Digitalisation of business.

A new buzzword.

 

I’ve been seeing and reading this word online for a while now, but I don’t think that business owners are paying enough attention to it.

I’m sure that you know a well-established business that you work with, one of these businesses that have been operating for quite a while now and have a good reputation.

However, when it comes to online presence, they don’t exist. Maybe a rusty website that nobody can find. That’s all.

That’s what I call a dinosaur.

Because you can see that they are likely to be extinct.

 

I genuinely think that…

 

[Tweet “It makes sense for 90% of businesses to have a solid presence online.”]

 

And that’s why digitalisation of business has a key role in this process. It’s not easy to adapt a business structure to the digital world.

That’s why some businesses that perform well keep postponing it or not invest what it’s necessary to start building a solid reputation online.

 

Not only they’re not making the most of the new reality that the digital world has brought, they are also losing money. Day after day.

 

 

But what is digitalisation of business?

“Integration of digital technologies into everyday life by the digitization of everything that can be digitized.” –Business Dictionary.

I’ve been looking for an accurate definition of this term. I failed. Not a single one represented what digitalisation means for business.

If you ask me, in general terms, digitalisation is the adaptation of a business and its brand to the digital world by using available online tools with the objective of making its digital efforts profitable.

 

Now, the role of the “chief digital officer” is resonating among a lot of companies. As you can see, people are even hiring experts to implement digitalisation processes for their business.

 

And why is it so important?

I’m going to give you some figures:

1. 80% of the online population has bought something online.
2. Mobile ecommerce has increase by 35% in just one year.
3. These are the annual online sales growth rates for some countries in Europe:

4. One in every six people in the world use Facebook.

 

And these are just 4 figures among a long list that will shock you.

If one every six people in the world are on Facebook, do you really think that a business wouldn’t be able to find clients there?

As a matter of fact, Facebook would be one of the biggest marketplaces to start promoting a business.

Only last month, my website received more than 1000 visits from Facebook. Well, being only me in my business, I can’t imagine manage this amount of visit in a month in a physical shop (coming only from Facebook), can you?

Well, my website did it for me informing potential clients if that’s what they were looking for or not.

 

 

Also, think about these people setting a physical store and closing a couple of months later because it didn’t work; now business operates the other way round, they start opening a online shop and if it works, they open a physical shop.

They start their business with a small investment to set up an online shop to test their business idea first before going for a physical shop, which requires a bigger investment.

 

Aren’t you convinced yet?

 

 

Benefits of digitalisation of business

Among all the benefits that a business can get from digitalisation, I must highlight these ones:

• Start a business with a low investment to test a business idea.
• Start building a community around your brand.
• Get instant and real insight about your online efforts.
• Reach more potential clients, in different countries and cultures, investing less money and time.
• Automatise intern processes to save time and make your business more profitable.
• Get to know more about your ideal clients and where they gather online.
• Engage with your community and show the human aspect of your brand online.
• Develop your business in the safest way.

 

And, at this point, you’ll be wondering…

 

Why are you talking about digitalisation of business in this blog?

Firstly, because the role of translators, interpreters and copywriters are essential in this digitalisation process.

If you want to get clients online, you need to communicate your message. You need to communicate with people globally, in different countries and in different languages.

And no, Google Translator isn’t enough.

We need to overcomer cultural differences and promote business from different perspectives depending on the audience that we need to target. The role of communication specialists hasn’t been this important before.

 

And communicating a message is only half of the battle. We want our audience to take actions. And that’s why we need copywriting services, to persuade people to do what we want them to do.

Brands need to have a voice and personality so people can trust them. We don’t want to buy products and services from a robot, we love to feel special in this selling process, and this is what copywriting can achieve within your business.

 

[Tweet “Our role as communication specialists has special importance in digitalisation processes.”]

 

How can you start with the digitalisation of your business?

If you’re starting from scratch, your instinct will tell you to be everywhere and start creating profiles in every single platform to have a presence online.

Don’t.

It can be overwhelming at the very beginning, so it’s better to start focusing on the most important platforms for your business.

 

• The first thing you need to do is prioritise.

What do you need to do first?

Do you want to be on Facebook? What for? Maybe it’s useless if you can’t drive of your audience to your own platform.

There’s not a universal answer, that’s why you need to think about your situation online.

You need to ask yourself: “what do I want to achieve online?”

Maybe you can start selling and delivering your products online, or maybe you can adapt your current products into digital ones and sell them in a platform, or maybe you want to start building an audience to attract them to your restaurant or hotel.

Not every business has the same objectives online.

What is yours? What’s the first action that you need to take to get it right?

 

• Put all your efforts in this first step.

This is going to be the core of your online strategy, so you have to do it right.

If your objective is attracting people to your website, your website must be optimised to turn all this traffic into clients.

If we don’t get this first step right, we would be losing clients already and our online efforts won’t be as profitable.

Things that you should plan:

• Your budget for this first step.
• When you want to get it finished (deadlines will help you stick to a schedule.)
• Split your objectives in small ones (i.e. if you want to get clients with your website, think about how many clients you want to get during the first month.)
• What you need to finish this first step (i.e. if you’re setting up your website, you’ll need to think about copywriting, photography, graphic design, SEO services, among others.)

 

• Equip yourself with sub-strategies to get your first objective.

The rest that you do online must be linked and focused on achieving the first strategy.

If we stick to the example above and say that our strategy is to get clients from your website, and then you create a profile on Facebook, you’ll have to drive your Facebook followers to your website.

A big mistake would be just focusing on getting followers and not doing anything with them.

Never lose your focus.

It’s great to have sub-strategies to achieve your goal, but make all your online efforts count for your main strategy.

 

I’ve seen so many business leaving their social media profiles behind just because “it wasn’t worth it”. I always say that it wasn’t worth it because of their approach to social media and their digitalisation strategy.

 

There’s no perfect formula to digitalise a business.

Every single business is a complete different world, that’s why you need to surround yourself with specialists that can deal with the different aspects of your digitalisation process.