Why Small Businesses Face the Most Barriers Using Advanced Digital Marketing Tools

Creating a strategy utilizing digital tools is essential to increasing a business’s lifespan and ultimate success. This includes any participation in digital marketing from boosting customer satisfaction scores with support tools to collecting data and measuring analytics to increasing the rate in returning customers. We’ve seen an immense shift from analog to digital data as technological revolution phases emerge, with the Age of Information (or Digital Era) taking a secure hold since the late 20th century.

Most often digital engagement tasks are assigned to existing roles such as IT, sales, and marketing personnel. This is not always the most effective plan of action given that the digital field is a category of its own thus there’s a selective demand for someone with the necessary expertise and training.

But when a business is in its startup phase or trying to restructure, the ability to manage automated tools further requires an understanding of your short-term and long-term goals. Breaking down this idea makes it easy to set manageable goals and not get bogged down in the weeds while assessing your customers’ needs.

So why are small businesses still struggling to adapt?

Blue Corona Measurable Marketing Solutions finds “30% say that keeping up with technology advances is a major concern of small business owners.”

The makeup behind this divide lies in the lack of digital knowledge given the flood of readily available tools. CxORE has created a plan and strategy around employing tools that specialize in different areas and are uniquely catered to small business. Depending on your focus, you could dive into customer relationship management (CRM) tools—increasing your email marketing, campaigns, or website presence. Other tools offer accounting, HR, and IT services. What many business owners do not realize is that these digital services can be accessed through a single sign-on portal alleviating the need to manage multiple services.

Christian Jorgensen from Planday, an advanced HR real-time software company, recognizes the time saving value of an integrated set of tools, “For instance, there are tools focusing on marketing automation, sales optimization, social media, document and data storage, booking and reservation, workforce management, inventory management, commerce, and billing and finance. If the right tools are implemented correctly, they have the potential to help managers claim more time and resources to build their core business faster and better.”

Jorgensen makes a major point about services like the cloud, SaaS (software as a service), and mobile apps as these offer the most optimal value in cutting down cost and time. Of course, some business owners are still reluctant and that’s a normal part of the evolutionary process.

Why adopt these latest technological trends when you have a reliable IT person? Why change the system when it’s working perfectly as it has been? Or why spend on newer services when it’s too expensive?

Many services are much cheaper than a decade ago and as Jorgensen mentions, these products are user-friendly and especially geared towards accessibility. This means all employees and owners have access to 24/7 support from any place and any device.

“Your competitors are trying to win as many customers as possible to increase their own market share. This means that you need to stay ahead by developing and launching new and innovative products or services as quickly as possible. As the saying goes ‘you snooze, you lose" said Linh Tran, contributor from InLoox Blog.

Making the switch to simple, cost effective applications leads to considerable increases in staff satisfaction and reduces the overall workload. Tran continues to pinpoint the importance of adopting new structures, “To do so, one strategy is to offer additional training courses for your employees to encourage them to learn new skills or enhance their existing ones. The business world is constantly changing, and so are trends, and ‘best practices’ continuously evolve. Only if your team is up to date with the latest practices can you charge ahead of your competition. And as a neat and equally important side effect, it will give your team new, interesting challenges that keeps their work exciting.”

We understand why some business owners are hesitant, but we’ve also met and talked to many who have taken the leap towards the best and latest digital tools and business practices. And while factoring in the benefits and costs, the ones who are still waiting may fall short and lose out on the competitive advantages.

There are hundreds of automated services dedicated to boosting your business, CxORE cut through the clutter and integrated a set of digital tools that can help put your business on the right path.

#smallbusiness #technology #reboot #practice #learning

Crystal Lam