Digital presence defines your success!

With the global business landscape changing towards digital format, it is time Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs), considered to be the life-blood of any economy and providing over 90 percent employment in many countries, had a re-look at their online presence and marketing strategies to ensure long-term success and profitability.

This is all the more important and timely in light of the recent report published by the World Trade Organization (WTO’s World Trade Report, 2016). The report highlights that SMEs are less represented online when compared to larger establishments. This is an important finding to be carefully looked into by the SMEs and other forums supporting them.

Quite obviously, excessive reliance on conventional marketing strategies not only hampers their sales turnover but they run the risk of ignoring the great potential available for opening up their goods and services for global customers.

Research suggests that trading online could improve their market share and help enhance profit-margins both in domestic and international markets. Over 80% of consumers do research online before purchasing a product from a company, reveals an online survey. Smart phones, of late, have made these jobs much easier to search and find out a good supplier of what you are looking for. Remember, customers do read reviews, compare prices and make sure that delivery is free before buying a product or service.

For instance, did you ever book a hotel without checking the prices, comparing the facilities offered before confirming the booking?

In this regard, it is quite interesting to learn that internet-enabled SMEs in China export to 63 countries and the figure for Korean companies is 57 countries. The report further estimates that the export figures for traditional SMEs, the ones that do not adopt online marketing tools, are abysmally low from a meagre 2 percent to 28 percent.

So, the underlying message is that it is absolutely imminent to introduce a well-developed ‘online advertisement design’ as it would not only help SMEs to improve their sales gradually but reduce the marketing costs, too.

Online Footprint and Organizational Success!

To start with, SMEs that have no or very small online presence should carry out basic research on customer activities and demands online, create a global database of potential clients and make every attempt to reach out to them, successfully.

In this process, they should leave no stone unturned to convert their online tools into actual sales. It is worthwhile to mention here that there is a clear linkage between digital maturity and organizational success as confirmed by a study report published by Lloyds Bank in 2015. Another research study suggests that SMEs can reduce their cost by up to 20 percent by digitalizing.

Create Profiles in Social Media & Post Your Stuff!

Creating a Facebook profile, a blog or designing a dedicated website would help SMEs to ensure online presence in this world of digital and online marketing. This would serve as a great tool to establish relationship, trust and curiosity with your potential clients.

Make an attempt to build confidence by sharing testimonials of happy customers. Sadly, customers do not read long emails. Therefore, the best strategy is to highlight the usefulness of your goods and services to address your customers’ grievances or problems. Yet another technique is to organize ‘online contest’ and offer free gifts to winners. These methods create curiosity and help you to increase your sales and customer-base, exponentially.

As the next step and follow up measure, SMEs should also resort to online payment platforms such as Paypal, Fortumo, Google Wallet to facilitate payments faster and hassle-free. Customers do love the comfort of completing their transactions happily sitting at home. Can you recall your last visit to a ticketing agent for booking a flight ticket?

Undoubtedly, consumer behavior has changed quite dramatically with gadgets and internet over the years and one has to take note of it and change the marketing strategy, accordingly.

To reiterate, it is time SMEs had improved their online presence as it helps them reach out to global customers with higher efficiency very fast and keep a lid on the cost, as well.

This is absolutely necessary, in tune with consumer mindset, as the global trade landscape is undergoing dramatic transformations particularly for SMEs and it would be costly if they fail to take note of the emerging trends.

We are still in the very beginning of the internet. Let’s use it, wisely. – Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia.

*Dr. Elango Rengasamy is Managing Director, Greater Vision Conferences & Seminars, a seminar/training organizing entity based in Dubai-UAE.