To meet the demands of modern consumers, every business needs to embrace digital transformation, especially SMEs.

Integrating digital technology into all areas of your business and having a solid search engine optimization strategy, can transform the way you operate, allowing you to do more and give more to your customers.

However, many firms are still resisting to modernize even though it’s a necessity in this digital age. Mainly because they’re afraid that this transition will cost them a fortune and affect their transactions. But this is not true. In fact, it’s the other way around. Delaying will cost you your business.

Times have changed, and the only way of keeping up with the way the world is moving is to adapt to these changes and by being where everybody is – online.

A company, no matter how big or small, can now hardly survive without the help of technology.

If you have been resisting change or aren’t taking digital transformation seriously, now is the best time to take action. To help you get started, here are the 7 most important things you’ll need to help your business succeed in this digital era.

7 Ways to Digitally Reshape Your Business

Having Digitally Native and Tech Savvy Leaders in Place

If you’re not very familiar with digital technologies and the tool necessary to help your business succeed in this digital era, then it’s best to let someone tech-savvy and digitally native help you lead the transformation.

However, you need to keep in mind that you’re not just doing it for the sake of modernizing.

Digital transformation is more than just integrating technology into your business operations. It’s all about having the desire to improve your company’s work environment, culture, and overall business strategy.

With the help of tech-savvy leaders, you can carry out this digital transformation more smoothly and less stressful than it should be compared to if you spearheaded this change alone.

Using Data Analytics Capabilities to Understand Customers Better

To help your business succeed in this digital era, you must get to know your customers and prospects on a deeper level, and digital transformation can help you with that.

Through your website, social media, and Google Analytics, you can gain consumer insights by tracking how your visitors navigate through your site and interact with your brand online.

This can help you make better decisions with regards to how, when, and what to sell them, and develop campaigns that effectively reach your target audience.

Various organizations are building data analytics capabilities to understand their customers thoroughly, make predictions, and generate recommendations. A great example of this is Coca-Cola.

In 2015, Coca-Cola built a digital-led loyalty program to help them boost their customer acquisition and retention strategies. Because of this, they were able to generate information that helped them produce more relevant content for their different audiences. We can see various Coca-Cola ads all year round that resonates differently with different audiences.

It just shows that analytics plays an important role in helping businesses succeed.

Being able to understand your customers on a deeper level also allows you to develop a good CRM strategy, such as personalizing your customer service and even offering customized product bundles for your customers and prospects in real-time via the internet for a better customer experience.

You can also use analytics to figure out how to make the lives of your target audience easier. If you own an online store, you can use plug-ins to automatically load the items your customers placed in their baskets that they didn’t check out when they last visited your site or app.

This saves them time, allowing them to browse through more items.

Additionally, you can also use digital media to get your brand out there and raise awareness.

You can start by creating an online community wherein your customers and prospects are free to come together and ask questions, express their thoughts and opinions, make social connections, and discuss interests surrounding your brand.

It’s a great opportunity to share valuable content and interact with your customers and establish trust among your prospects.

Using Technology to Boost Effective Communication

You can use technology to enhance the way you communicate with your customers and prospects online and in-person.

Instead of using written text or merely words to explain the benefits of your products and services, you can create a video presentation and use other visuals to help you get your message across to your target audience effectively.

This can make your sales pitch more engaging and convincing.

An example of this is how medical representatives are replacing in-person interactions with digital interactions. When medical representatives visit their clients, they usually just leave their tab that contains all the necessary information about the new products they’re selling.

So, instead of explaining it one by one personally to their client, which can take a lot of time and disrupt their hectic schedules, all they have to do is come back to retrieve their tab and have a 10-minute conversation with their client to close the deal.

Technology can also help boost effective communication within your organization.

Try using Slack or other business communication platforms so your team members can effectively communicate with each other, collaborate, and get feedback in real-time.

Using Digital Initiatives to Enhance Customer Service

If you want your business to succeed in this digital era, it’s important to have good customer service.

Good customer service can help you increase customer loyalty, encourage your customers to spend more and more often with your business, and helps generate positive word-of-mouth.

However, we understand that now and then there may be lapses when it comes to providing excellent customer service due to the lack of tools or manpower, especially for SMEs.

Fortunately, technology can help you with this. Here’s how:

• Create a Twitter or Facebook account that is dedicated to providing customer service only. It’s a great platform to respond to customer complaints immediately and take action. This can help prevent unhappy customers from posting on social media, leave a bad review, and going to your store to make a scene, all of which can damage your reputation.
• Offer self-service digital tools to help your customers whenever and wherever. This can save your customers time, and it’s a great way to solve their problems or answer their queries quickly. An example of this is the use of chatbots to provide customer service.

Streamline Your Processes through Automation

Automation provides great benefits that can help your business do more and scale faster. Here are some of the amazing benefits of automation:

• Saves you time – If you own and run a business, then you can relate how 24 hours is never enough to tick off all your to-dos from your list. Automating your administrative process and data collection will allow you to focus on other things that can never be automated, like increasing brand value, building company culture, and more.
• Saves you money – Automation helps your business to become more efficient and effective at doing things. It’ll help you save on staffing costs and other unnecessary expenses.
• Help you make more sales: Automating parts of your sales and lead funnel, like data collection and email writing, allows you to focus on converting leads to sales.
• Help you become more agile – Your business should be able to pivot, change, and move quickly to meet the ever-changing demands of consumers. Automation can help your business be more agile by allowing you to upgrade, change, and renew your data systems easily.

Boost the Productivity of Your Members through Technology

There are so many ways technology can help you and your employees become more productive.

Providing a virtual space where you and your team members can work together in real-time is a great way to boost your entire company’s productivity, especially with the new work-from-home set up.

It also allows you to monitor your team members and make sure that tasks are being accomplished every day. Some of the most useful workplace virtualization tools are Slack and Basecamp.

Modernize Your Business Model

Modernizing your business model will help you stay relevant to consumers.

It’s a sure way of future-proofing your business. If you own a physical store, consider creating a website so that you can sell to people beyond your store location and beyond store hours.

Consider accepting credit card payments, PayPal, and other popular ways people wire money.

You should also invest in a good search engine optimization strategy to boost your online presence. The more visible you are to prospects the greater your chances of making more sales!

You should also consider investing in the following:

• Brand-friendly and SEO-optimized web design
• Social media marketing
• PPC
• Internet marketing
• Invest in photography and videography for your promotional materials and digital ads

Ready to Start Your Digital Transition with a Good Search Engine Optimization Strategy?

If you feel overwhelmed after reading this, you’re not alone. Hundreds of other people are still hesitant to change the way they do business.

However, you need to remember that the world won’t stop for you. It will continue to advance with time, and it’s up to you if you want your business to thrive or die in this digital era.

Guest Author

Shay Berman is the founder and president of Digital Resource, a full-service digital marketing agency located in South Florida, USA. Shay’s clear-cut approach to internet marketing has driven his clients’ businesses to new heights and landed Digital Resource on the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. for two consecutive years.