Classified as a lower-middle income economy, the Philippines is unsurprisingly not on top of the latest trends when it comes to technology. However, thanks to a global network of partners, a growing economic sector, and increasingly accessible new technology, we are fast catching up. These leaps and bounds mean that we now have access to modern, sophisticated tools for everything from education, business operations, and marketing.

The three main ways that technology is changing marketing in the Philippines include a shift in portability, improved and editable aesthetics, and advanced tracking.

Portability

Now that laptops are more lightweight and come with new operating systems designed to work quickly and efficiently, marketing can be done from anywhere. A powerpoint can be reviewed from a cellphone, a survey can be taken on a tablet, and data can be analyzed with just a laptop and reliable Internet connection on the beach. As a country with insufficient infrastructure and traffic jams that can take hours, being able to utilize your commute time to close deals and refine marketing materials will play a key role in innovation and improvement.

Here are some tools that can help you turn your marketing team into a mobile workforce.

• [insert laptop, link to Versatech product]
• [insert smartbro pocket wifi, link to Versatech product]
• ChargeTech portable battery pack – This powerbank allows you to charge everything from your cellphones to your laptop, and it even includes a three-prong outlet to plug into.

Editable design materials

Aesthetics has always played a large role in marketing, from the ad campaigns in the 90s to the billboards we see plastered across Manila today. What catches your eye catches your interest, and that is where the money goes. With new technology, creating an aesthetically pleasing marketing piece is easier than ever, and it makes design more accessible to marketers who may not have a background in graphic design or the arts. Small edits don’t take an entire graphic design team anymore, which means with the right software a copy edit only takes a few seconds versus back-and-forth email directions.

Here are a few online tools that allow you to create beautiful designs.

• Canva – This is an online tool that allows non-designers to create everything from social media images, to posters, to blog graphics, to greeting cards. You can create custom sizes, upload your own photos and elements, edit fonts and backgrounds, and much more. With such an easy-to-use interface, this tool is great for people with any level of design experience.
• Piktochart – This tool is especially useful for creating infographics. One of the most useful features is that team members can collaborate on a graphic by leaving comments and messages.
• Unsplash – Finding high-quality stock photos to use in your websites, brochures, and other materials is hard, and sometimes expensive. Unsplash answers this problem by providing a database of beautiful, high-resolution images that are free to use under the CC0 license.

Advanced tracking

Finally, and possibly most game-changing, is the effect technology has on monitoring and metrics. Just a few decades ago, we could only submit our marketing efforts into the void and hope they got us some customers. Now, we can not only track each campaign, we can monitor the return on investment on every detail of a marketing campaign. With UTM tags, we can now see exactly where each website viewer comes from, so we can monitor our biggest traffic drivers. Instead of relying on your customers to tell you how they discovered your business, you can track the success rates of affiliate and referral programs.

Below are a few tools you can use to track and analyze the ROI of your campaigns.

• Google analytics – Google Analytics allows you to track multiple levels of your website. You can see the demographics of your website visitors, who follows a call-to-action, where your website traffic is coming from, which webpages or blog posts are most popular, and more.
• Facebook insights – This internal Facebook tool shows you statistics like reach, engagement, and follower demographics. You can also add a CTA to Facebook, like a “Buy Now”option or “Download app” button. Facebook allows you to track the clicks to this CTA.
• MailChimp – MailChimp is an email campaign service that helps you keep in touch with your audiences via email. Once you send a campaign, MailChimp will show you metrics like how many emails were opened, your best subscribers, how many people click on links within your email, and more.

By taking advantage of portable and efficient technology, marketing departments will be able to operate on-the-move and from anywhere. This will create a fast-moving shift towards agile marketing, paving the way for innovation and allowing us to keep up with industry trends. Marketing departments will have more control over design, allowing for beautiful and functional pieces with less turnover time. Finally, marketing teams have more access to metrics and measurement systems. This means we’ll be able to gain valuable insight into our target markets like never before.