How Can Your Company Continue to Innovate its Approach? Three Solutions

It's important to constantly re-evaluate your business to see what can be improved for profit longevity and future growth. "Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation," Czech writer Milan Kundera once said. It's true that marketing and innovation are the heart of what makes a business relevant to consumers, and therefore successful. How can you continue to innovate your company? Here are three possible solutions.

1. Mobile Design for Your Website
Did you know that, according to a Latitude study, users have a 60% better opinion of a brand if its website is well-optimized for mobile searching? In the next few years, phones are projected to surpass desktop computers in terms of how much time people spend browsing and searching on the internet. You can either take advantage of this traffic and the fact that many businesses have, so far, failed to accommodate these needs, or you can fall behind and not connect with the consumers looking for this service.

2. Finding Product Lifecycle Management Solutions
Product lifecycle management solutions, or PLM, are a type of software that allows businesses to manage the cycle of a product from the time it is conceptualized, to the use and then disposal of the product. This software can help to process large amounts of data in order to identify price points, sale opportunities, and how consumer preferences can shape development. It's a good time to be an early adopter for this trend, as the PLM consulting firm industry is expected to grow almost 10% each year.

3. Using Consumer Psychology Research
The old approach to marketing was to produce something and then try to sell it -- however you could. New marketing turns the process around, and incorporates knowledge of the consumer from the beginning, rather than trying to fit it in like a puzzle piece at the end. Consumer research can be tailored to your particular demographics in order to get a razor-sharp marketing approach for your products. One study published in the Wall Street Journalshowed how a hotel made use of something they found out using consumer research: when people are making a crossroad decision, they are more receptive to it upon observing others making the same decision. The hotel used a new sign saying "Join your fellow guests in helping to save the environment," and they saw a 25% increase in customers re-using their bath towels.

How will your business innovate? Let us know in the comments.