Tech Investments You Can’t Afford Not to Make: Advice for Small Businesses

It’s an exciting new age for small businesses. There’s a wealth of affordable technology on the market designed to help draw customers to your website, simplify the transacting of business, and keep those transactions safe and secure. If you’re a small business owner, you know that your success depends on being smart with every single investment. That makes it all the more important to find tech advances that can transform your business into a desirable, safe, and convenient way for your customers to shop. 

Security

There’s little doubt that data security technology is one of the most important tech investments you can make. It involves nothing less than gaining the confidence of your clientele and the protection of customers’ sensitive financial information. Small businesses that don’t secure themselves and their customers run the risk of being branded as irresponsible companies concerned only with maximizing profit by skimping on important technology. If you think data crime couldn’t happen to you, ask Target, Yahoo, and JP Morgan Chase — big companies that thought they had properly secured very sensitive data and information. 

Emphasize Mobility

Giving customers a responsive and engaging website is a must these days, but it’s still not enough. In fact, you also have to ensure that your site is mobile-friendly because more than 50 percent of web traffic comes from smartphones, which means your small business must be savvy about mobile technology, including websites, payment apps, and any details that make it easy for a mobile device to interact with your online storefront/website. Many content management systems provide mobile-compatible technology that businesses can use to construct customized websites that look great but don’t cost an arm and a leg. 

A Dynamic Website

Small businesses need to attract, impress and retain clients in order to succeed. Winning people over means you need a dynamic and captivating website. One of the best investments you’ll make is to hire a brilliant freelance JavaScript developer. As Upwork explains, skilled JS developers are fluent in different back-end technologies and have plenty of experience with build tools like Bower and Grunt. An effective application of JavaScript can make your website really pop. What’s more, your site will be much more mobile-friendly, which is an essential factor in pulling in customers who prefer to use their mobile devices to shop. JavaScript will keep customers coming back for a great shopping experience. 

Marketing Automation

Integrating your marketing outreach activities with your company’s technology is one of the most efficient ways to promote small businesses. Customer relationship management software allows you to communicate with customers and grow relationships without a lot of wasteful effort and, even better, without spending needlessly on tactics that might or might not work. 

As a small business owner, it’s important to maximize every investment you make in your company, and that’s where marketing automation can help. It’s a smart technology that makes it easy to reach the right prospects at the right time, as well as provide customers with what they want based on their purchase history and shopping habits. Chatbots and automated social media marketing are good examples of affordable, technologically advanced marketing tools. 

Tech-Based Team Collaboration

If you have a large team to manage or an entirely virtual workforce, a team collaboration tool can help you work more efficiently and effectively. Collaboration tools combine communication and project management and reduce the likelihood that an important task will fall through the cracks. Sococo, for example, is a powerful online collaboration platform for meeting, messaging, and coordinating work, and Adobe Connect is a great way to hold interactive virtual meetings that can even be played back if someone missed something important. 

Small businesses are under a lot of pressure to make the right decision at every turn. That’s very hard to do, but there are technology resources that can make everyone productive and position your company for success — and there are many that won’t stress your budget.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

Persuasive Wordplay in Animated Email Advertisements

Animated email advertisements by Google. An incredibly well-known company, which began as a search engine but now houses an entire suite similar to that of Microsoft Office. The following advertisement is for their advancement into becoming something of an "all-in-one" company, similar to Apple's "Siri," "Google Assistant" is an assistant to help people complete tasks by only using vocal commands. However, let's see how their advertisement compares to our standards.

Google Assistant Advertisement - Overall Grade: A

ANIMATED:


The animated portion of their advertisement is extremely well made for email-based marketing approaches. Firstly, it's a small portion of the email that's fully animated, creating smaller file size, and therefore, a shorter loading time. 

The pretense of this advertisement is the sentence, "Have Google -blank- it." Putting different words in place of this "blank" is effective in that it's able to give examples of what the audience can do with this specific product. In giving multiple different uses for the Google Assistant, more people will buy into the idea of using it, because they can see a practical use for the product. Having the text move quicker and quicker as the animation goes on before replacing the changing verb into the slogan is smart because it gives the audience a sense of there being many, many more options available, and that there isn't enough time to look through them all. This is smart as a way to also lead into the ending, where the slogan appears.

The bold statement of "Make Google do it" is extremely effective in that it's able to very simply explain what the entirety of the animated advertisement had been trying to say; essentially, that Google, or Google's Assistant, can do anything you ask it to, and that all you have to do is tell it to do so. It's a smart way to tell the audience that they need to "Make Google do -blank-" in a way that doesn't sound like a command. If it were phrased that way, fewer people would be inclined to listen, even just a little bit, because people don't like being told what to do. However, with the email advertisement saying that they should make Google -blank- it, the audience doesn't feel as if they're being commanded, but that they can tell Google what needs to be done.

