What Does Digital Age Mean for Business?

The digital age does bring a lot of new paradigm. In the personal context, it changes human behaviour and lifestyle, while in a more global context, it affects the overall system globally, including business processes and ethics.

We can see most of us cannot get off the internet nowadays. Look at the sales of mobile devices that have skyrocketed in last decades.

And if you ask why, I can just simply say, smart mobile devices allow us to do anything from personal kinds of stuff to business purposes anytime and anywhere. We don’t need to carry a laptop because we have our smartphones in the pocket at all time.

Smartphone in its core is a communication gadget. Not only that we can talk with other people using the conventional phone line, but there are definitely a lot more communication tools in it, which are part of mobile applications or mobile apps.

The messaging system like Whatsapp and Line provide better features to communicate and yet, much cheaper. We can text, doing voice chat and even better, video chat.

So, are these changes affect businesses? Yes, a lot.
Do businesses need to adapt to these changes? Yes, urgently.

Let’s take an example in the retail business, a small B2C business in this matter.

You own a shop that sells clothes. Apart from the revenue and profit of the brick-and-mortar shop, it is a smart move to get the business online. At the very least, an online presence in various social media.

And if you want to get a bit expansive by building an e-commerce website or an online store. It will certainly push the sales chart higher when done right.

Running an online store is not just about displaying products to sell. You need to have a specific area for communication purposes, such as product review, or sales support.

Now, let’s take a bigger scale business as an example. A consumer brand. Bringing the brand online is absolutely necessary. Be it the e-commerce website as a channel for direct sales or acquiring digital marketing strategy to strengthen brand image.

And those may not be enough for a large-scale business.

Building a mobile app is just one thing to consider but of course, it needs to be advantageous in term of brand and revenue.

People download and use your mobile app if they feel beneficial of it. And when we talk about the brand-related mobile app, one of the reason is they can get in touch with the brand. It has to provide a communication system in it.

And speaking about communication in marketing, getting into social media is not just about displaying your business and posting content. You need to be communicative and respond to the followers.

It is a connected world. Relationship is far more important than before. This is the consequences of living in digital age. Communication is absolutely part of the term.

And lastly, apart from any challenge you’re going to face, don’t forget to have fun!

See you online!