one of the technologies employed by call tracking software. Other technologies in data and language data mining, data management, predictive analysis are also utilized by call tracking software to make sure that the reports it generate are accurate and reliable. Its many functions make it a very powerful business tool used in the marketing. Data analytics, being a science, makes the whole process systematic and analytical.
Call Tracking in the Modern World
Call tracking is a technique, or a system, used to monitor and gather useful data from inbound calls. It is not a new advancement where in fact, it is first employed in a legacy phone system of a company, to get data from its callers, which are potential buyers as well, and use it to create an extensive client profiling to help in generating more leads. It is also used to gauge the performance of the marketing campaign implemented at a time by the number of calls received, and the counterpart sales it produced. It can make a reliable, statistics and metrics based reports which can help the marketing to make major decisions, and learn how to best utilize the company resources allocated to them.
Today, the method of call tracking was already automated in a platform based system called call tracking software. The phone call tracking software enables call tracking to be integrated in the PSTN, and can be used in all communication channels including web based ones like the VoIP and email. It also effectively utilizes huge amounts of data, as that in the larger scale or enterprise setting.
Call tracking tools use a sophisticated coding and programming that base its functionality in the data analytics, turning the complex process into an automated feature. It lifts the burden from marketing analysts in doing the tedious and time consuming data analytics process. Now that it is automated, it can now generate reports fast and efficiently. Businesses can now make smarter decisions, which can translate into better sales, better profits, more innovations, more competent employees, and happier customers.
For a long time, sales call tracking software have expanded its functionalities and benefits, especially in the advent of the information age. The internet has become a more popular platform for businesses to flourish, without the huge cost and many inconveniences of traditional ways of doing marketing campaigns. Instead of becoming obsolete, it enhanced its functions to effectively adapt them into the modern era we are now in. Here are some of the modern benefits of call tracking software:
- Multiple Marketing Campaigns
A call tracking tool can make a unified system of integrated multiple communication and information channels to utilize all data in a company, whether unstructured and structured. It can also effectively gather data from both offline (billboards, print ads, tv and radio commercials, etc.) and online (websites, blogs, banners, pop ads, email subscriptions, etc.) sources, and meld them into its system. It can also acquire and differentiate data from multiple marketing campaign sources to come up with a metric based analysis of each individual performance, and yield a reliable answer as to which marketing campaign generates the most leads, even giving statistical figures to support it. A more advanced feature for a best call tracking tool could be when it can also generate exact figures of sales and revenue from a specific type of marketing campaign.
- SEO Integration
According to SearchEngineLand’s survey in 2012, 85% of consumers utilize the Internet to look for potential service and product providers. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is a method used by programmers to increase the visibility of a website in the (unpaid) search results on the internet. It requires in depth study of how the internet works, and how keywords work and how it can be associated with your website. It is applied on the website by altering its coding, or making amendments and adjustments in all its media content like text, photos, or videos.
To give added insight, SEO experts utilize the reports generated by call tracking software with the keywords they use, in order to effectively implement marketing campaigns involving the internet. Conversely, a call tracking software can also “hook up” on the keywords used and monitor its effectiveness in making a website on top priority in web searches. It is an advanced feature of a call tracking software that proves that it can still be effective in this modern age.
- CRM Integration
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management is an approach in customer service management that aims to foster a positive relationship between the business and its present and future customers. It makes use of all communication channels such as telephone, email, chat, SMS, website comments, social media, etc. to establish increased visibility within its clients, as well as in gauging these customers’ wants and needs to be able to effectively establish good business relationships with them. Leads and sales are correlational, as well as maximized profits, if customer relations have been outstanding. The legacy of trust maximizes customer retention and attracting future customers.
A call tracking system can help with improving customer relations through the data it gathers containing customer profiles, customer behavior, and other insights that come from inbound calls and other communication media that are integrated in its system. It also enables the manager to listen to particular conversations in real time, to be able to offer a more personalized experience within the call duration by assessing the particular needs of the customer at the moment.
Technology aims to unify the standard in business by offering customizable solutions to each type of business that are both cost efficient and investment-worthy. It also grants confidence in start-up entrepreneurs that they can have the leverage in a competitive market. It also makes long time employees have increased productivity, efficiency and healthy attitude towards their jobs and their workplaces. Technology can effectively associate itself to ease and convenience, not just in business, but in the personal life, as well.
Are you a start-up entrepreneur? Or a long time business manager? Or a marketing analyst? Or just wanted to reap the benefits of having a reliable work partner with technology? Set the track by first knowing the best business tool for you. For the list of the top call tracking software available in the market today, check out CrowdReviews.com’s best call tracking software.
Jeev Trika
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