Digital Business is the way to go, no matter what you are selling

Do you sell cookies? Or do you sell Apparels? Digital Business is for you, irrespective of what you are selling. 

Befriend Technology and reap the benefits to reach out to more customers out there.

..Are you having only 2 more minutes to get the story? Check here at slideshare.

Since the first steam engine rolled out, possibly this is the best time ever to start your own business. You may be a businessman planning to sell food or apparels or your own artwork. Or you may be planning to sell your ideas about Interior Decoration or you are an Author selling your own books. Whatever be it, once you are ready with your product, the first dreading thought that eventually hits you is - how to connect with your potential customers? 

The answer for any SMB so far has been - "I have a large network and I reach out to them with my products." The approach has been to leverage the network of friends, friends of friends and so on. Though this may sound good to start with, but unfortunately this is not a scalable affair. After first few sales, it becomes difficult to reach out to the same friends for a repeat order at times. Also it has its own limitation, by the extent of your network size and your network's network size. You can reach a certain niche population, who are like you (think Demographics) or similar to you. But there is a huge number of potential customers out there, who might not be in your or your friend's network. 

How big is that untapped population? To put things into perspective, lets have few numbers about India.

• Total Population: 1.2 billion
• Active Social Media Users: 0.1 billion
• Internet Users: 0.2 billion
• Mobile Subscribers: 0.8 billion
• 70% of Internet access is being done through Mobile or Tablet
• 28% of total Indian population has atleast one mobile connection

This is enormous. Even if you are tapping only India market, that's huge. Since Digital business doesn't confine itself into any geographical boundary, literally the sky becomes the limit. But how do you reach this huge Internet facing, Mobile savvy, Social Media friendly population? For starters, you can use the below checklist to find out how ready you are. 

1. Do you have a Website?
2. Is your Website Mobile friendly?
3. Do you have a Social Media strategy, which goes beyond opening a FB page?
4. Are you using online advertising also?
5. Are you using Cloud based tools and not spending fortunes in building an IT Infra?

If you say "Yes" to 3 items above, you are well on track. And if you say "Yes" to more than 4, you are in all likelihood already reaping the benefits out of this new age technology. 


What is stopping you in expanding your business from a local one to a global one using Digital Technology? Share your experience and thoughts.

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Thank you for checking this article. I contribute regularly on Technology & Management related stuff. Apart from this blog, you can follow me at 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/csubhamoy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/csubhamoy
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csubhamoy

About me: I have been working in the areas of IT strategy & usage of Digital technology to deliver business growth. My areas of interest include Enterprise Mobility, Cloud Solution Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Social Media and Big Data. I am an alumni of Indian Statistical Institute (MTech Computer Science) and also attended Harvard Business School Executive Education on Innovation and Driving Growth.

What is so Social about it?

This is an interesting video from Erik Qualman on the spread of Social Media. He is a known face in the Social Media space. The video is approx 8 months old (which is like a decade in Digital business) and hence the numbers quoted might need to be adjusted accordingly. Also it might not have the latest and greatest of Social Media - however the essence remains same. For example, I guess the next version would surely mention the Oreo campaign. 

Till that time, enjoy the music and the pace of the video. You may also like to share this video with your boss to justify you spending your entire day in Facebook/Twitter.

Socialist World

There is so much of Social around us these days.  Do you feel comfortable in this new world with all of the new things evolving around you everyday?

Being Social has got a whole new meaning in the last few years - its not enough to have a chat with your friend over a cup of tea or have a phone call once in a week. You got to do this publicly, in one of the many Social networks. You need to Like the fact that he/she had a nice trip back home from office, else you are going to be outcast pretty soon. But did this Social movement help us in improving our life in any way?

In terms of ease of communication, possibly yes, the social platforms, coupled with the smartphones have made it much easier to connect with your close friends. It has made communication cheaper. You can use your phone to call up your friends in any other country easily using Skype or Google Hangout, just by paying the data charge which is quite less compared to the voice calls.

Did it help us in taking decision faster? May be yes, may be no. If you look at the ease at which you can get your friend's feedback (or friend's friend) on the new microwave, it surprises me. You don't need to ask all of your family members or friends or office colleagues about how do they feel about a particular hospital before you admit your wife for the special day. You need not believe only the product catalogs churned out by the marketers, which talk about the brighter part of the product only. 

On the flip side, we now-a-days tend to spend more time on the FB App than the total Internet time earlier. But who cares about that anyway? Well, if you have a youngster at home, you may have already started nodding your head. Its very addictive, and it takes away the time people used to spend in other nice-old-school hobbies. But thats a different story altogether.

Now if you are a marketer, you are the one who has got benefited the most. Social Media has opened up a big trove of customer insight. Now you know when I am going to buy my new car or when do I plan to take my family out for a dinner or when is my daughter's birthday coming up. If you are connected to this new thing called Social network, you also know who all my friends are, and what we are talking about you. Based on our sentiment, you can decide how to position a product or do upsell and cross sell. I am sure you are going to be the biggest beneficiary of this new development. But as a consumer, we would sincerely request you to please make this experience more friendly so that we Like it! 

How can you make the Social Marketing less intruding and more customer friendly? Lets catch up soon again on that. If you have your ideas, do let me know as exchanging ideas is the basis of the new Social world. Lets be a Social animal on this lovely planet.