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The COVID-19 pandemic has made it necessary for almost all businesses to migrate online to survive. With physical stores shutting down and people heading online to shop, you’re missing out on a lot if you’re not going online.
But even once you go online, it’s a slow, uphill battle to get to your customers and generate decent sales.
So, how can SMEs boost business online?
Technology can come in handy for this. Not only can it help you grow your sales but can help with the overall growth of your business.
Let’s take a look at how you can use it to your advantage.
Using Technology to Boost Business Online
Here’s how SMEs can use technology to boost business online.
1. Use Social Media Marketing
The number of social media users is nearing the 4 billion mark and currently stands at 3.8 billion. Your SME can easily reach out to this massive audience by establishing a presence on the most popular social media platforms.
You need to figure out where your target audience is present and accordingly build your presence on those platforms. For this, you need to regularly post content on the platforms and grow your brand awareness.
However, to get the most out of your social media efforts, you should post content regularly and remain active on the platforms. For this, you can leverage tools that can help you schedule posts, monitor your brand mentions, and more.
2. Build a Website
As more users go online looking for brands, it’s essential to build and establish your credibility. For this, it’s critical that you build a website.
It serves as your digital portfolio and helps you build your brand online. And that’s not all. You can also grow your sales using it.
When you have a website, your audience can easily find you and research your brand. This added discoverability can help you boost business online.
3. Partner with Influencers
While social media marketing is helpful in boosting your brand’s presence online, it can take quite some effort to reach a huge target audience.
In such a situation, it helps to partner with influential social media users. These influencers have a powerful connection with their audiences. Their audiences see them as authority figures in their niches.
Additionally, they take their recommendations seriously. So, when these influencers say something positive about your brand, it’s likely that their audiences will take note. Some of them may even check out your business and might purchase from you too.
This added traffic and visibility can go a long way to help you boost your business online.
However, the tricky part about influencer marketing is that of finding influencers. There are many fake influencers out there who purchase followers and likes. To avoid them, you can use tools to find genuine influencers.
But that’s not all.
Finding influencers is just one part of the deal. You also need to manage your entire campaign and analyze the results to optimize it.
This can be a challenging task when you’re a small business owner as you may be short-staffed for it. In such a situation, you can partner with agencies that can handle the entire influencer marketing campaigns for you.
4. Use Project Management Tools
Managing projects can be quite challenging. It’s also critical to stick to your deadlines and get work done in a timely manner.
What’s more?
Your team, too, needs to be on the same page as you when it comes to managing the project and its deadlines. In such a situation, you need to have a method in place through which you can manage your project with ease while keeping your team informed.
This is where project management tools can come in handy. Tools like Trello, Asana, and Toggl Plan can help you manage your projects from scratch till the end.
Image via Asana
You can assign tasks, message team members, add deadlines, and even attach files for each activity.
5. Leverage Email Marketing
Nearly 4 billion people use emails now. This makes it a great way to reach your target audience regularly. It’s also one of the best ways to engage your customers on a regular basis.
By sending out regular email newsletters to your target audience, you can easily get their attention.
Whether it’s a new product that you’re launching or it’s a special occasion, email marketing can help you draw traffic to your website or online store and boost your sales.
Make sure that you include call-to-action (CTA) buttons in your newsletters. These buttons can help you drive traffic to your website so that your subscribers can take the action that you want them to.
6. Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools
It’s essential for businesses to manage their relationships with their customers well. If you don’t keep your customers engaged and satisfied, it’s very likely that they might switch to another brand.
This is why it’s crucial to make sure that you don’t miss the opportunity to engage your customers. For this, you can leverage customer relationship management (CRM) tools. These tools can help you manage your relationships with customers and help you nurture them as well.
These tools can also assist you in converting potential customers through regular interactions. You can use CRMs like Zoho CRM and Agile CRM.
Image via Agile CRM
Final Thoughts
SMEs have taken a massive hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s become important for all businesses to go online now. To boost business online, you should use social media marketing and consistently publish good content. You can also partner with influencers to grow your reach and traffic.
Also, you should create a website and use project management tools to manage your projects. It also helps to send out newsletters to your subscribers regularly and engage with your customers through CRMs.
Do you have any questions about how you can use technology to boost your business online? If so, do let us know in the comments below.
