What is digital strategy for a small business?
Whether you are a brick and mortar or an online marketer selling physical products, you need to keep up with digital technologies and incorporating digital tools into your day-to-day business. Do you and your business navigate the digital economy with confidence? Do you have a digital strategy in place? This article is an essential read if you want to remain competitive in an increasingly digital marketplace.
This is the first Plantconfindent core piece where I describe a topic area I offer support in for other businesses. I have been working with content management systems for ten years now. From blogging through social media to introducing company-level productivity tools to teams and building websites that mirror the companies values, strengths and a smooth journey for their clients, I’ve done many things.
In that time, I’ve seen some typical problems and recurring challenges that business owners face when they start operating in the digital economy. I wrote this article for you. What is a digital strategy for a business, and how to have one? Let’s see the key points you have to pay attention to if you want to succeed and set you up for the right digital mindset!
In this article, I’m going to go in-depth on these five essential aspects of a digital business:
What is a digital strategy?
A digital strategy is at the heart of your business strategy.
The digital strategy focuses on using technology to improve your personal and business performance. It is a clear understanding of the benefits that digital brings and forming your platforms and processes around it, so you don’t leave value on the table.
I call the digital aspect of your business a strategy (and not a toolbox, for example) because you specify a direction you will take to create competitive advantages with digital technology, as well as the tools you will use to achieve these changes. Also, this offers an excellent opportunity to re-think or refine your business strategy or to adjust your strategic decisions based on digital performance.
The digital strategy covers every digital experience.
What should your digital strategy cover? You should include in it all your digital platforms - website, social media outlets and app if you have one -, the online user experience of your audience, your business productivity processes and tools, plus your own knowledge while working with these processes and tools. Your digital strategy is the digital journey of everyone interacting with your business.
Start thinking in a way that all the above links together and have to work together to drive your success. Your website is not an isolated entity to your social channels and vice versa, as well as it’s unlikely to run a business smoothly if your internal processes are crap or worse, non-existent.
In my opinion, to do it right with the digitals, you should dedicate 20% of your time to strategising and spend the other 80% on execution and regular tweaking.
The thing with the digital face of your business is that it is an agile environment: it will continuously change and push you to adapt to it.
What is a digital journey for a small business? Imagine that you own a company that manufactures and markets a physical product, for example, paper-based storage containers for eco-minded customers. You need to arrange the schedule of two or three locations where your product is made, your backstock is kept, and where you send the parcels out from. You do everything digitally and keep your books online, too, so your accountant has access to it and does their job automated. Your shop runs on an eCommerce platform that takes care of your inventory, orders, invoicing and customer emails without your close watch. You have a substantial audience across different online channels who order and pay for your products in several ways. And this charade of processes should be organised. Partly, because that amplifies your productivity and partly so you’re able to plan in your business.
Once you have it set-up, your digitals are a constant work in progress, requiring a steady part of your attention: you do regular alignments between different parts. It’s an iterative process that needs to be checked and updated regularly, aka optimised according to your goals.
So, once again, your business’ digital strategy is a closely interwoven system of your
Internal processes, your day-to-day productivity in your business,
The external face of your business; website, socials, marketing, eCommerce, etc. and your
Iterative work to harmonise the internal and external digital.
From toolbox to a plan
From a set of productivity and business apps to a tactical plan
People use business and productivity applications to thematise and prioritise the things they have to get done to move forward with their projects. However, the importance of these tools is sometimes overrated, and sometimes underrated. I see business owners being controlled by their productivity apps and most strikingly, social media applications. I think that the sweet spot between under evaluating and overhyping digital tools is lying where you feel 100% in control of them. So, instead of having apps that tell what to do (or read or buy or like), you should be the one in the driver’s seat holding the wheel.
That applies to business apps, too. You don’t want to be a victim of your processes or the data gathered through them, but to confidently take the lead.
There is a time to separate your tools according to personal and work-related accounts.
In the life of a small business, personal and business productivity accounts are probably overlapping much. At the start, you don’t need to separate your work tasks from your personal tasks, as your business grew organically out from your personal space. You’re likely to launch your offering by using your personal social network, keeping most of the tasks merged with your personal to-do list because you don’t need to collaborate regularly with others online. Or, a classic mistake that I see: a small team is working with one single email account, which is the account of the manager.
The minute you wish to share your workspace with someone else, you will need a clear distinction. When you have a team around you and are not a company of one anymore, you’ll need to create and maintain a shared working environment.
In this sense, having a team of 3 is not that different from having a team of 15.
I see entrepreneurs up close who are not able to make the step that’d require them to share their digital working environment and start scaling up. Not that they don’t want to! They still need to build their strategic muscle and step outside their one-person vision to a collective one.
But when do we start to speak about strategy instead of having a set of productivity or business intelligence tools?
It’s more likely for a business to build out their digital toolbox first before they start to aspire for more. To move the needle on value creation or scaling, even, you need to set strategic ambitions and follow them up with a plan.
In specific contexts, this is called a digital transformation. Digital transformation is a planned process in which businesses make constant, iterative changes to produce results in their focus areas or use cases. Staying by the paper storage containers example: you could set digital ambitions to automate your production and logistics processes, to build a new marketing funnel to reach a new segment of customers or, you could scale up your online store to a more robust eCommerce engine.
How will a toolbox become a strategy?
I get often asked where one should draw the line in digital transformation. Where to start and what is the ultimate goal for a small business of 1-5 persons?
