Challenge #1: If you’re not in Google, you don’t exist.

A website is the virtual front door to your business. If you don’t have a website, you don’t exist for a consumer looking for a product or service online. What’s more, if you don’t show up on the first page of Google, 75% of potential customers will never find out about you.

Solution: Web development & SEO

It isn’t just enough to make a simple webpage. What you need is a website that is designed to attract consumers, is easy and efficient to use and will make them repeat customers. This is where web development and SEO comes into play. A strong web development team can create a website specific to your business that will handle all of your customers needs. This team will utilize specific trends in your market to create a website that will not only grab your customers’ attention, but keep them on your website looking through your products/services. SEO is just as important. Having a great website won’t mean very much if people can’t find it in the first place. SEO, or search engine optimization, does exactly what it sounds like. An SEO specialist will utilize trends specific to their audience in order to optimize their relevance in search engines. Most consumers will not look past the first page of Google search results, so you have to ensure that your website has great searchability. SEO uses data to figure out what words and phrases are being searched the most by your target audience. Then, they will create content for your website that utilizes these keywords and increases your searchability on the web. With these two tools combined, your customers will be able to find your business and purchase whatever product/service they need, all from the comfort of their home.

SEO is just as important. Having a great website won’t mean very much if people can’t find it in the first place. SEO, or search engine optimization, does exactly what it sounds like. An SEO specialist will utilize trends specific to their audience in order to optimize their relevance in search engines. Most consumers will not look past the first page of Google search results, so you have to ensure that your website has great searchability. SEO uses data to figure out what words and phrases are being searched the most by your target audience. Then, they will create content for your website that utilizes these keywords and increases your searchability on the web. With these two tools combined, your customers will be able to find your business and purchase whatever product/service they need, all from the comfort of their home.

Challenge #2: Social media is setting an unparalleled pace and scale of communication to keep up with.

Social media is currently being utilized by almost 4 billion internet users. Social platforms are where your existing and potential customers reside, seek entertainment, and interact for over 2 hours a day on average–a gold mine for your competitors! Not surprisingly then, more than half of all online brands are discovered in public social feeds.

Solution: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (SMM) is a lot like meeting someone at a party: everyone is enjoying themselves, some folks are working the room, striking up conversations, showing off and oozing charm in hopes to be noticed and remembered, others just observe. The great thing about a social platform is that most people see it as an enjoyable place where they go to relax, entertain, and chat with friends. SMM, therefore, is a unique opportunity to put a face to your brand, give it a voice, develop its “personality”, if you like, and connect with your target audience where and when it is most likely to be open to communication. All you need is to find the right group, at the right times, and with the right message. Remember that you sell a story, not just a product or service.

Of course, there’s much more to it than that. Marketing to the most powerful communication medium is based on certain brain-racking rules and principles–basically, there’s a science to managing campaigns–and this is where an SMM specialist comes in handy. Whether outsourced or hired in-house, a dedicated brand manager is absolutely necessary for your campaign’s success. Keeping an eye on ever-changing platform algorithms and making adjustments to your strategy is a full-time job that requires a good deal of experience and knowledge. Not to mention, you will also need to help brainstorm content ideas and monitor the content that comes through to ensure your quality standards are being met. That kind of balancing act takes a lot of experience and skill. Luckily, this is where SMM specialists thrive.

Challenge #3: You have to stand out in a hyper competitive environment.

While hypercompetition is linked to many factors, globalization and technology are two of its fundamental drivers affecting almost every industry. Communication technologies, which are predominantly reshaped, accelerated, or enabled by the Internet these days, play a critical role in expanding markets and boosting competition. As a result, businesses today are being exposed to competition at an unprecedented level.

Solution: Online advertising

When it comes to technological developments, though, it’s a two-way street. While being one of the driving forces of competition on the one hand, technology also provides opportunities for businesses to keep ahead of that competition at the same time.

In the age of digital disruption when barriers are blurred, online advertising becomes a global marketing tool. By investing in paid ads, you can get your product or service in front of your potential customers the instant it crosses their mind and they are actively searching for it online. It’s your mission to be their first option and choice. You have to reach them faster than your competitors do and let them know you are nearby, ready to meet their needs asap.

Challenge #4: Your business model needs to constantly evolve to adapt to changing consumer behavior.

Hypercompetition and customer-centric economy dictate new rules: to gain a competitive advantage, businesses are expected to provide a lot more value in whatever they sell than simply price and quality. With so many options to choose from, consumers can afford to be picky. People will prioritize safety, convenience, eco consciousness, flexibility and speed above all else. If you can offer these things for your customers, they will be much more likely to choose you over the competition.

Solution: App development

The major cultural and technological shifts of recent times call for transformation and innovation in the way businesses deliver value to customers. The idea is not new: you aren’t selling a product or service, you’re selling an experience.

