Get your business ahead with these digital tools

In the recent digital report 2019, the world’s total population is 7.676 billion people with 5 billion mobile users and 4.3 billion internet users. Out of 44.9m total population in Uganda, over 19 million users – an equivalent of 42 per cent of the population access internet. This presents a business owner an opportunity to spread a word about their business on digital space.
Mr Emmanuel Luvuuma, a digital trainer at DigiCon Academy, explains four principles that compliment digital marketing for any business to stand out. These include; solution, value, conversation, and anywhere.

To emphasise the evolution of marketing, he says the market place has changed, and the customer is in charge.
“You realise that as we are trying to do digital marketing, customer is at the fore front. We are offering value, trying to create conversations, accessing them in whatever place they are in their convenience, and give an easier way of making money for their solutions.”

Pamela Hatega, general manager Blu Flamingo Digital Africa, says there are so many digital marketing tools a business owner can use. But he or she needs to choose and focus on what works best for the business to achieve optimum results depending on the research done about the potential of the different digital marketing tools and platforms. You must also consider your target market and participation on the different digital platforms.

Establish benchmarks
One needs to establish benchmarks by identifying one, two and three players that have made it for whatever reasons in their industry.
“Understand what makes each one shine out. It could be one does well with a paid media strategy on point or content creation fantastically maybe also delivering the best customer service,” Ms Hatega says.

She continues, “After, look into the business to find out what makes you stand out. Then create a one single minded objective and then focus on that. While doing digital marketing, one tests and confirms if they will give you real results. You need to be able to track what you are doing.”

Target marketing
Luvuuma adds, digital marketing helps your business succeed by allowing you to target the consumers who are most likely to buy your products or invest in your services.
Through using advertising tools such as Facebook ads manager, Twitter ads and Google ads platform, one can deliver messages directly to their audience targeting them based on their interests, location and giving them a higher chance of conversion.

Social Listening
Social Listening involves monitoring tool brand’s social media channels for any customer feedback and direct mentions. He explains, with social listening, one pays attention to what their customers are saying about ones’ brand – both the negative and positive comments. This can help you discover new profit areas and attend to those that are making you lose customers.
Some of the tools that can help you with social media listening are Sprout Social, Hootsuite and HubSpot.

Reporting and Analytics
As Social media scientist Dan Zarrella put it, “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”
He adds, reporting and analytics helps one collect data on their digital marketing efforts and making sense of that data, study customer partners and help you make an informed marketing decision that help drive profitable business value.
Some tools you can use to collect data are Facebook Insights, Twitter analytics, Hootsuite and sprout social.

Optimisation
It is imperative to develop a responsive and optimised website to run on both mobile and desktop screens. According to Luvuuma, it helps business owners target the clients and prospects on all the different screens using either a computer or phone to access the digital platforms. Some of the tools to test the responsiveness of your website are Responsinator, Google resize and I am responsive.

Video streaming
Live streaming is a great way to give your followers a press pass to your events, product launches and media conferences for your business or organization.
From Luvuuma’s experience, video content has become one of the biggest online trends and around 500 million people watch video on Facebook alone each day.

Email marketing
Hatega states that email marketing creates a database and properly segments it to ensure that one is sharing relevant content with respective people within the database. Clients can get email alerts in case you have new stock.

Website driven strategy
Also you ought to try out a website driven strategy; understanding how to use the product. Have a specific goal conversion on your website to guide and track on the work’s progress. That is how one evaluates tangible results. That ties back to results that one would like to see.
A website is a basis of every marketing digital platform. But also, don’t construct a website if it isn’t optimally used. The facebook page may just be it for you. The beauty about the website is that you own it.

Right people
Working with the right people who have a clear understanding of what it is that one is getting into and how it works equally matters.
“Identifying the right partner starts with being educated. Small business owners should attend conferences and get equipped with the right knowledge and the ability to identify the right partner,” Luvuuma says.

Shared content
Creating engaging and helpful quality content inform of videos, graphics and others that can be shared on different social media and messaging App platforms will help build your brand awareness and market the business products to wider audience.