The Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (ASME) and Microsoft Singapore asserts that digitization can help small businesses increase revenue by an average of 26% and save approximately 22% in costs. If these numbers don’t encourage you, we know what will! Go through the following passages to check out some compelling reasons why every small business owner must invest in digitization.
Importance of Business Digitization
- Empowering Workforce
Digitization facilitates remote working – a model widely adopted by many businesses during the pandemic. Digitization helps to bring the world closer, therefore, even small businesses can employ people from around the globe and build a strong and diverse workforce. Thanks to the myriad of cloud services, the transformation of small businesses has started. This, in turn, will help to enhance efficiency, workscope, and productivity.
- Wider Reach and Accessibility
Digitization offers a wide array of opportunities for small businesses to position themselves in front of a wide audience. It also helps more users to access the brand and provides a seamless communication platform. Engaging a trusted website design company and creating a digital destination is important to achieve the same.
- Increased Sales with an Online Store
Investing in eCommerce website development and creating an online store has become immensely beneficial for small businesses. It helps them to increase sales and boost revenue.
Here are some statistics to prove the merit of an e-store. In 2016, the global retail eCommerce sales amounted to 1.845 trillion US dollars. In 4 years, i.e., in 2020, the sales increased to 4.280 trillion US dollars. By 2024, the sales are estimated to rise to 6.388 trillion US dollars. Should you seek to leverage this growth, there’s no substitute for digitization.
- Marketing Your Products / Services
Traditional marketing measures like hoardings, cold calling, TV and newspaper advertisements cannot help you reach a wide audience. These will drain your resources instead of resulting in excellent results.
Small businesses can extract the benefits of digital marketing to make the most of their investment. Strategic digital marketing helps to position a brand on multiple platforms and reach the right target audience. Further, digital marketing efforts can be monitored and optimized.
Marketing techniques like search engine optimization, paid advertisements, social media marketing, video marketing, email marketing, etc. are popular these days. The best part is that, unlike outbound marketing strategies, these inbound methods reach people who are actively looking for a similar product or service that you offer. Therefore, they have a better chance to convert. As you can see, investing in digital marketing services is one of the most important aspects of business digitization.
- Increased Brand Awareness
These days, users prefer to search online before interacting with a business. Even if you own a business that demands a physical presence, say, a salon or an electronics repair centre, having a digital presence is a must if you seek to increase brand awareness.
Once you place your brand on the digital landscape, more people can find you out and learn about your products and services. Digitization has a plethora of opportunities these days. It is not simply limited to website development. For instance, if yours is a local brand and you operate locally, invest in local SEO services. With it, you can optimize your brand presence for “near me” searches. Oh and let us tell you, a study by Hubspot finds that nearly 46% of all searches are local.
- Innovation-Driven
Digitization gives you the opportunity to drive innovation to your business. For instance, you can equip your website with AI/ML technologies, integrate AR/VR features, and optimize for voice searches. You can also create social media-based online stores and directly sell via Facebook or Instagram. You can also create a mobile app to increase customers on the go. Opportunities are many when it comes to the digital realm. All it needs is for you to take the right step.
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- Streamline Communication
Customer phone service using the internet is at the heart of every business, especially small businesses. Today’s customers want prompt service and rapid communication can give you a competitive edge.
Here is a scenario. Suppose you sell coffee machines. The customers visit your website and fail to clarify some concerns. They contact you but receive no response from your end. Or a system generated mail is sent that states that an executive will be available within 2-3 business days to clarify the concern.
What do you think will happen? These potential customers will simply bounce. With so many brands available online, you cannot afford to let that happen! Because your loss is another’s gain!
Integrating a chatbot or a live chat button is helpful to ensure seamless communication. Forbes finds that 60% of millennials say that they have used chatbots. And 70% of them had a positive user experience.
- Monitor Performance
Monitoring performance is important for small businesses as it helps to identify if their investment is returning a revenue. As digitization helps to direct your efforts into multiple avenues, it’s important to pay attention to the overall results.
And you can do that with various analytics tools available online. From website traffic to conversion rates, PPC ad engagement rate to video viewers – you can track it all.
By now, you must have understood why and how digitization can bring a revolution to your business. Don’t waste your time and dive in. You can witness the results with consistent efforts.