What’s considered a good experience in the post-covid reality? The lockdown presented fulfillment issues that challenged all businesses and made brands fully rethink their online experience. This pandemic, which locked millions of customers indoors with so many services suddenly out of reach, has taught us a lesson: accessibility and timing are the key.

By offering customers the convenience of using your online platform, you reside in your customers’ smartphones and become their personal service provider that they have at their fingertips. This way, you are enabled to respond to your customers’ needs, resolve their issues quickly, and simply make their daily lives easier.

Challenge #5: ‘Digital workspace’ is inevitable, and companies are forced to reconfigure themselves within a short time frame.

The pandemic didn’t just force customers home, it did the same to business owners and employees. This led to many businesses closing their doors for an extended period of time. However, some businesses were able to adapt to a work-from-home system. Now that the country is steadily reopening, many businesses are questioning whether office spaces are even necessary. Not to mention there are also still many businesses that cannot physically open their doors due to reopening restrictions.

With this shift, it seems inevitable that at least some businesses are going to turn this temporary work-from-home strategy into a more permanent business plan. However, not all business owners are going to be prepared to run a digital workspace, and, if that is you, time is not on your side. If your competitors have already integrated a digital workspace into their business, then they are in a prime position to continue providing the products, services and support that your customers need.

Solution: Digital workplace transformation

So, what you need is a solution that will be able to stand up to the challenges of a remote working environment. The two most crippling challenges are communication and collaboration. Your employees won’t be able to just walk down the hall or gather their coworkers for a last-minute meeting. Luckily, the solutions are readily available and easy to use: cloud infrastructure and collaboration & productivity platform.

G Suite is an all-in-one solution for workflow challenges such as messaging, file sharing, scheduling, etc. It has tools for messaging and virtual meetings, calendars and scheduling, data and file storage, projects, presentations, accounting, etc. Utilizing these tools will allow you to adapt your business to a remote working environment.

Another tool that will allow you to thrive in the digital workplace is the Cloud. When most people think of cloud platforms, they think of data storage that can be accessed from any device at any time. However, this is only one part of a cloud platform’s infrastructure. When you use a cloud platform, like Google Cloud, you are actually getting a wide range of benefits that will help you adapt to a digital workplace. Google Cloud, for example, has services such as Cloud Endpoint and Cloud Translate, as well as networking benefits like load balancing and DNS. And that is just a small part of its cloud infrastructure.

Using tools like these will allow you to coordinate your team more effectively, and will give them much needed resources to succeed in a digital workplace. Having an established remote working plan for your business will allow you to compete with, or even put you ahead, of the competition. You won’t have to wait for restrictions to ease or worry about the safety of yourself, your employees, or your customers. It will be business almost as usual.

Challenge #6: As the whole world is moving life online, crime is growing exponentially in cyberspace.

Unfortunately, there are those that are willing to do whatever is necessary to profit during the pandemic. Statistics show that there has been a significant increase in various types of cybercrime during the pandemic. With everyone stuck at home, worried and looking for a distraction, it makes sense that they are turning to the Internet for some relief. This also opens them up to these cybercriminals. The same thing is true for businesses that are moving to a more online plan. So, how can you protect your business and your customers?

Solution: Cyber security

While cybercrime can be a scary thing to think about, we are lucky to have cybersecurity to fight it off. Choosing the right tools, prevention features and providers can mean the difference between being a victim of cybercrime and fighting cybercrime. So, make sure you are using trusted services, such as Google, that have security measures in place to protect your business and customers.

Services such as data encryption are a keep part of that protection. Firewalls, secure interservice communication, insider risk and intrusion detection, secure service deployment, data disposal, and more are all necessary for protecting against cybercriminals. You should make sure that the service you use provides these security measures, and preferably more. Google is yet another good example here. They provide security services as access transparency, data loss prevention, firewalls, asset inventory, key management, data encryption, etc. They also provide protection against identity fraud, one of the most well-known cybercrimes out there. Tools such as Cloud Identity, Certificate Authority Service, Context-aware access, Titan Security Key, and more all work together to keep frauders from getting your or your employees’ personal information. You should also make sure that you are choosing providers that will take your business’ cybersecurity seriously. Certified providers are the best option. Zazmic, as a certified Google Cloud service provider, is a good example.

Cybercrime is a serious issue, and it is growing. With more people working from home, and just on the Internet more in general, we are more vulnerable now than ever. However, cybercrime is also preventable if the right precautions are taken. Taking cybersecurity into consideration early in the development of your digital workspace will protect you, your business and your employees down the road.

Summary

Our living and working environments have changed and will continue to change post-covid. There is no such thing as going back to what was normal; however, this gives us the opportunity to shape a new, better normal that will prepare us for the future. Now is the time to prepare your business for the post-covid world and the challenges and opportunities that it will bring. Using this checklist will ensure that your business is ready to face the digital transformation that is underway, and will give you the tools you need to thrive in the digital world.