Aveline Clarke: Hi. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about tools, as in what tools you need to help you innovate your customer journey. So often, business owners get swayed by a new toy on the market, by hearing what someone else is using, or they get direct marketed to about another shiny technology tool. And let's face it, there are just so many tools and apps on the market today, you would literally spend all day researching all the tools and automations and different apps that were available, and that is not a good use of your time, and I don't recommend it.

The most important thing, as a business owner, is for you to have this strategy and your customer journey mapped in detail. And then you look at what needs you have in terms of where you need the support in that customer journey. You might already have a tool for managing your leads or your email marketing or something like that, which is great, you might already have a marketing automation tool. So the goal is not to first think about the tool, and just lead with a fancy tool and say, "Wow, look what this tool can do. And it's got all these bells and whistles."

You start with the strategy, you start with your business. I had someone come to me last week and they were referred to me, they're all excited, and they wanted to purchase a marketing automation tool because he knew that's what I had experience in, and he was all set to buy it. And when I dug deeper into his business and understood more about what he needed, the marketing automation tool wasn't actually the right thing for him. And therein lies the problem that most business owners have, because they don't understand this. You don't go out and buy the technology and fit your business to the technology. You understand your business first, you create and map your customer journey first. Then you go and find the tool that's going to support you. So I'm not going to tell you which tool to use, there are plenty out there. The goal for you is to find the right tool for your business that's going to support you and your customers along that journey in the best possible way.

There we go. There's the answer, probably not the one that you wanted or thought I was going to say, but that is the best possible way to look at this and to approach technology. Definitely use technology because it is going to help you, it's going to help you be more efficient and help map gaps. Make sure you've got the journey map first, as a strategy, and an entire journey, then the tool comes after that.