How small-medium enterprises can manage rising costs with digital communications
You’ve been running your business for some time now. You’ve managed to keep your head above water. You might have even pivoted your business and unlocked unexpected revenue streams, despite headwinds from the global pandemic. When possible, you’ve cut costs.
But with the latest measures from the Singapore Budget 2022 come rising costs. The combined effects brought about by the progressive wage model (PWM), goods and services tax hike, property tax increase and the rise in minimum qualifying salaries for new Employment Pass (EP) and S Pass applicants can sink small-medium enterprises (SMEs) that are unprepared to overcome these new challenges.
Businesses must find new ways to maximise their budget without sacrificing quality, but it’s not an easy task. Small-medium businesses (SMBs) on a quest to maintain profits are often cornered by decisions that involve trade-offs.
For instance, increasing prices can temporarily relieve your burden but puts you at the risk of losing customers. Switching to cheaper manufacturing alternatives might slow the bleed but could ultimately shortchange the customer experience, causing long-term problems.
Cut your losses, prioritise revenue generation
Sounds like SMEs are caught between a rock and a hard place, but we’re not in uncharted territory. The pandemic has taught businesses many hard lessons – the importance of being open-minded has emerged as one of the most important lessons, helping many independent operators bounce back with creative solutions.
Staying open-minded enables us to stay open to opportunities. We need to rethink and reinvent to make the most of these opportunities. Here are two points to consider:
First, rethink your marketing strategy: Are you still relying on outdated marketing strategies that no longer work? It’s time to cut your losses. Stop wasting your money on print marketing, such as brochures, flyers and other paper marketing techniques. Print marketing is expensive, time-consuming and often ineffective.
Second, reinvent digitally. For SMBs, going digital can be fast, effective and budget-friendly – executed properly, it can turn any business around from red to black. Digital marketing allows you to be more precise with whom you target, so you know you’re spending your marketing dollars on the people who matter to your business.
Score quick wins in the digital space
It pays to go digital. Companies that adopt digital strategies are almost twice as likely to experience higher organic growth rates. The digital space is also where your customers live, work, and play today. Equipping yourself with digital communications tools makes your brand’s presence felt across multiple channels and keeps it well-positioned for continued engagement, acquisition of new customers, and retention of current ones.
Additionally, digital communications helps many small-medium enterprise owners with limited resources and time-poor employees to benefit from the power of automation – this immediately converts high-touch tasks into low-effort ones, which enables anyone to easily send out the right messages at the right time across various channels, including SMS, email and WhatsApp, on one efficient platform.
5 ways digital communications benefit your business
Improve call-to-action and response rates by 88%
Lean times call for mean measures – you want answers that rally your customers into action. SMS can make that happen. Besides having an incredibly high open rate of an estimated 98%, call-to-action and response rates get up to as high as 88% when combined with rich, personalised landing pages. It’s a proven and effective method for communicating personalised offers and time-sensitive promotions, booking appointments, confirming payments, sending reminders and updates, and more.
Establish real-time structured two-way communications
Reach out directly to your customers with structured two-way communications. This allows you to interact with them, whether confirming a booking or completing a purchase. Easily customise your communications with ready-to-use templates, so everything you send out stays on brand. Better yet, leverage the power of automated feedback so you can gain fresh insights to fuel business growth.
See the big picture with a single view of everything
No more digging through endless spreadsheets and reports. You should be able to see all your customer interactions, regardless of the channel you use, on one single dashboard. This will save you a significant amount of time creating and sending messages, segmenting audiences according to what works best, and tracking the effectiveness of past communications.
Boost efficiency with easy-to-use tools
When you’re racing against time, the last thing you need is complex communications management to bog you down. Digital communications tools with automation and ready-to-use messaging templates can be deployed in minutes. Send fewer messages, lower costs, and increase engagement and outcomes simultaneously.
Improve data-driven decision-making
Use your data to create a personalised experience for your customers and automate customer journeys based on responses. Automation of your communications workflows ensures that your customers get what they need quickly and through their preferred medium.
Don’t forget about long-term customer relationships
Remember, tough times don’t last forever. Adaptable companies do. Many companies have made the most during these times to accelerate their digital transformation. As SMB owners, you have the advantage of agility to swiftly pivot from the traditional “product-first” marketing model to a future-forward one that puts the customer first – take the first step, starting by transforming the way you communicate with your customers.
Download our eBook to learn how you can drive customer engagement through digital communication. Let us show you how to continue building long-term customer relationships today. Request a free demo below to see Whispir in action.
So when good times return, you’ll emerge stronger with more customers by your side.
