Now, when everything is going digital, your small business can struggle to maintain its position. Why? Because the markets are getting so competitive, surviving without an online presence is becoming nearly impossible. That’s not the only reason why your company needs instant digitalization. Instead, there are many other factors associated with it.
This article specifically walks you through some essential elements that clarify why you should go digital. Plus, it also provides you with a strategic move to digitalize your business. So, let’s set off on a highly informative journey.
Why Digitalize Your Small Business?
Many reasons necessitate the digitalization of your small business. Let’s look at some of the most important ones.
Exposure To A Wider Audience
A small company usually has access to limited consumers with a traditional approach. Why? Paper-based marketing and physical outlets commonly attract only locals. On the other hand, going digital opens doors to exposure to a broader audience.
According to Statista, the internet has over 5 billion global users, which is a considerable number. Digitization enables you to make every person who uses the internet, within or outside your town, aware of your brand.
More Cost-Efficiency
Another reason to go digital is to reduce your spending on brand promotion and operations. Traditional marketing methods like newspaper ads, billboards, flyers, or other printed media are relatively more expensive than digital marketing.
In contrast, spending little money on Google or social media ads, along with using a free QR code generator, yields much better results. Similarly, automating business operations using technology eliminates the need to hire dedicated resources, saving costs.
Streamlined Operations
Running a small business doesn’t mean you have fewer tasks. Even with a startup, you must deal with many things daily. So, if you go traditional, massive manual effort is involved, often slowing down your operations.
However, if you let technology handle your routine tasks, your work will be much easier than before. Workflow automation increases your company's efficiency and reduces the chances of human error.
Better Customer Engagement
HubSpot, a widely used CRM, says good engagement keeps customers returning. However, engaging with existing and prospective clients is hard without a digital buyer management system. This limitation might weaken your company’s relationship with shoppers.
That’s why going digital matters. It helps you connect with your customers quickly and straightforwardly. You can talk to them, hear what’s wrong, and fix it quickly using online tools. When people get help immediately, they feel cared for and stay happy.
More Opportunity For Sales
With just the physical presence of your business, people can only buy from you during working hours. However, you can get orders anytime if your brand is active online. For instance, suppose you have a small shop for kids' garments in any market in the city.
You can double your sales by creating an e-commerce store and listing the same items on it. The same is true for any small business, such as a coffee shop, cafe, bakery, etc. A simple website and strong social media presence can positively impact your overall revenue.
Staying Competitive In The Market
Another benefit of the digital transformation of your business is that you get a competitive edge, which is essential for growth. Emphasizing the importance of going digital, Forbes states that companies can make their operations and decision-making better than others by integrating emerging technologies.
A strong digital presence also helps your small business compete with bigger ones that are less prominent online. This makes your brand stand out from those who still rely on old methods to run and promote their businesses.
Targeted Business Promotion
In the case of traditional marketing, you don’t have control over who sees your brand on the internet. As a result, your company is exposed to many who are not interested in it at all. However, digital marketing provides you with the full opportunity to customize your targeted audience.
You can target customers based on various factors, from age, gender, location, occupation, and other demographics to psychological buying behaviors. This facility enables you to ensure that your company's ads only reach the right people, increasing conversion chances.
Personalized Marketing
Salesforce, another popular CRM, says 73% of customers want brands to offer better personalization in interactions. However, when you promote your business through printed media, you must show the same message to everyone, which doesn’t appeal to everyone. As a result, your conversion rate decreases significantly.
But if we talk about digital marketing, you get complete control over personalizing your message. Whether it’s an email campaign, content marketing, or simple social media DMs, you can create personalized content for every platform. This ensures that your message resonates with every recipient.
Improved Team Collaboration
While small businesses usually have fewer team members, their overall success heavily depends on their communication. This approach is not good if they have to go to each other’s desks every time, even to discuss small things. Instead, it is just a waste of time and effort.
With advanced communications tools, working together has become much easier. Teams can instantly talk in real time, share files, assign tasks, and do many other things with advanced solutions. For micro companies, this kind of teamwork improves work efficiency.
Key Strategies To Go Digital For Better Business Growth
It should be clear by now why you need to digitize your small business. Now that you have understood the importance of digitalization, let’s learn some strategies for doing it.
Develop A Highly Responsive Website
The first thing you need to create an online presence for your company is a highly responsive website. According to Forbes, over 73% of small businesses have created a site, and this trend is increasing with time. Why? Brand owners now know that most people first search online to find a product or service.
