In the past year and particularly in 2020, there have been a lot of changes in the landscape of everything. Because, of course, Covid and its effects. The way we do our purchasing and shopping for goods, our eating habits as far as restaurant food and more have been affected. It has been tough enough for the individual involved, but enough tougher on the businesses.
If you are a small business or a brick and mortar store and you didn’t already have a web presence, you were in a lot of trouble. If you did have a web presence, you still probably had to change your ways of marketing yourself. Creativity and innovation have become paramount to start or increase your business’s digital transformation.
So let’s look at a few effective ways to get this started or amplified.
Your Web Presence
Obviously, there will be a bit of working outside your comfort zone. But that’s good for you. If you don’t already have a website/presence, there are many places to start creating a website with no coding knowledge whatsoever. Just pick a web hosting company and think about what you want your website name or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) to be.
Picking a reputable IT service to host your company site is an important search. Knowing what you need in the service beforehand is most important. And you can see more once you know what you are looking for. It’s not as easy as just posting the site.
Then there is the site construction itself. There are a few WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) site builders out there. WordPress, for instance, has millions of templates specifically designed for storefronts of different industries. The coding for search engine optimization is already in the templates to use, you just have to edit a bit.
Your Way of Thinking
Since you cannot talk face to face with your customers and engage with them about your product, you have to think of more customer-oriented methods on your website than the product. Make sure they have access to your team or just yourself with email links or even a chat application on your site to give them a ‘warmer’ approach.
Your Products
What is your product? Is it something that can be segwayed into another product that is more current or relevant with the 2020 attitudes and ways? This will help you with your presence if you do your search engine optimization and marketing in a more current frame of mind.
eCommerce
Incorporate the use of paying for your product right there through your site to help them find their way and you make a sale. And make it easy to do. Make the shopping experience as enjoyable as possible. Educate your customer with light-hearted but informative comments about your product.
Don’t stop there!! Once they make a purchase, follow up with an email with the order information and tracking info if applicable. Loyalty is key here. It is easier to keep a customer than find new ones.
There are companies who even throw a piece of candy in the shipped box or a short handwritten memo of thanks. That kind of thing in the cold land of the digital landscape can go a long way!
Your People
This might not be something you would really think about, but are your employees in it for the long haul? Are they computer savvy enough to help you get where you want to be? Maybe some training or finding some savvy help is due.
When it comes to marketing in this day and age of innovation, you have to be conscious of ongoing and changing trends with potential customers and your product/s and the correlation of them together. You have to be conscious of how the internet is seeing and ranking your website to stay on the front page (or get to) of search results.
Instilling a culture in your company or with yourself of constant learning so that you can make the task of digitally transforming your business as easy as possible.
Digitally transforming your business is a daunting but necessary task if you want to stay alive in this day and age. It takes forward-thinking. It takes an entrepreneurial stance to keep you going and engaged. It takes continuing education at every turn.
Try, quickly fail, then try again is what is needed here to keep up with the times. Focus on the results to make yourself happen.