What are traditional businesses? An organization, which could be a store, a food outlet or an agency, operating out of a physical premise and providing its consumers a certain product or service, is termed as a traditional business.  Problems faced by them: In recent times, we have seen the decline of many traditional businesses. The biggest reason for downfall of traditional businesses is their incompetency to digitize or lack of interest and faith in digital marketing. Few other contributing factors are: High set up cost: The traditional businesses involve a physical space, at an impactful location, from where they carry out their trade. This combination of a suitable place and location usually comes at a high cost. Stocking of products: In a physical set up, the seller needs to stock a lot of products for user experience. This involves a lot of investment. High marketing cost: In traditional businesses, the modes of marketing are generally print and digital mediums, which come at a very high value and no guarantee of customer conversion. Downtime issues: In the traditional business set up. A single day of downtime, due to human limitations, can cost the business a lot.  Window shopper issues: Not everyone visiting the business space is a customer. A lot of time and logistics are wasted behind these leisurely browsers.         Why is digitization important for traditional businesses? Being present online is, being visible: Being online increases the market reach exponentially in contrast to the traditional ways. The younger generation explores everything online first and then decide to venture offline. Being known online can help in establishing a good customer base and hence increase the sales. Customer engagement: Digital marketing helps out in customer engagement and understanding the trends. For example, these days everyone prefers home delivery or services, catering to this requirement of the audience helps in business growth.   Direct marketing: Once you have marked your target audience and understood the market trends, the next step is marketing your product or service. Through various platforms, you can start direct marketing without involving any distributors or agencies.  Round the clock business: Digitization gives you the advantage of 24*7 business with or without your availability. Since your products or services are listed online, they are visible to the consumers and the trade can continue without your immediate involvement. Better customer service: Being present digitally can be helpful in providing better service to the customers. This in turn builds trust towards your business and helps it grow. Better product visibility: Through your digital handle, you can conveniently show off your product in a better manner and also without any extra investment. Product segregation into different categories as per customer requirement also becomes easy.   To sum up, digitization is not only a tool to enhance the business, rather it is the need of the hour and extremely important to sustain in the current market. Hence, along with physical presence, digital presence is also equally necessary.

With the ever growing e-commerce websites and social media and digital marketplaces, it has become extremely important for brands and businesses to be present online. In the pre-covid times, there was still some room for people to consider buying or investing into a company’s service or product through word of mouth or physical presence, but after the pandemic, online is the first place where people prefer buying from. This makes it all the more important for businesses to work on their online presence.  Ways to improve social media presence: Using appropriate platforms: Small businesses are literally spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a platform for marketing, given so many options like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest etc. Targeting all of them in one go could be a bit overwhelming initially, instead a better approach could be starting with ones which have a larger and ideal audience for the business. You could gradually advance to other platforms once things get rolling. Find an ideal audience to engage: The foremost thing to acknowledge here is, everyone is not an audience. Most of the businesses are pretty clear right from the start which particular audience they are targeting. This clarity helps in figuring out many more aspects like platform, content, brand voice etc. Establish the goal: Be clear with what you really want to achieve with your online presence. For instance, the expected outcome for a product based business would be different than the one who provides service. The clarity of outcome will help you in creating a social media strategy. Research the trending content type: Understanding the current trends and connecting your brand with them will always make you stand out and increase the audience engagement. Finding the current trend largely depends upon your target audience. Something which people of age group 18-24 will connect with might not resonate with people of age group 35-40. Thus, the research needs to be consumer specific. Be consistent with the content: The saying ‘out of sight is out of mind’ holds great value when it comes to building social media presence. If your brand is constantly visible in the news feeds, posts, reels etc. your chances of consumer conversion are higher. To attain this, it is highly advisable to have a content calendar in place and adhering to it.  Go beyond advertising: These days’ people are looking for brands which add value to their lives. Beyond just selling, indulge with your audience. This could be done by offering them some freebies or some offers or educating them around your brand, though not explicitly. Buying your product or investing in your services should not be the only motto of the audience to visit your social media handle.  User analytics to monitor the engagement: Many online tools like google analytics can help you understand user engagement. The results from the analysis helps in deciding the further steps.

