In today’s digital age, no company can get away without utilizing technology if they want to survive. This is especially true in marketing, as the rest of the world spends so much of their time playing on smartphones, connecting with one another through social media, and perusing every corners of the internet.

For companies to capture the lion’s share of their target market, they need to reach potential leads and conversions where they already exist. As such, here are three marketing technologies every digital company should be using:

1. Incentive & Gamification Technology

Gamification is a relatively new word, though the concept is not. The term refers to turning something into a game, or rather taking the elements of a game, like points and rewards, and using that to drive learning, sales — whatever.

A good example of this is rewards points. Many businesses use the concept of rewards points to drive customer loyalty and increase the number of return shoppers that visit their store or use their platform. By presenting incentives like these, companies are showing that they care about the customer experience and are committed to rewarding those that stick by them.

Nowadays there exist myriad advanced incentive technology programs which can help you not only gain and convert new customers, but which can also up-train and maintain sales staff on their product knowledge. Look at all of the different options and decide which one is best for you and your organization.

2. Responsive Web Design

While not traditionally considered “technology”, the design of your website is extremely important for marketing — so much so, that Kristan Bauer considers it one of the seven SEO fundamentals.

This is because any website that isn’t mobile friendly nowadays is going to take too long to load, be too complicated to navigate on a small screen, or both. Your website’s design is essentially the digital face of your company, and, regardless of conventional (if not cliched) wisdom, customers judge books by their covers.

Your website’s design should be sleek but effective. Don’t go all out with fancy Flash plug-ins or other frills that don’t actually help navigation, acquisition, or retention. Function should be always be your number one priority — just remember that function includes myriad user devices, like smartphones and tablets.

3. Live Chat Software

While chat software, whether automated or manned by customer service professionals, is nothing new, using it for marketing may be something worth trying.

In their article, “Live Chat System & Inbound Lead Generation,” the experts at HelpOnClick suggest utilizing live chat software to garner inbound leads via these four strategies:

  • Automated Greetings: Automated chat pop-ups are referred to as “Greetings.” You should consider setting different greetings to be triggered by different events such as: returning visitors, time intervals, visiting certain pages, etc.
  • Free Offers: Another effective way to generate leads is through the promotion of free materials using the live chat system. This includes discount coupons, free e-books, publicity materials, and reports. Apart from generating leads, promoting free materials through live chat also builds customer interest and trust and improves brand awareness.
  • 24/7 Live Chat: Customers nowadays expect to be able to reach businesses at all hours of the day. On top of that, you can greatly increase incoming leads by decreasing hours of downtime.
  • Live Chat Reports: Live chat reports can help you to fine tune your customer service strategy. These will help you garner different statistics relating to departmental activities and customer service quality ratings, and they can help you to evaluate the effectiveness of the customer service department and take actions accordingly.

Be utilizing these technologies, you can ensure that your firm is on the cutting edge of the digital marketing future. Just remember that these aren’t end-all-be-all solutions. Your marketing strategy should be well rounded, well thought out, and most of all, well researched. Nevertheless, while these technologies aren’t silver bullets, they should help immensely.