Are you digital enough? (Article 2)

Most entrepreneurs or MSME owners are, these days, quite convinced that ‘going digital’ is perhaps the right way for them to do better business. But the crux of the issue is ‘how’?

The risk factors

Covid 19 pandemic has made all of us more cost conscious than ever before. But there is always a thin line in looking for ‘cost effective’ and ‘cheap’ solutions. Unfortunately, most of the MSME owners tend to go for the latter. And the trouble starts here. They seek some SEO/SEM(1) agency to do the job. This just doesn’t work to enhance business, for few simple reasons:

The agency doesn’t know -

1)    Your business processes

2)    Your customer behaviour

3)    Your customer expectations

4)    Your customer’s way of decision making

5)    Your organization culture

6)    Your USP’s(2)

7)    Even your weak areas & how to cover them up

8)    Your team and how it operates

9)    Your production methods & how to upgrade the same

10) The quality standards you follow & how to leverage the same in getting business

In short, you need some expert to work with you for implementing your digital strategy. It has a lot to deal with technical knowledge and knowledge of business process!

Having a software agency to work for it, is like asking for too much from them. A good software agency is just 10% of the game!

Are you relying too much on SEO/SEM agency?

Certain pitfalls of relying too much on software agency to work out digital strategy could be something like this:

1)    They use certain techniques to clean up your website. This is fine. This will increase speed of your website. But then, they won’t be able to work on the content that exists on your website. This must be done by ‘you’, with the help of experts who understand your business! Remember, it is the good ‘content’ that would attract and engage your audience & not just the speed of your website!

2)    They might be able to increase the traffic, but the visitors may not be relevant! (many times, you may have visitors through irrelevant sources or even from gaming/porno sites…. we have seen it happen with some of our clients)

3)    They might create fake blogs, use bots and what not…

The effect – You may see good activity for your website – but results? In fact, there are good chances that your website may become black listed by search engines like Google, Bing, Firefox etc., as the search engines are vigilant & can easily notice this. The ranking of your website as compared with your competitors may go terribly down.

4)    They may maintain your social media – but where will the followers come from? It is quite possible that your followers may not be relevant. They may not give you any business.

So how shall one plan the digital strategy for the organization?

We’ll elaborate this in the next article. We will also discuss how going digital can enhance your business and what you, as MSME owner need to do in this game.

Reference: (1) SEO – Search Engine Optimization and SEM – Search Engine Marketing, (2) USP – A unique selling proposition (USP) refers to the unique benefit exhibited by your company, service, product or brand that enables it to stand out from competitors. The proposition is the one the competition cannot or does not offer. 

© Nitin Kirloskar