So, if you wish your brand to appear in searches related to your offering, you must have a well-developed site. Make sure that its design is highly intuitive and it offers easy navigation to users. Also, ensure your web platform works properly on smartphones and large screens.
Plan Which Social Platforms To Be Active On
If you’re moving your business online, being active on social media should be one of your first things. But remember, not every social app is the right fit for you. Instead, every social channel has its unique audience and preferences. So, before creating accounts, it’s better that you first decide which platforms are best for you.
For instance, if you run a small B2B company, you should prefer LinkedIn and X (Twitter). However, if you have a B2C brand, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are more result-driven for you. Create a strong profile on any platform by implementing proper optimization techniques.
Invest In Search Engine Optimization
Creating a website is not enough for your micro company. Instead, you must try to rank it in the top results. Backlinko states that the sites in the first position in SERP-1 get most of the clicks, which is 27.6%. This percentage decreases as your website moves downward. However, if you invest in SEO, you can maintain your brand’s ranking for the long term.
Search engine optimization ensures that you make the most out of going digital. By showcasing your business among top searches, SEO helps you gain maximum customers. So, you must either optimize your site for SEO on your own or hire a dedicated professional to do it for you. A little budget invested in SEO might pay you back for months and years.
Automate Content Creation For Your Brand
When you bring your brand to digital platforms, you must post valuable content regularly to keep it alive online. However, creating perfect blogs, post descriptions, sales pages, or web material requires sufficient effort and time. However, you can bring automation to your content creation process with advanced AI-powered online tools.
For instance, an AI writing assistant can help you create initial drafts in bulk. Then, you can refine the quality of the same drafts using an efficient paraphrasing tool, such as wording, structure, flow, etc. After that, you can take help from online editing tools to make all your content pieces completely error-free. Fortunately, many of these digital tools are free. So, they not only increase your business productivity but also save costs.
Bing Automation To Task Management
As mentioned earlier, small companies also have many things to do daily. As a business owner, keeping an eye on all operations for you might be challenging. However, you can easily track all the processes with automated task management solutions. In real time, such tools inform you of your employees’ activities and internal progress.
They also allow you to assign tasks to your team members and get instant notifications on completion. With automation in your workflow, you do things faster and avoid missing deadlines. This way, you can ensure that your operations don’t experience any delay due to your availability issues.
Automate Customer Response System
Nowadays, customers don’t want to delay getting answers to their queries. A study conducted by Salesforce reveals that 81% of buyers expect companies to reply faster. And this is only possible if you automate the system of responding to customer queries. Here, we are referring to integrating AI chatbots with your systems.
An AI model can instantly read the message and understand the meanings and context properly. Also, such powerful bots can offer personalized replies, considering the client's problem. So, along with bringing other digital changes to your company, you must also focus on auto-replies. This can significantly improve your service and give you a competitive edge.
Set A Sufficient Budget For Online Advertisement
Promoting your small business through paid online advertisements is a critical part of going digital. This is especially helpful in the initial stage when there is no awareness of your brand on the internet. Since organic growth takes time, paid ads enable you to build sufficient credibility in the market in less time. Not just that, but they also help you gain clicks, calls, and visits faster.
Therefore, you must dedicate a particular budget for paid ads to digitalize your company. However, avoid investing too much at the start. Instead, begin with a small amount and analyze the performance of ads. Instead of running a single ad, run more than one and see which works best. Then, turn off the other ones and continue with the one that drives better results.
Track Your Digital Success Using Essential KPIs
Remember, once you have digitized your small company, keeping an eye on growth is essential. Otherwise, it will be unclear to you what benefits you are getting after going digital. And when it comes to tracking success, key performance indicators help you a lot. They keep you aware of how your business is growing after getting online.
The KPIs include site traffic, click-through rate, customer success rate, projects completed, leads, physical visits, and conversions. All of them tell you about your business's progress in different ways. When everything is in front of you, it becomes easier to make the right decisions to ensure that the company moves in the desired direction.
To Sum Up
Technology can help small businesses reduce their operational costs, improve their marketing, and increase overall efficiency. Above all, when a company goes digital, it leaves many other brands behind that have not digitalized yet, even if they are big. So, considering all these benefits, digital transformation is essential for every microbrand nowadays.
