Here are five reasons why it is so important for today’s businesses to go digital

Why Going Digital and Using social media is so Important for Today’s Businesses!

The Digital Age is upon us. Here are five reasons why it is so important for today’s businesses to go digital, and how doing so can and will make your business thrive.

1. It Will Allow You to Keep up With the Appetites of the Modern Consumer

There’s no denying that the introduction of tablets and smartphones into our lives has made us more contactable than ever, and consumers are now buying more products on the go than ever before. Going digital and introducing social media and mobile apps/websites to your business will make sure that your company keeps up with the modern-day consumer (or potential customer) and maximise profits along with keeping your customers satisfied. In an interview with Marketing Magazine, Pierre Perron of Sony Mobile states that the most exciting development in the mobile space is the consumer’s appetite to use new things and that ‘keeping up with consumer appetite is key to Sony’s mobile successes.

2. Using social media Will Increase Company and Brand Awareness Immensely

The use of social media within your marketing campaigns will bring in and maintain a younger, ‘fresh’ audience for your business. The increase of mobile technology means that many potential customers now check their social media sites dozens of times per day and using this to your company’s advantage will maximise profits and be instrumental in getting your business’ brand and message out there. In his article ‘What happens when you get 1.3M likes on Facebook?’, Alex Wain, the co-founder of the successful web business ‘so bad so good’ states:

‘Having a viral hit [on social media] is the holy grail of online marketing. It’s worth big bucks to marketers looking to prove their worth and it can have a huge impact on brand awareness, sales, consumer engagement and reach.’

Alex goes on to say that visitors to his company website tripled in 24 hours. Wow! We can only imagine the amount of company awareness that has been raised by its social media presence alone! And if that’s not enough to convince you to join the digital revolution, Ryan Holmes, the CEO of Hootsuite, says:

‘The good news for businesses is that major social networks like Facebook and Twitter are figuring out ways to make it simpler and more productive for companies to engage with customers. Meanwhile, more and more tools are emerging that make it easier to track the impact of social media spending. To sum it up, 2015 is the year that the impact of social media on business gets easier to show and harder to ignore’.

If you would like to know more about why going digital is important to raise awareness of your business, visit our interview with Manchester’s own SEO expert Andy Kinsey. 

3. Increased Interaction with Customers

Going digital makes it so much easier to interact and communicate with new and existing customers. Using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter allows customers to give their feedback on their experiences of your company and reassures them that their valued opinion is being heard and understood.

Corinne Sklar, chief marketing officer at Bluewolf wrote in her Guardian article:

‘Social media is a key channel for mobilising customer engagement in this interactive economy. Customers are truly engaged when they feel known and that is what the best use of social media can achieve.’

If a customer is engaged with your company, then they are more likely to return to your company again and again. As we all know, a happy customer is much more beneficial to a company than an unhappy one and having an increased level of interaction with your customers through social media channels will increase customer satisfaction and have a higher chance of increasing company revenue.

It is also interesting to note that while social media is instrumental in the spreading of positive news, customer’s negative experiences can spread across the internet at an incredible speed, so it is worth making sure that the member of staff that is interacting with customers over social media is trained in social media etiquette.

4. The People Within Your Company Are More Approachable to Potential Customers/Employees

Social media does not stop at just Facebook and Twitter. Creating a company profile on LinkedIn is a great way of introducing your business to a professional audience and enables you to give a detailed description about your company type, industry, and other useful information for potential customers to take into consideration. An interesting article written for Forbes by Kate Harrison states that businesses that use social media are ‘humanized’ and that social media strays away from the ‘corporate machine’ image that follows many modern companies.

To stray away from the corporate machine image even more, many companies opt for each of their employees to have a personal LinkedIn profile. This is an effective way of enabling potential customers or clients to see who they are working with on an individual basis, and gives them the opportunity to discover relevant information that could be a deciding factor as to whether they choose to work with the company or not (where your staff have previously worked, their education history etc.) There is also a direct message option on LinkedIn which would allow a potential customer to send a quick and convenient message to individual employees of the company, rather than an email or phone call to the main office.

5. It Will Allow You to Keep Track on How Your Business is Being Represented Online

The introduction of social media into the world has made communicating our views and opinions online a much easier experience which can have an impact on a much larger scale. However, this also means that any negative opinions or experiences that customers have had with your business can be seen across the globe in a matter of minutes. Take this for example: a video that was posted on YouTube of a FedEx employee carelessly throwing parcels into a delivery truck has been viewed over two million times!

Without being on social media, your business will be unable to respond appropriately to anyone discussing a bad experience that they have had with you. Obviously, it is impossible to stop the negative view from spreading across the web, but monitoring it and responding to comments, when necessary, will help to keep it under control. It also means that you can contact any unhappy customers and attempt to resolve the situation.