1.Know your audience
Knowing what your audience can or cannot do is crucial to taking your business to the next level.
When you decide to offer digital services as part of your brand, you want your audience to be able to use it. What’s their difficulty when it comes to using digital services? Connectivity? Can’t find the home button? The last thing you want is to launch the latest technology and realise (too late) that 80% of your target audience don’t know how to download an app. For B2B companies, this means the IT solutions you offer too. Knowing your audience means finding out their tech-savviness, and the runway it’d take to get them up to speed on the new offerings.
2.Identify Your Strengths
Going digital doesn’t mean casting a net far and wide, hoping some fish will swim in voluntarily.
Every brand has something that it can build its digitalisation efforts around. For instance, if customer service is the hallmark of your business, that should be integrated into the plans on adopting technology. Perhaps a chatbot for your website, or equipping your customer relationship managers with video conferencing facilities – all these can take your brand’s customer service to the next level. Identifying your strengths means targeting efforts towards what your business is known for. Your brand’s strength should shine through. Take stock of what your brand is known for, and build your digital services around that.
3.Keep things Simple
Easier said than done. Essentially, problem-solve for your target audience. See how your brand can make their lives a little better.
Keeping things simple points to improvement. When your brand uses technology, it should not complicate things for your customers. Instead, it needs to simplify and ease previously difficult tasks. B2B companies will enjoy the same when they keep things simple – your customers look to you for a stable solution that can help them run their businesses. So it’s your duty to use technology to speed things up, lower costs, or increase convenience for them. For instance: no time to run to the supermarket? Here’s a hassle-free solution to save you time. Online grocery shopping, complete with home delivery. Finding that gap and meeting it with technology can be a powerful thing, not to mention money-making.
4.Get in Touch
The power of networking is real. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know till it’s too late.
So when going digital with your business, it’s important to get in touch with the right people. Coders, developers, UX experts? Speak with fellow business owners, technology buffs, data analysts. Get in touch with all who know how to grow your business, and those whom you can generate ideas or partner to make strategic market moves with. #squadgoals wasn’t termed for nothing.
5.Follow Up!
Keep abreast of the latest industry shifts.
Follow up with your digital efforts, using metrics and data. Scrutinise, analyse, and act. From there, decide if the next steps include a move towards more of the same. The idea is not to be reactive, but strategic with your digitalisation efforts. And most importantly, back it up with data. It’s one thing to slap an app onto the App Store, and another to find a tech solution that works well for your brand. Facebook has become the go-to interface for companies wanting a slice of the social media pie. While that has its rewards, it’s not enough.
Want more? Get in touch with us for a digital audit.