Today’s digital world is having an increasingly big impact on both consumers and businesses, and their digital marketing. People are getting even busier in today’s digital world – and they are looking for convenience and speed. As a result, customers expect companies to retail their opening hours, products, and services for them. Not the other way around. And this trend of speed and convenience ain’t gonna stop anytime soon. Millennials are already the most customers.
Technology means application of knowledge to change our environment. Companies can take advantage of technology to stand out from competitions and satisfy customers’ changed needs. Companies can do so by improving their products, services, or processes. They need to provide products and/or services that their new customers want, faster than competition.
So how is the digital era affecting small and midsize companies? And furthermore, what can I as a small business owner do about it?
People do spend a lot of time online
Smartphone, laptop, tablets. Facebook, Uber (for transportation and food delivery), flight and vacation booking websites. Online banking and payment processing online. People do actually spend quite a lot of time online. Mobility is increasing even more. People do more things on the go.
More people use their cell phone or tablet to buy and sell products online, or to find an address, a review, or even more information about a local business. They also share their customer experience with friends, acquaintances, and strangers on social media. Social media is shaping people’s expectations and buying behaviour. People still seem to make higher value purchases on the larger screen but that will most likely change over time.
Millennials have become majority of customers and people running companies. They were raised on digital technology and they are generally very tech savvy. Companies can simply no longer push planning their digital strategy further. Google has put a lot of effort in the past years in prioritising good mobile websites. If business owners wanna stay in competition longer term, they need to follow technology trends and be proactive.
Ready to start your digital marketing plan? Contact us today to start your complementary express digital assessment.
Digital brings new opportunities for businesses
People spending a lot of time online opens new opportunities for SMEs to review their digital strategy. Additionally, digitisation brings great opportunities for social and digital marketing. The rise of online purchases and services makes it worthwhile for small companies to sell and process payments online. Whereas, social media brings companies an opportunity to reach high number of clients online. And that can be done with a low spend. This doesn’t mean people want to buy products only online. Not all companies need to become e-commerce businesses overnight. Digitisation also brings the need for more supporting services online, e.g. customer service.
Digital and mobile is not only for your customers but also for your employees. Cloud computing has enabled businesses to move some of their resources to a 3rd party server. Not only does this mean less down time and crashes. It also means small businesses can better compete with larger corporations. In the past it wasn’t feasible from cost perspective for small companies to have access to this type of infrastructure.
We should offer more products and services where people spend the most time. It’s essential for companies to know their customers and offer them what they want in terms of speed, convenience, and future products or services. Companies need to be proactive and follow the industry, as well as follow their clients. They need to strive to decrease cost and increase functionality through technology.
The expansion of the IoT and data
The Internet of things (IoT) means your company can connect devices to communicate together, to collect important information. This information can include buying behaviour, as well as internal information about company’s processes. Since digital and technology is changing your customers, you need to be on top of how they are changing. Furthermore, you need to know what your company can do to address the changed needs and turn it into sales.
From business and marketing perspective, the IoT enables effective customer segmentation. We can segment your clients and prospects based on where your website visitors are coming from and what device they are using. Furthermore, we can segment them based on the size of screen, their operating system, as well as the browser they are using. We can also track all their actions on your website, e.g. what they click on. And if they leave and don’t click on anything, we can address the problem too. With help of data and IoT, business owners can target their existing clients better with relevant information and offers. When done right, this can lead to dramatic improvement in conversion, sales, and revenues.
Ready to start your digital marketing plan? Contact us today to start your complementary express digital assessment.
What is a small business digital strategy?
We already know people are expecting to buy products and services, and to get supporting services online. And we also know almost all large companies have already incorporated digital into their business. However, the question is, as a small or midsize business, how critical is it to have a digital strategy right now? Also, if I’m not that tech savvy, where can I get the knowledge execute it?
As a company, regardless of if you’re big or small, you absolutely need to be online. But if you haven’t done that much yet, how should you balance out the investment in digital vs. short-term profit? A digital strategy is a plan to maximise the impact of data and technology for your business. You can think about how digital can enhance and add value to your core operations. You’ll need to start thinking how you can offer your products or services even faster. Or how you can customise your services for your clients.
Marketing as a part of digital strategy
Digitisation all together with online time consumption open tremendous opportunities for social media and digital marketing for businesses. Companies can start addressing their customers’ needs through their website. But when talking about website, mobile first is the most critical point. If your company’s website isn’t mobile optimised yet, social media, email, and Google campaign results will surely be remarkably lower. Business owners can also address new needs of their customers through mobile solutions.
As we saw earlier, IoT and big data enables extreme customer segmentation which improves email marketing and social campaigns. And as a small business, you can be far more flexible and innovative to beat your larger competitors. Word of mouth is increasingly important especially in social media. Social media enables people to connect and share without geographic limitations or social status. Nowadays it’s very difficult to get rid of bad press online. Many companies have put a lot of resources into community management to find bad comments and reviews of them online and try to manage it and the bad affect.
So how should SMEs go about digital?
This new digital era requires a complete change in entrepreneurs’ attitude and thinking. It’s essential to change older attitudes to be able to continue satisfying your customers’ needs in the future too. Technology brings many benefits to your company, regardless of the size, which helps you sell more and make more profit. Technology can drastically improve your company’s performance.
Firstly, stay up to speed with technology. If you’re not very familiar with it, then it’s the time to get to. Whether or not you personally like it, digital isn’t going to go away or slow down any time soon. It’s recommended to start little by little and bring digital part of your everyday business. Huge technological advancements are most likely to happen soon at a very fast speed. And the speed is just getting faster and faster every day.
Secondly, you don’t need to become a digital business overnight. There are businesses whose business model and products rely only on digital. However, you probably shouldn’t change your business completely too fast. You don’t have to rebuild your business from the ground up. There’s a reason why your company has been successful so far. However, you will need to understand if technology will improve or challenge your business, and how. Thus, digital should be part of your plan, and you’ll need to make it play to your advantage.
Get your digital marketing audit started
If your business is ready to start planning or going digital, the Marketigation team is there to help. Our marketing assessment gives you a list of recommendations on how to improve your digital presence and marketing. It includes recommendations related to mobile website, user experience, Google traffic, social media presence, and targeted campaigns. This list will work as a short to midterm digital marketing strategy for your company.
We’ve already helped tons of companies in going digital and driving more sales. Get in touch with us already today to start your complementary express digital assessment. Or feel free to contact us if you have any questions about digital marketing.