“Are your tech tools stifling your business?” @CanDoCanBe
“Karen Skidmore works with small business owners to show them how to build the business model, create the marketing systems and use the right web tech marketing tools to attract more of the right clients to their business. To subscribe to her free email newsletter and get access to practical advice that will move your business forward. CLICK HERE and Visit www.webtechclub.com and you can grab a FREE taster!
Do you change your business to suit your tech tools? Or your tech tools to your business?
As you start to embrace technology within your business – whether it’s a new email marketing system or web based accounting package – it’s easy to feel unsure about whether you are making the right decision.
Perhaps you have a website built on flash by your teenage son. It’s looks beautiful – and it didn’t cost you anything apart from a month’s worth of washing when he was back from Uni – but it can’t be found on Google (Flash can’t be viewed by search engines, hence its inability to get found!).
Perhaps you are feeling pretty chuffed with your free shopping cart system. You’ve not shelled out any cash, but you are getting frustrated with setting up your new workshop. You’ve now delayed the date three times because you can’t the system do what you want it to.
Sticking with the wrong tools?
How many tech systems are you sticking with just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to work out if there is a better system out there?
Is it better to keep using the same systems and just fit your business around them? Better the devil and all that, especially when you are not paying out much for them. But when certain tools and systems are stifling our creativity and growth, then surely it is time to change.
Email marketing systems are one of those tech tools that it is easy for a small business to out grow. When I first started using email newsletters in my business in 2004, I went with Constant Contact. It was – and still is – a great newsletter system. But even with the recently added new features, it still isn’t an email marketing system to support selling products and programmes online. It misses the power of a decent autoresponder system.
Autoresponders are my number one recommended web tech marketing tool. They allow you to put your online relationship building in to turbo drive. So when I started using 1ShoppingCart for my workshop and ebook selling, I was able to start building a set-and-forget marketing system. But I loved Constant Contact’s email newsletters so much that I stuck with them and ran both systems side by side for more than 18 months.
When enough is enough
Cracks started to appear. It wasn’t a surprise. I was running my email campaigns on one system and starting to build my customer list on another. When someone unsubscribed on one system, I had to manually check that they were taken off the other! Duh!
Finally I took one of the leaps of faith, sucked in my breath and got it sorted. Delegating the project to a Virtual Assistant was the key to success.
5 years later and the change of email marketing system happens again. Not part of my big plan, but this time it was 1ShoppingCart that was stifling my business. No matter how hard I tried to understand why, 1ShoppingCart refused to work their recurring payments with PayPal. One off payments, not a problem. But monthly recurring payments for my Web Tech Club membership site, nope!
I came up with a sticking plaster. Send new members directly to PayPal. It worked beautifully with Wishlist Member (the WordPress membership plugin that I use), but my VA still had to manually add new members to 1ShoppingCart to get the system to work. I could have stuck with it. No one seems to notice this sticking plaster. But I knew it could be better. I knew people wanted to use their credit cards, rather than just their PayPal accounts. And even though I could do this with PayPal Website Payments Pro, it still wouldn’t work with 1ShoppingCart.
Plus my other big problem was that I couldn’t use the 1ShoppingCart affiliate programme. Without the orders coming through the system, affiliates would have no way of the system allocating their recommended members to their account. And when you have person after person asking you how to sign up to your affiliate programme because they love your product so much, it can get you down when you have to admit you can’t offer one!
Turning away business because your systems can’t offer it?
So here where these web tech tools were, helping me run my business. But stifling it all the same. It had to change.
I could have gone down the merchant account route, but after an awful experience of trying to get Worldpay to work with 1ShoppingCart the previous year, it was 1ShoppingCart that had to go. My tried and tested shopping cart system that I had recommended to my clients for the past 5 years was on it’s way out.
I’ve ended up with Premium Web Cart and Aweber (PWC doesn’t offer an email marketing system so you have to set up a system such as Aweber along side). The system is still not fully set up, but finally my affiliate programme can be launched very soon.
It’s not easy. I am not advocating changing your email marketing systems – or any other web tech tool – just for the sake of it. But if you are “making do” just because you haven’t got the time, energy or mental capacity to change it, make the time, energy or mental capacity to do it.
I know I may well be giving you a huge project to think of here. However, what would be the difference to your business this time next year, if you did change one of your web tech tools?
Web tech tools can make us more productive and increase our marketing power, but when certain tech tools stifle our business, then surely its time to invest and change.
What do you think?
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