Tools Don't Solve Problems, Strategy Does.

Our society has an unhealthy obsession with tools.

Whenever someone is stuck in any problem, only one thing comes to their mind, to find a tool to fix it.

We have to listen only this question being asked everytime: “what’s the best tool for this or that?”

For example, common questions I get asked:

“What’s the best marketing stack for my company?”

“What’s the best tool for content promotion?”

“What’s the best tool for blog conversions?”

If you’re asking these types of questions, you’re going in the wrong direction about your job.

If you read most of the blog posts about tools on the web, you’d have believed that you have to pay some dollars for a month for a software product and it will magically solve your problem.

Read Also: Content Marketing: What Kind of Content Should You Create?

But, Simply tools don’t solve problems. They just optimize processes.

Tools act as a catalyst, they can speed up, organize or improve something that is already working, but they aren’t going to help you solve a problem.

For example:

If following content marketing, I am already driving a huge traffic and leads, and I needed a process improvement for tracking, nurturing, and routing leads to a sales team, then I might invest in marketing automation. Or I can just use softwares such as Zapier of Ifttt to push data from one place to another.

But if I had no strategy to drive inbound traffic, leads, then buying Hubspot, Marketo, or Pardot wouldn’t have any effect and improve my inbound/content marketing program.

People only spend for tools when they’re looking for a straight and simple solution, or when they’re finding an easy way out.

After that, when tools doesn’t seem to work, people get confused why the tools aren’t driving results, they’ve invested in or when they seem to be working for others?

Tools don’t drive results, strategy does.

Strategy is what solves problems

Most of the people do not remember that tools don’t solve problems. But strategy does.

The problem with strategy is that it takes years of hard work and investment to learn.

Also Read: How long will it take for to get results in Digital Marketing?

For example:

If I wanted to become better at sales by learning, I must try to seek the help of a mentor, study a course, practice selling, start reading, and ultimately test things until I succeed.

Sharpening a new skill, takes some time and effort.

Software has made people sluggish.

When People find out, if something isn’t working, they search for and buy a sales tool and planning it’s going to improve their chances of succeeding by 1000%.

Why?

Because it’s not an easy task to admit that you follow a mistaken strategy or you’re just plain not good at something and it’s  a lot easier to blame something not working on a shitty tool you purchased.

The thing is, that if you don’t get better at strategy, you won’t get better at your job.

Tools won’t make you better at your job. Strategy will.

Stop wasting money on tools. Start investing in strategy.

Seriously, take a look at all of the tools you’re invested in.

How many of them improve a process?

How many of them improve the speed at which you can do something?

How many of them help you organize information in a better way than you could do manually?

There’s a lot of shitty tools out there that you’re probably paying for, and that aren’t moving the needle for you, or for your business.

So I challenge you to take a look at all of the software you’re paying for, that you think will (replace x function) or (improve x function)… and think long and hard about whether those tools actually add value to your life, or your business.

If they don’t, cancel them. (Unless it’s Wordable).

Then, take the money that you saved from those tools, and start investing it into improving your craft.

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