Cloud computing is responsible for a large amount of untapped marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes. We tend to think about enterprise level businesses when we think of cloud infrastructures and implementations, but in reality, small businesses have just as much reason to turn to the cloud than the big companies, if not more.
In fact, according to Yuchun Lee, CEO of IBM’s Unica, less than 10 percent of software spend is going toward cloud solutions, and Unica is seeing adoption more on a department-by-department basis as it is. "It’s amazing, but most companies I’ve talked to…there’s no standard processes for marketers," says Lee. "There’s no standard organization structure, no standard technology, so this need for standard, I think, will greatly benefit the whole industry of marketing."
Watch our interview with Lee from the Inbound Marketing Summit:
Small businesses don’t always think they have the resources to have the online presence they have, when in fact there are many tools at their disposal, via the cloud, that might be more cost-effective than they think. In fact, this was something of a running theme at the summit – there are simply so many tools online now (with more being developed seemingly everyday), that you can put together effective marketing campaigns for next to nothing. The same goes for managing marketing.
The cloud offers opportunities that make it so businesses don’t have to invest their own resources as heavily, to develop the online presence that they want.
"A company should focus on, strategically, what they’re good at, and what’s core to their business, and sometimes managing computers and hardware may not be the core for some of these companies, so the cloud’s a great option," says Lee.
Do yourself a favor and explore the cloud options that are out there. Last week, we talked about Appmatcher from RackSpace, which aspires to be something of a Match.com for business apps. That might be a good place to start. That’s not an endorsement, just a suggestion. I’d figure out what you’re really setting to accomplish and do some searching.
