Due to the pandemic, Malaysia's economy is now heavily reliant on small and medium-sized businesses (SME) to survive. As we move more into the digital era, the gap between businesses that can adapt to the advancements of the digital world and those that aren't is widening by the minute.

In actuality, such businesses are aware of the need to digitize but lack the necessary skills and expertise to accomplish so with a little amount of start-up capital. The fact is, even the smallest businesses must embrace digital transformation to remain relevant, efficient, and competitive against the industry giants.

Despite the complexity, cost, and sometimes unnecessary nature of digitization for businesses, there are methods for them to leverage the digital landscape to help their businesses function more effectively and expand further.

What You Should Do Before Going Online?

1. Design your marketing materials

What exactly are marketing materials? Marketing materials are any sort of content used by a company to communicate with its consumers about its products and services. These include posters, logos, social media graphics, blog graphics, videos, newsletters, and more.

You may be thinking: "Why do I need marketing materials?"  Of course, it not only helps to promote your business, but it also helps customers recognize and recall your business anytime they see such colours or designs. If you use this, you will be able to reach a larger audience than you would with other more targeted means of advertising.

Here are a few design tools that you can use today:

a. Canva

Canva is a free graphic design tool that allows you to edit images even if you don't have a lot of expertise or understanding of photo editing. It's used to create graphics for your website and marketing materials.

b. Snapseed

Snapseed is a free photo editing tool that includes a plethora of preset filters. It's available for iOS and Android, and it allows you to edit photos on your mobile device.

Here are images of before and after shots (left) and further editing in Snapseed.

Source: Huffpost, Food Instagrammers Share How to Shoot and Edit Drool-Worthy Photos

c. InShot

We all know that video editing is time-consuming. For most businesses, video significantly slows down content creation. InShot is a video editing app for beginners that allows them to effortlessly trim video, adjust the speed of footage, and apply various effects to the video.

Source: Best for Android

2. Discover your target customers

Once you've chosen to start a business and have an idea, you should validate it. It might be as simple as discussing potential customers' needs and asking whether they are interested in your solution. However, there are other ways you can use to "test the water."

a) Examine customer feedback

Examining competitor reviews is a simple way to learn about current customer interest. It provides an estimate of the market size as well as some suggestions for marketing the products/services.

b) Survey potential customers

Another way is to talk with customers to understand their needs. Even if you can’t interact with them in person, you can create an online survey. For example, setting up a Poll on Instagram or sharing a blog could be a good tool to know the market needs.

c) Use Google Trends

Google Trends can help you know whether a trend related to your products/services is on the rise or decline. With this tool, you can see if the search volume for a particular keyword is going up or down.

3. Connect with customers

Today, online marketing campaigns serve as a marketing tool to help you reach a more targeted audience.

Through social media, businesses can reach a much wider customer base who are likely to be interested in your products or services than through traditional advertising techniques or brick and mortar operations.

By leveraging popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, or even by creating videos for YouTube and TikTok, businesses can reach a larger audience, more effectively and efficiently, gaining more exposure.

4. Make your business mobile-friendly

Optimizing your store for mobile in 2022 isn't a choice — it's a must if you want to be profitable online. Nowadays, everyone is glued to their smartphones. Around half of all Internet traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices.

Additionally, Google's algorithm emphasizes the fact that websites which are equally accessible on desktops, mobile devices, and small tablets are indexed higher by search engines.

Furthermore, e-Wallets and other contactless payment systems can provide great convenience for customers who prefer not to carry cash around with them and reduce transaction times while also maintaining security.

5. Build your business

In today's world, building a business also means developing a strong online presence through a website and social media.

A website will increase your potential customers' trust in your business and help you build your brand. This will make them more easy to buy from you. You can even request customer email addresses to promote your business directly to them.

A good thing is that you can easily create a website today. By using EasyStore, you can build an ecommerce website without coding or design skills. You can have your own website/online store complete with payment and shipping solutions in EasyStore.

It’s Time to Go Online with Exclusive Chinese New Year Digital Kickstart Bundle

That’s not all. In order to make things simpler, EasyStore wants you to #BetulBetulOng by creating your business online all in one go through our Chinese New Year Digital Kickstart Bundle.

This specially curated package includes a complete easy-to-use ecommerce platform with all the tools you need & pre-integrated payment and shipping platforms.

With RM888, you’ll get:

1. EasyStore Lite Yearly Plan (worth RM708)

• 2 sales channels
• 2 users account
• 5 apps integration
• 1 self collect location
• 1 free domain name
• Sell up to 1,000 products
• Free gift promotion
• Surprise gift: Feature your brand on our website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and newsletters for no charge. *Available for first 5 signups.

2. senangPay Advanced Package (worth RM450)

• FPX Channels:
  • Local International Credit & Debit Card
    • UnionPay Credit Card & Debit Card
    • Online banking
  • e-Wallet payment
  • Boost
    • GrabPay
    • TouchNGo
  • Recurring payment

Note: SSM details are required during the applicant process on senangPay. 

3. Free RM125 EasyParcel Credit

• RM100 free credit
• Extra RM25 free credit once you fulfilled the first integration order and successfully delivered it

4. Free 50 Pgeon Shipments (worth RM450)

• Parcel delivery up to 5kg within Peninsular Malaysia
• Applicable for Pgeon Delivery and Pgeon Prime services

There is no better all-in-one solution to start your online business today. At only RM 888, this package is worth more than RM 1500. Grab your #BetulBetulOng digital kickstart bundle before 6 February 2022!