1. OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE FOR MOBILE
Your website needs to be updated regularly, easy to navigate and the user needs to quickly understand what your business is offering. Most importantly your website needs to be optimized for all types of mobile usage, as most traffic is now accessed through our mobile phones. Since customers spend most of their time on their phones, the ability to purchase the goods and services and easy sign up through mobile is critical for SMEs.
2. DIGITAL MARKETING
The trick is to continuously test your digital strategy until you find what gives the best results. Digital advertising such as pay-per-click can significantly increase traffic to your website. The key to success here to regularly test keywords to attract visitors to your site.
3. PERSONALISED CONTENT
With the move to automation of marketing activities, particularly email marketing, it’s so important to personalize the communication to really connect with the customer. Ensure the messaging is relevant and pertinent to your audience.
4. ONLINE USER REVIEWS
You need to encourage user reviews, this validates your business products or services and the best way to earn creditability and user trust. Also, you need to respond to any negative comments otherwise you could suffer severe brand reputation.
5. CONTENT MARKETING AND VIDEOS
Your digital strategy needs to include content marketing, it supports and adds value to the entire customer journey. Users are attracted to businesses that they see as partners to their businesses. In today’s highly competitive world, businesses are looking for support and content marketing gives them the valuable advise that they need. The rise in the use of YouTube is impacting on how consumers consume content and creating short 5-minute videos is the next big thing in content marketing. Users have so much information at their fingertips that videos will become the new norm to deliver messages to your customers.
6. VOICE SEARCH
The improvement in voice recognition technology will have a large influence on how customers find what they are looking for. It’s easy to use and delivers quick results. This will impact how the search engine optimization works and the how your keywords are selected.
7. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE-LEARNING
This will completely change the sales process and improve the effectiveness of digital marketing activities. By continuously analyzing customer data and understanding the identified customer trends, these results can be used to effectively target the right customers at the right time, increasing the conversion percentage. SMEs that are able to harness this power will have a competitive edge to their competitors.
8. CASHLESS PAYMENT SYSTEMS
Customers want an easy way to pay for their goods and services. A cashless society will impact how SMEs are paid in the future and the adoption of mobile payment tech innovations such as mobile wallets, in-apps and person-to-person (P2P) payment options is an important consideration for SMEs.
9. BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY
This technology will impact the way we do business in the future. It offers the potential to reduce the cost of transacting and is a secure way of keeping transactions protected. Once cryptocurrency is widely accepted it will increase the speed and transparency for various processes for SMEs.
10. BE ADAPTABLE
With changes occurring daily in the world of tech, you need to ensure your positioning is adaptable. Where possible, make your messaging modular so that you can chop and change with trends and keep your content current. Rather than reinvent the wheel, see what you can repurpose so that you save on resources but still maintain up-to-date material.
