You can never know what the future holds for your business. We live in the digital era – this much is true. So, you might as well use it to your advantage and give your business a chance.
With the right tactics, tips, and tools, you can accelerate your business growth and give it a competitive edge. Why is this so important? Well, global digital transformation spending is forecasted to reach $3.9 trillion by 2027, so it’s clear that businesses are fighting to stay ahead.
Put simply – if you want your business to grow you must adapt. And here’s how!
Embrace technology
The first and most obvious step. If you’re looking to succeed in a digital era, you must have the digital by your side. You know how our parents used to say, “If your friends jumped in the water, would you jump too?” Well, this isn’t such a case. You should do what everyone else does.
That said, embracing technology will help you:
- Streamline daily tasks: Technology has made it a lot easier to handle the tasks that you must do but take up too much of your time. For example, it has automated email sorting. Instead of going over your emails one by one, a digital tool can automatically sort them into folders, giving you the most important ones on a silver plate.
- Reach out to more customers online: Businesses used to target customers with billboards. Now, they do it online. Why? It’s simple. Potential customers spend a lot of their time online. If you want to reach out to them, you must get out there – post ads on social media, create an AI avatar to engage users on your website and provide a more personalized experience, use email marketing to stay in touch with your customers, etc.
- Make better decisions: When you make a business decision, what do you rely on? Yes, it sometimes might be a feeling, but most of the time it’s DATA. AI tools give you access to a lot of data that can help you understand customers’ behavior and their preferences.
As much as you want to keep your old-school approach, there’s no way to do all of this without embracing technology. Technology is here to stay, so why not make it your new best friend?
Put an accent on customer service and experience
Customers play a huge, if not the biggest role in your business’s success. And to satisfy customers nowadays, you’ll need a lot more than the occasional discounts. They expect a fast service. They expect their needs to be heard. All in all, they expect a personalized experience.
And how do you provide all this? That’s right. With the help of technology, such as:
AI-powered chatbots
You could create your own AI-powered chatbot that will guide your customers from the moment they first enter the website to making their purchases. What’s so special about these chatbots isn’t only that they’re there for customers even outside working hours to answer their questions and help them with the basic steps of scrolling and purchasing, like click here, click there.
They can also get under their skin by recommending exactly what they expect. This is possible because AI chatbots are trained to learn from previous interactions with customers. So, their answers and all of their recommendations are simply a response to customers’ behaviors.
Social media marketing
Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to find a person that isn’t on social media. If they don’t like Facebook, they possibly use Instagram. If they don’t use Instagram, they probably use LinkedIn.
This is why you shouldn’t overlook social media marketing. It’s where your audience spends their time, and if you want to reach out and connect with them, you need to be where they are.
With the help of technology, you could create targeted social media ads that are more likely to engage with the right audience. For example, if you’re in the HR industry, you could run ads promoting the best resume templates and they’ll reach those who need these the most, that is, job seekers. You can even use AI to track engagement so that your ads can get better with time.
Team up with the right people
Who you do business with matters. The right partnerships can open a lot of doors for you in the digital era. They can introduce you to new audiences and strengthen your brand reputation.
Here are a few tips:
- Find businesses that complement yours: No, businesses don’t always have to be competitors. In fact, a lot of businesses grow faster when working together. For example, a travel agency can team up with a luggage brand and offer discounts to passengers when they book a flight. This is what you’d call a win-win situation.
- Try influencer marketing: I understand that a lot of businesses are skeptical about this one, but getting an influencer to promote your brand works like a charm. In fact, over 80% of marketers agree that influencer marketing is an incredibly effective strategy, and 63.8% have already confirmed their plans to partner with influencers in 2025.
I’m not going to lie to you. Finding the right people to team up with when competitors are everywhere can be challenging. You must find the right fit, that is, someone who can communicate the culture you’ve worked hard to build, and not an influencer who has paid for their followers and is only doing it for the sake of it. This will only harm your brand reputation.
Build a digital-first culture
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Not all people are comfortable with using technology for every one of their tasks. I mean, most employees know how to open and send an email or browse the internet, but when it comes to automation, many might stumble upon challenges.
This is why it’s important not to make the change overnight. You probably needed time to adapt before deciding on the step, which is why you need to let everyone else do the same.
You can invest in training that will teach them about how to use digital tools to their advantage, and most importantly, help them understand that AI isn’t after their jobs but an enhancement that could save them a lot of time and trouble. This is when the idea of using it won’t seem that bad.
Be an example for your employees. Show and remind them daily that you’re also using these tools. It’ll be a lot easier for them when they see their leader embracing advanced technology.
Don’t forget about financial management
Investing in digital tools to help automate daily tasks is great and all, but don’t forget that they’re not free. You need to be as realistic as possible and invest only in what you can’t do without.
How can you do this?
- Track every dollar: It might sound a bit exaggerated, but this is what you should be doing. You need to regularly review your expenses and income to understand which investment has paid off and which hasn’t, as well as to identify areas where you can cut costs. This is how you’ll always know where your money is going and will avoid losses.
- Be realistic: What I mean is that you should create a realistic budget based on where your money should be going and not where you’d like it to be going. Needs come first.
Once you embrace technology, financial management will be the least of your worries. There are thousands of financial tools that will simplify this management for you. They will track your spending and manage your budget. They will give you a clearer picture of your finances.
Growing and standing tall in the digital era
It’s not easy to grow when so many businesses try to do the same. This is especially true for the digital era, as technology has made businesses more competitive than ever. This is because opening a business nowadays doesn’t require much. You just have to put your mind to it.
The greatest challenge is to grow and keep standing tall. Keep in mind that your business is among a pack of wolves, all trying to gain and retain customers and all trying to be the best.
If you don’t want to fade away, then embrace technology to take care of your finances and improve the customer experience. It’s a digital world, so there’s nothing left to do except adapt.
