The modern digital world creates massive opportunities for small businesses to grow, it also provides high chance of small business to increase revenue up to 20% annually.
Considering fully digitally enabled small businesses enjoyed over $350,000 in increased sales each year, the questions we need to ask are, why are nearly 84% small businesses are fully digitally enabled? Why don’t they take advantage of the obvious increase in revenues each year?
Let’s discover what they are.
TIME
Time is the most precious resource for small business owners and you don’t have a lot of time to devote to get the online strategy and activities done correctly.
Take Danny Adams owner of Ozone Air Conditioning. After having worked with large agencies and struggling doing things himself he found a business that focused only on small businesses like his.
They took away all the tough and time consuming work from Adams, and with more time Adams more involved in working through the best strategy for his business in winning more sales.
No sitting in front of a laptop of a PC struggling to do everything himself.
MONEY
Small business owners usually perceived online marketing activities as an expensive exercise mainly for bigger business.
Or others may have worked with a large agency that has cost them an arm and a leg. Or been burnt by a cowboy operator who they were lured by their low cost offer but the job never was completed in away it achieved your goal or complemented your business.
CONFIDENCE
Most small business owners would not have the skills and the confidence to know what had to be done. It can be a very overwhelming experience trying to understand what exactly must be done.
It’s a world of acronyms, and confusion if you don’t know exactly what to do.
Take the case of Anne Marie Cade a mum of three who runs a small but successful legal firm Daniel Lew Lemercier & Co, in Melbourne.
Anne Marie did some research to find and work with a firm took the time to understand her business, and then provide her the expertise she needed to deliver upon her goal of achieving the online marketing capability she desired.
THE PROVIDER
This is a major consideration. You need the expertise but you must be able to afford the service provided, now this is a hard choice business owners need to make.
Often there are two obvious choices an expensive agency or work with a provider offering a low price.
Today when it comes to low cost options, there are several offshore based providers.
Issues most business face are that you can often get burnt if you get a bad provider which has been quite an experience for small business owners.Take the case of Renata Bliss, CEO and Founder of theRooms.com.
After several bad experiences using providers from Odesk and Freelancer from India, Vietnam and Bangladesh, she have vowed to get her work done by Aussie based providers who focus on small business owners.
At the end of the day, wrong choice of provider can completely ruin your business by wasting your time and money.
According to Bliss, her opportunity costs of delays were far greater than cost of money paid.
STRATEGY
Getting your strategy right is fundamental to your success and must be done before any design or any activity begins.
According to serial entrepreneur Gordon Burke, owner of 7Areas.net he had many bad experiences of working with agencies who got straight into design of his websites.
After many failed experiences he now works with just one firm who helps him first get his strategy right. Burke says this way you design your site to head in the right direction with zero confusion.
It’s as important as setting your navigator before your start your journey, not once you’ve lost your way.
PROCESS
Ensuring you know the process of managing an online marketing project is crucial even if you have got all of the above 5 points right.
The wrong process can cost you a lot more money than you planned and get the completely wrong outcome after many week and months of delay. Many small businesses try to manage the process themselves and fail.
The question is, how can you manage things that you haven’t mastered yet in order to reach a significant result?
According to Dr Simon Coffey, Internationally renowned Sydney based orthopedic surgeons.
When it came to online marketing he felt it had to be managed by an expert he could depend on, but it needed to be a company not just an individual to ensure he wasn’t subject to a single point of failure.
He ended up working with a Sydney based firm who to his delight helped him achieve his outcomes from the very first month.
Dr Coffey says they were also surprisingly more affordable than the agencies that had pitched their business to him earlier which he found exorbitant for an individual professional practice.
By identifying the common traps, it is obvious that you as a small business owner have to keep all of the aspects balanced in order to survive in a business market in the long run.
The best solution to undermine the traps is to find the right online marketing service professional who has a track record of delivering significant results and both the small-business owner’s psyche as well as tough demands placed on them.
Any questions?
Feel free to talk to one of our digital strategists today. We are more than happy to help! Contact us now.
