My name’s Luke. I work here at Oneflow, and I’m a complete tech dinosaur. You want to know how to use Chromecast on a TV? I have a colleague who knows. You want to know about a specific Excel formula? No can do, my friend. You want to speak to a digital native? I’m not even entirely sure what one is.
The fact is, I’m a complete tech dinosaur. Even airdropping something is a mind blowing experience for me.
Now you might well be thinking, “why is this young Boomer working at a growing, dynamic SaaS company?” It’s a fair question. But I still have my uses around here. In fact, I think every marketing team ought to have a tech dinosaur like me.
Let’s take a look at why:
- Making sure jargon hasn’t taken over
- Coming with fresh ideas
- Finding clever workarounds
- Spending more time on non-tech work
- Asking the “daft” questions
1. Making sure jargon hasn’t taken over
Have you ever read a ‘How-to’ guide of some kind and been completely lost by the third point? You’re not alone. That probably happened because everyone who was involved in writing it was confident in what they were doing after they turned their computer on.
That’s where your tech dinosaur comes in. Put simply, if your tech dinosaur can’t understand it, why would anyone else outside of your marketing department be able to?
We all know that when you work with a product day-in day-out, it can become all too easy to struggle to simplify it. So run anything that’s on a more technical level past your resident tech dinosaur. If they fully understand everything as it’s written, then it’s likely to be accessible to a wider audience.
2. Coming with fresh ideas
As someone who has more distance from the tech that makes your company tick, a tech dinosaur is more likely to come up with a new approach to something. It doesn’t necessarily come from a lack of tech knowledge either. It can be driven by the thought processes that helped your tech dinosaur come to understand something.
Think back to when you last had a new workflow or process introduced. It probably took a presentation or tutorial or two to get it down. In fact, it takes an average of 21 days for someone to turn a new workflow or process into a habit. For your resident tech dinosaur, it could take a little longer – and that’s where the ideas magic can happen.
By having to put more effort into learning about your new workflow or process, your tech dinosaur can come up with new, fresh approaches for lots of things – from content pieces, to nurturing emails, to even onboarding materials. When it comes to ideas, your tech dinosaur could quickly become a fountain of knowledge.
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3. Finding clever workarounds
Your tech dinosaur will only ask about something techy so many times. If they’re still a little lost, then they’re likely to find workarounds. It might take them around the houses, but they’ll still be able to get the job done.
But this does have an unexpected benefit: they might find a new way of doing something. If you have a workflow that needs improving, it might be your resident tech dinosaur who finds a new, surprising way of doing it.
It might be something as simple as downloading then uploading some non-confidential data instead of trying to find a way to shift it between two unintegrated platforms. Whatever their trick is, be sure to ask.
4. Spending more time on non-tech work
We all know that in any marketing department, things sometimes get kicked into the long grass. Be it rewriting a nurturing email, tweaking H1 homepage copy or getting the creative side of a new website section done, these things can remain “ongoing” for quite some time.
That’s where your resident tech dinosaur comes in. As they’re not the person best placed to solve any tech problems that might come your team’s way, they can instead get on with the tasks that you’ve put to one side.
Your tech dinosaur can prove to be a valuable asset as they do the non-tech work that can add value to your site. New landing pages, ebooks and additional SEO optimization are just a few of the more creative ways your tech dinosaur can help your marketing team get ahead.
Read also: People. The most important part of your organization
5. Asking the “daft” questions
No matter how open and transparent your company culture is, people are always going to be reluctant to ask questions that they feel they should already know the answer to.
Your tech dinosaur is less likely to be that way inclined. Chances are that your tech dinosaur has already established their ‘not-techy’ reputation within your team. So if a new workflow or process is unclear, then they’re probably not going to feel self-conscious about speaking out.
It might well be that your tech dinosaur asks a question that others were already wondering about but didn’t want to ask. But there’s another advantage too.
If your tech dinosaur is asking a lot of questions around how exactly something works, and it’s also taking other members of your team a while to do things, then maybe the process is overly complex. By asking questions, you and your team could potentially find an even better way of working, or solving a problem in your workflows.
The key takeaways
There are those of us whose tech skills belie our age, in that they’re not particularly exceptional. But we still have our uses on every marketing team. In fact, every marketing team ought to have a tech dinosaur.
Your tech dinosaur can make sure that marketing jargon hasn’t taken over your materials. This is especially important in B2C, but also in B2B. They can come with fresh ideas on how to do things as they try to navigate the digital workplace without being an expert in it. This is also where your tech dinosaur can find clever workarounds as they find themselves following complex workflows. Another plus is that they’re unlikely to be afraid to ask the daft technical questions.
There are lots of advantages to having a tech dinosaur on your marketing team. These are just a few of them.