Well, I have been working with a wide range of clients from various industries that were different in team size and digital maturity. And all that doesn’t count until they don’t have set goals and scope to work within. In other words, you need to work out a frame first, set goals, identify the steps leading to those goals, act on them while you’re measuring your progress and reflect regularly exactly like you were planning a project!
There are three simple rules to turn your digital toolbox to a strategy:
PLAN
You’ll need to step back, take a glance at the big picture of your business and plan your and your customers’ digital journey—set ambitions and goals.
MANAGE
You’ll need to actively manage your processes and measure your progress against the goals you’ve set. Even better to set KPIs - key performance indicators - and track those. You’ll want to see the change that your efforts bring forth.
OPTIMISE
You’ll need to monitor change and adjust your processes and measures accordingly. This way, you can roll out long-term impact items on your plan.
That is the general plan like to follow in my own business as well as with clients. A conscious, step-by-step approach to build a framework for yourself that is easy and straightforward to work in.
Next, let’s see what are vital components of a small business’ digital strategy, eg. What are the areas to include in your digital transformation toolbox!
What tools should a digital strategy for a small business include?
Processes you have internally, the journey your customers go on with your business, and the work you put into understanding and harmonising the two. That’s your digital strategy at large. Under one of these three buckets in your toolbox, any business or productivity tool or tactic can be listed. Those I call components.
Here are the key components of your digital strategy toolbox:
Internal processes
The digital HQ of your business. It is where you plan your internal workflows, set business priorities and act on your daily tasks, along with your team. Supply chain and logistics come here, too, as well as the security of your virtual assets.
Task and project management
Workflow management and automation
Team communication
Online security
Supplier interaction and supply chain management
Your customer’s journey with you
The facade of your HQ, the storefront of your business. Here happens everything that you communicate with your audience, how you show up for them and every interaction you make.
Online presence
Selling online
Digital marketing
Customer interaction
Mobile-based solutions
Measurements & analytics
Your HQ and your facade are interactive. It is the area that makes measurements and optimisation possible to you and your team. Research activities, as well as every analytics or testing applications you apply to belong here.
Research and analytics
Audience and market testing
IT maintenance
Although the list of components cannot be exhaustive, I think you get the idea! Your next question - quite rightfully - might be: should I do this all by myself, or is there someone out there who can help me deal with it? The short answer is yes, you can ask for professional support. In the next paragraphs, let's discuss who is a digital strategist and what they can do for you.
Working with a digital strategist
What can a digital strategist do for you?
Some professionals can help you with various components of your digital strategy toolbox. The most common is when people get specialised in one or some particular areas (online marketing or customer relations, for example); however, I wouldn’t call them a digital strategist due to their limited scope to only a couple of the components. You’ll need someone who can work with all three key areas.
Digital strategists, instead, are the people that help businesses to connect the dots between a business’s internal processes, customer journey and iteration needs while aligning them to their business’s goals.
They work closely with the founders or with the manager of the business in a focused manner to get a clear and detailed understanding of what the challenges are from a business point-of-view. Ideally, they have a robust generalist’s knowledge of digital tools and vast knowledge of how small businesses work. They also need to have a solid foundation of what a physical or a digital product, or a service is, how the company would get paid, and everything along these lines.
These three stages of a business call for a digital strategist
These are the three optimal scenarios when a business owner should hire a digital strategist.
At the ideation stage, when the business value proposition gets outlined. The earlier, the merrier! At this stage, working with a digital strategist can help you to set your processes up, plan your brand’s interaction with customers, choose marketing techniques and define KPIs to measure.
When you give digital transformation a try, for example, you have a steady operating brick and mortar company with physical products, and you decide to take the next steps in using digital. At this stage, a digital strategist will help you to understand your digital assets and processes, and set you up with a strategy that enables you to grow.
When you need to redesign your strategy, you have a solid digital plan and your processes are in place working, but you’re seeking for a more optimal setup that allows you to scale up. A digital strategist can help you to amend your strategy by auditing all three buckets of tools, review your KPI’s and manage your business through all the changes necessary to make.
Summary
When a small business owner starts thinking in digital strategy, the very first step to take is to identify the extent of their three key systems: internal processes, customer journey and to what extent they can iterate, adjust and change within their industry. Taking note of how these systems interact with each other and where the boundaries of each lie are key.
There are numerous digital tools associated with every three systems, and even the smallest business is using some of them already - whether intentionally or unintentionally. Never have I met a client who doesn’t have a social media account or a website that they are not sure how to make better. Strategic thinking sparks when you learn to look at these tools as components of interconnected processes that should work for your goals.
When your digital toolbox becomes a strategy, it mirrors your values internally and externally, offering a consistent brand experience in-person and online.
Working with a Digital Strategist can lift the weight off of your shoulders as they can skillfully lead through the process of strategy, implementation and in many cases, they help you keep up with your system and measure your performance on the long term.
How can Plantconfident help you?
Plantconfident works with small, plant-based or natural-focused businesses helping them solve complex business problems, reaching their next milestone and very often doing that using digital technologies.
Clients are reaching out to me with very different challenges they’re facing, and most of the time, we identify an underlying problem linked to their digital strategy. Sometimes the tools they use are sub-optimal, sometimes they need a little help harnessing the tools they already use and paying for and sometimes, we’re working together on an entire project like transitioning to a new eCommerce platform or getting them ready to scale their business.
Keep your eyes peeled for more articles under my focus topic, Digital Strategy! To read a manual-like guide about launching this website, visit my article 3+1 Lessons for every new website owner. And in this one, read more how I helped an organic veggie grower that has a veggie box delivery service to find an eCommerce solution that’s convenient, customer-focused and scalable.