When it comes to selecting an eCommerce platform, you have to remember that your eCommerce site will dictate the following 4 things:

• Growth: How quickly your business is able to grow?
• Running costs: This includes the cost of building your eCommerce platform and ongoing development and maintenance costs.
• Customer engagement: How you can control how your customers interact with your business.
• Objectives: The right eCommerce platform will enable you to deliver the service you set out to achieve.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself before approaching an agency:

• How much time are you able to invest in the partnership?
• If you have an in-house marketing team, what skills does your team already have and in what areas are you lacking?

What can a digital Partner offer you?

• Save money — Partnering with an agency takes off the burden of hiring additional staff to carry out marketing tasks for you, as well as the costs for marketing tools and collateral.
• Offer digital marketing expertise — With digital marketing agencies, you have access to both qualified digital marketing professionals and the latest marketing tools, allowing you to save on overhead costs.
• Save time and effort — Researching and developing a product or service from scratch is not only costly but also time-consuming. Digital marketing agencies often offer a full-service solution that encompasses all manner of marketing tasks, saving you time and effort in creating new offerings, or with maintaining your particular solutions to clients.
• Widen your service offerings — Small businesses often face the challenge of clients needing a product or service that you don’t yet have the capacity to offer. Digital marketing agencies can help you widen and expand your offerings by providing you with the new product or service that your clients asked for, which is a win-win for both parties.

Digital skills are in high demand and short supply. But first things first — how do you define a digital team when nearly everything is digital?

Digital teams are responsible for developing, testing, and implementing a strategy to reach and engage target audiences through digital channels like web, mobile, and social. While other groups may draft the messaging, a digital team works hand-in-hand with marketing and product leaders to curate and create digital-first strategy.

• Why is building an in-house digital marketing team an investment and not an expense?

-It helps secure your organisation’s digital future

-It can create beneficial organisational change

-It creates more opportunities and entrepreneurship

• What are the challenges?

-It can be more expensive than an agency in the short term

-The new team will need a leader—not a manager

-You may have to fight for your vision to be embraced

Let’s use the 5s of Digital Strategy approach:

The 5s includes Sell, Serve, Speak, Save, and Sizzle

1. Sell

Sell is an indispensable aspect of any digital strategy approach because there is a clear connection between sales and revenue of the company. The aim of the company is to gain profit as much as possible from sales. Your online presence will help you get a lead generation that will eventually turn into potential customers.

2. Serve

As the popular adage goes, “Customers are king”, it’s very important for you to know the needs and requirements of your customers and serve them accordingly. We know it is very difficult for you to serve all the people present online, so at first recognize your potential customers and then move forward to serve them properly. You need to make them feel the benefit of their being online in ways such as providing quick information, easy renewal services, to solving their queries etc. Try to be present and responsive to your customers every time.

3. Speak

Communication plays a major role in any marketing business. It is very important for both customers and suppliers. As a marketer you need to understand your customers well. Listen to them carefully and know exactly what they are looking for and talk to them. Get to know your customers carefully so that you can convey your message well. If you understand your customer’s interests, attitudes, and behavior well then it will allow you to get or give better responses. And it will also help you to build a better relationship with them.

4. Save

When you market your products digitally or on an online platform it will automatically help you save money, time and efforts. It can reduce your physical and operating cost. Advertising, print media, postage, and customers service can be reduced once the digital strategy approach has begun.

5. Sizzle

Sizzle is the last stage of 5s in digital strategy approach and it is about how you build or enhance your brand name online. Sizzling is all about creating, broadening, and establishing your brand presence on the digital platform. Here social media plays a great role in achieving or building your brand’s presence. You also need to build trust, recognition, and relationship to enhance your product presence in the market.