Business Development Challenges
I was doing some research on digital business development and digital marketing for 2022. As we all know, staying agile and ready to pivot when changes happen is critical for all businesses. I came across an article by Ming Lagman that I found particularly interesting. It talks about how the pandemic has changed things, and even though businesses have pivoted and have made adjustments due to the changes he suggests that things are going to continue to change and not backward, it will be CHANGE forward.
Due to the Pandemic customers, whether they are B2B or B2C have tasted the freedom of shopping and doing business online, this trend is going to continue and grow. The challenge for businesses now is how to live with Covid and the changes it has brought, how to leverage the changes, and how to position
their business as to put them in front of consumers where they are at.
Some businesses are waiting and hoping things will go back to the way it was, but it won’t, going back is not going to be an option, those who wait too long will, unfortunately, pay a heavy price.
In Lagman’s article, his research revealed that
⦁ 132% e-commerce growth in the past year;
⦁ New digital consumers are over 12 million, and
⦁ 99% of digital consumers are likely to continue using e-commerce.
Now, this is good news for small and medium-sized businesses as it gives us a path, an avenue to economic recovery. It also presents some challenges as well.
Two main challenges
- Time
- Money
Businesses will be looking at how to get this new digital work done, so they can take advantage, however for small businesses the cost can be prohibitive.
To hire a marketing company or a full-time Digital Business Development Manager costs 70k-100k a year or more with ROI being 12 or more months. A lot of small businesses cannot afford this kind of expense, so some will either not do anything at all and others will try to do it themselves. The challenge here is “Time”. By doing nothing businesses will be passed by progress within a short period of time, and business owners doing it themselves will detract from the existing core duties of running the business which could be detrimental.
There is no doubt that business owners could learn digital business development, but it will cost them time and focus. It is easy to get stuck in a never-ending loop of survival activity and never be able to grow the business. It’s important for business owners to work on their business, not in their business.
What is emerging to fill this support gap for small businesses is another group of professional, savvy, technology-oriented business owners that understand the challenges of small businesses, as they are small business owners themselves.
They are positioning themselves as small business support and service providers focusing on the digital challenges. They operate lean, with reduced overhead and therefore offer great value for the struggling small business sector.
Whether we like it or not, digital business is not going away. To avoid it, to not transform and take advantage will be a costly mistake.
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