We’ve heavily reviewed the importance and benefits of digitizing your business, like how it can create greater transparency of your marketing and ROI. And although digitizing your business takes an investment in time and patience, the results outway the initial hurdle. Businesses often blame their lack of familiarity with technology as a barrier to digitizing their organization. But, what is more damaging? Upgrading your current process and knowledge base, or potentially going out of business?
Localogy released a report after tracking the transition of small business owners’ mindsets from traditional to software as a service. According to the MCM Wave V-1 report, businesses using SaaS services spend 65%-75% more time on revenue-generating activities versus non-users. This goes to show that digitizing your business can save you time and lead you away from wasting money on channels that don’t provide the data needed to know that processes are working.
What happens if you choose to forego digitization? Let’s explore the real consequences.
8 Negative Effects
1. Lose Relevance
Businesses using traditional processes move slower than those with digitized processes. Digital speed is important in this day and age if you want to keep up with fast-moving strategies. Since today’s marketing is agile, it’s important to keep up with your online presence so that you’re able to jump on trending topics. You wouldn’t want to lose business relevance just because you weren’t agile enough to maintain your digital presence.
2. Competitive Disadvantage
There are many reasons that could cause you to be at a competitive disadvantage. If your business isn’t digitized and doesn’t have the proper processes in place, prospective customers could experience slower response times and turn to one of your competitors instead. When you leverage A.I. and technology, it helps you avoid lagging behind your competitors.
3. Inability to Collect Data
Without having the proper software in place, you’re missing out on valuable data that can provide transparency into your marketing efforts. By digitizing your business, you gain access to the data you need to make smart decisions as you grow your business, no matter where you are at any given time. For example, with your entire online presence plugged into an all-in-one marketing platform, you can see the ROI of your specific marketing activities whenever you want.
SUGGESTED READING: How Digitizing Your Business Creates Greater Transparency of Marketing Spend and ROI
4. Risk Market Share
If you continue with your offline processes, you risk the potential of losing some market share in your industry. You miss the opportunity to capitalize on prospects who are online. Your competitors will surely take that market share. While you may feel comfortable with relying on referrals and door-to-door, consider what happens when something as drastic as COVID-19 affects your traditional marketing. Having a digitized business ensures that it will keep running in times of panic and uncertainty.
5. Struggle to Retain Valuable Staff
Your staff needs to communicate smoothly while your customers must access what they want faster. To achieve this, your organization needs flexible processes that streamline these needs. It can cost big time to replace and retrain employees. You’ll want to find a way to keep your team dedicated and engaged with your digitized processes.
6. Prevent Revenue Growth
Lacking a digital footprint can hinder your company’s revenue growth. There is only so much growing you can do with traditional processes. Growth will become a huge challenge when you don’t adopt new technologies that can take your business to the next level. While making an acknowledgment that you need to adopt modern software and tactics is a great first step, a business needs to embrace that change in order to reap its full benefits. When it comes to digitizing your business, your organization needs to engage in the process and look at how it can be integrated to drive revenue growth.
7. Fail to Gain Learning Advantage
Early adopters of technologies have a learning advantage over their competition. Through testing, learning, and data, businesses can get better insights, and make updates faster than those who don’t embrace a digital approach.
8. See Costs Increase
Digitizing your business can be done at a low cost and can suit your budget if planned strategically. However, you could see costs increase if you haven’t found technology and software that can be utilized for more than just one purpose (i.e. one tool for getting reviews, one tool for managing your website, one tool for managing search engine marketing, etc.). With a strategic plan, you can harness the power of technology to automate and optimize, which will result in costs decreasing.
Want to Learn More?
In Localogy’s report, 73% of small businesses preferred to work with a single software company that could address most or all their needs. The Surefire Local Marketing Platform is the best way to digitize your business and meet multiple business needs. Your entire online presence can be plugged into one platform that any member of your team can access from anywhere. It lets your entire company work together, increasing productivity, gaining transparency of marketing spend and ROI, and creating unmatched customer experiences.
Don’t let your business get swallowed by your competition because you made the choice not to transform your organization. Request a demo of the Surefire Local Marketing Platform to see the benefits of digitizing your business.