Digital marketing refers to promoting the product or service which a company provides using different digital platforms like website, search engines, social media, messengers, etc. The traditional marketing lacks the potential of reaching the target audience and is very non-specific, also it requires higher investment. Whereas, with digital marketing, businesses can target ideal audience and invest wisely. Digital marketing is a win-win for entrepreneurs since it works at a lower cost and gains better results.   Let us understand why Digital Marketing has gained popularity and is a preferred way of marketing nowadays, as compared to the traditional marketing methods. Low cost investment: After setting up a business, the next most important step is marketing. The traditional marketing involved (still does), lots of capital. The budding entrepreneurs, who usually work on a shoestring budget find it difficult to invest this amount. Here, the digital marketing comes to their rescue. With very minimum expenditure, one can have a great marketing strategy in place. Flexibility of making changes: In the traditional marketing, once you opt for a campaign, it is very difficult to alter it or make any changes in case you find it is not working up to your expectations. Even if you, it will add on to the expenses. This is not the case when it comes to digital marketing. The content can be altered as and how required, without add on charges. This is both cost efficient as well as convenient. Unceasing marketing: Your website and the social media handle/page that you create for your brand are always going to promote your business, irrespective of the time or day. The consumer can always have the access to the required information through these mediums, without having to interact with anyone in person. Whereas in traditional marketing, where manpower or other conventional means of publicity are involved for brand promoting, this is not possible.  Greater rate of conversion: There are multiple platforms available for digital marketing, which expands the reach of the business manifold. Here, with the help of various analytical tools and data, you can keep the track of consumer engagement. This helps in understanding the potential of the existing business model and also planning the next steps. Also, with the help of the strategy ‘Conversion Rate Optimization’, the rate of conversion can be increased. This strategy helps in improving or upgrading the components of the website, app, or page of the business, in order to attract more consumers. On the contrary, in traditional marketing it is impossible to get data about customer conversion or reach and engagement. Targeting potential audience: Reaching right people is the ultimate goal of marketing. With the help of digital marketing you can target the real consumers, who are genuinely interested in your product or service. Once the ideal audience is engaged, you can work more effectively in converting them.  Traditional marketing is very generic, given the limited resources it uses to promote, thus, reaching specific audience through this is practically not possible.   Mobile Audience: Today most of the purchases or business deals begin with a mobile phone. From being a luxury, smart phones have become a necessity today and almost everyone owns and operates a mobile. This therefore is the most potential medium for selling products and services, and digital marketing enables it, literally on the go. Conversely, traditional marketing is yet to explore this sphere and works with mostly tangible mediums.

There are many misbeliefs about the Hiring and Recruitment firms which prevail in the market. Let us understand some Myths about the Recruitment firms: Many companies these days outsource their recruitment and hiring process to various recruitment firms. Due to a lot of prejudice and some unpleasant experiences of a few candidates, people have a lot of misconceptions about these firms. Let us take a look at a few of them: Recruiters charge money from Job Seekers: This is the foremost myth and one of the most important reasons because of which job seekers refrain from approaching the recruiters. The truth is, for job seekers, recruiters are free. The job of a recruiter is to find a correct candidate for a job opening and the company pays them for this. They do not charge anything from the job seeker. Recruiters do not control the hiring process: Although the Recruiting firms do not carry out the entire process of hiring, they do help out the company in screening the candidates. Thus, they play an important part in the process.         We at RA Consulting, help out companies in shortlisting relevant profiles and appropriate candidates for job roles required by companies. Recruiters help in finding a job: Companies approach the recruitment firms to find the right candidates for certain job profiles. They are given a list of requirements for the particular position and recruitment firms source the candidate whose skill set matches the requirement list. So, in reality, the job of recruitment firms is quite the opposite of what is presumed. Recruiters can help in career counselling: Recruiters can guide you with the latest trends, market conditions and upcoming jobs, but they are different from career counsellors. Hence it is recommended to assess the help you are looking for and approach counsellors for the same.  Recruiters fees are deducted from the candidate’s salary: Recruitment firms are paid by the company for which they do the hiring, this does not have any impact on the candidate’s salary. The candidate’s salary is based on many factors including but not limited to the previous salary, the budget of the hiring organization and the skills and experience the candidate brings to the table. Recruiters care only about filling a job post: Finding the correct candidate for the job profile is the ultimate goal and responsibility of a recruiting firm. If the match goes wrong, it questions the firm’s skills of judgement and capabilities also. Hence, the recruiter is extremely careful in putting the right person in the right role.