To finish off the animated advertisement with the logo for Google's Assistant is extremely smart, especially coupled with the fact that it is the only color in the entire animation. Having it be the only splash of color helps to make the logo stand out, as well as making sure that the audience remembers it from the animation. Considering the logo is also used within Google Assistant itself, it's good that it's in the advertisement to give the audience and customers a tie-in to the product itself.

STATIC:

The rest of this advertisement is great, considering that it came up in time for spring. The imagery of someone pruning a tree, getting it healthy for spring, is not only a great juxtaposition of the monotony of black, grey, and white (minus the Google Assistant logo, of course), but it also brings in the color green as a focal point, which is not only associated with nature and life but also money and wealth, slightly inspiring imagery of Google Assistant being a product that will help someone's life be prosperous. "Spring into action" is a really cute way to blend in the time, and give a reason to begin using Google Assistant, which we'll mention soon. Through the statement, "tidy up and make way for what matters most with help from your Google Assistant," one can assume that the email advertisement is alluding to the fact that, in spring, many people participate in spring cleaning, in order to have a clean start for the rest of the year. This can also be helped through the fact that they're advertising a completely hands-free version of the AI, meaning that the audience can be cleaning with their hands, and begin searching things, create reminders, and more, simply by saying a vocal prompt. 

The final part of the email advertisement states that Google Assistant can be available across different devices, which not only helps sell their product to people who maybe have multiple devices that support Google Assistant, or at least, try to send a subconscious message for people who don't have multiple devices, to perhaps look into buying some for the upcoming seasons. 

Overall, the grade I've given is simply because I believe that every aspect of this animated email advertisement is absolutely wonderful. The subtle psychology behind the wording of the slogan, the color aspects of the animation, the color of the static image below, the wordplay on the season, and the slight advertisement at the bottom; everything works cohesively together, and it's orchestrated into a beautifully simple, yet complex advertisement that is succinct and persuasive.

Related Content: Using Free Email Accounts for Business (Podcast: Morning Joe with Gibrón) 

Animated Email Advertisements and Color Theory

We continue our examination of animated emails from top brands by taking a look at Olive Garden's National Breadstick Day advertisement. Olive Garden is a well-known restaurant known for its home-style attitude, its never-ending garlic breadsticks, and its amazing salad dressing. The following email advertisement was for National Breadstick Day, trying to get their newsletter followers to "celebrate breadsticks" at their nearest Olive Garden.

Olive Garden National Breadstick Day Advertisement - Overall Grade: B-

ANIMATED:

This specific advertisement is alright. The animation itself is choppy, almost looking like stop-motion, which could potentially be in order to add to the homemade feel that the restaurant likes to advertise. The way that the breadsticks are crawling off the plate is definitely a plus, though, because it seems to imply that everyone at the table is taking the breadsticks and that everyone wants some. The composition of the advertisement is very good, though, having the plate of breadsticks in the center as if the reader were looking down at their table, then having their signature salad in the upper lefthand corner and what looks like a soda in the upper right. 

Having the colors of the letters be the light green that they are is both aesthetically pleasing against the dark brown of the table, and is great at connecting the entire piece together as it's the same color as the salad in the upper lefthand corner. The alternating brown color is good as it also connects to the brown wood of the table the plates and whatnot are sitting on, and as a good contrast to the white plate. This is all ignoring the fact that the new logo is made with the same colors, however, and the colors could just be exact color drops from that. The same logic could be applied to those colors being chosen for the logo as well, though. Green is usually associated with nature and freshness, which are good to think of with a restaurant that has a very memorable salad appetizer. Not to mention that it's associated with growth and money, possibly subconsciously telling their customers that they are a very successful company and that they're a good choice to go to. The brown is effective in sharing the idea that the restaurant is friendly, which is a selling point in most of their advertisements as well.

STATIC:

The message below is very clever. Most, if not all, of Olive Garden's audience, love their signature breadsticks, and the company is capitalizing on that. By saying that "one breadstick is never enough," Olive Garden is subconsciously telling its audience that they need to eat multiple breadsticks to feel satisfied, which is good, considering that the restaurant gives unlimited servings. Even the button at the bottom is useful with this, by bringing home the entire advertisement and reminding the audience why it was sent out. By stating "celebrate breadsticks" on the button to the website, they both remind the audience that it's National Breadstick Day, but also make them crave exactly what they're trying to sell.

The grade I've given is derived from the overall placement of the components and the design of the advertisement, but not the animation itself. Even if the point of having the choppy animation was to add to a homemade, stop-motion feel to the advertisement, it seems lazy and uninteresting. The composition and colors were nice, as well as the written message below, which definitely helped boost the grade a bit. Although, no matter the interesting thought development behind it, and the message it may have, this advertisement doesn't make me feel as though I need to go out and get some breadsticks alongside some Olive Garden Italian food, even if it was National Breadstick Day.