Pat runs a small accountancy practice in Leinster with 10 staff. A dyed-in-the-wool accountant and a Delphic-like oracle when it comes to things like accounting standards, taxation and compliance, Pat has another string to his bow: he can talk fairly competently about the importance of keeping the firm’s blog up to date with fresh content.
Barely skipping a beat, he can jump from talking about the exciting IAS 7 Cash Flow reporting standard to the importance of having web content that’s of interest to both clients and, equally important, the search engines that scour the firm’s website every couple of weeks.
Jane, meanwhile, runs a training business which ran face-to-face programmes for corporates around the country prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Typically, these training days were held on-site or in a room in a local hotel. In the space of just two weeks in April 2020, her business almost imploded and like most SME owners at the time, she had plenty of sleepless nights.
After tweaking her business model and, to borrow the most over-used word of 2020, “pivoting” to digital, Jane is now selling online courses in the UK, South Africa and fair dinkum, Australia. Like Pat, she too can look under the bonnet of her newly configured website and track the number of unique visitors to her website every week and attribute them to specific online advertising campaigns or special promotions on social media platforms.
And then there’s Mike who owns a men’s clothing shop in a midland town. Mike never felt the need to have an online presence because his customers were all local and he has built up a loyal following over the 30 years he has been in business.
Big Tech companies like Google has a lot to offer Irish SMEs trying to get on the digital ladder
Mike’s shop is typical of many men’s clothing shops that are to be found on the high streets of plenty of Irish towns, selling a range of well-known international fashion brands while also stocking the sartorial staples that are part of every country funeral and wedding. As lockdown kicked in during 2020, however, sales dried up and he needed a new plan as some of his customers were buying online.
With a spanking new website launched in 2021, Mike is now able to tell me that his organic rankings are much better than his nearest rival in a town 16km away. Recent orders that were placed online were from shoppers in Dublin, Galway and Cork. Now he is putting together a database of customers, past and present, so he can email them with special offers.
Pat, Jane and Mike are acquaintances of mine although I have changed their names at their request. While their stories are by no means unique in the post-pandemic era, they do shed some light on how many businesses the length and breadth of Ireland have taken to the basics of digital marketing like ducks to water over the past two years. And in their own little way, many of them have unwittingly become part-time digital marketers.
While all three plucky entrepreneurs said a Hail Mary before they coughed up for the investment needed, some of them acknowledge that support from the likes of their Local Enterprise Office, which gave them up to €5,000 in online trading vouchers, went some way in alleviating the financial burden. For bigger companies, Enterprise Ireland was also providing similar supports to companies hoping to have an export dimension to their business.
What is also interesting about their story is that they half joke about how they are now working for Google. Practically everything they do to boost their organic search rankings is done with Google’s search engine in mind. Accounting for 92pc of all global search traffic, Google is - let’s face - it the only show in town and for many businesses and indeed consumers it is the internet as we know it. The bottom line is you don’t want to fall foul of Google and its ever-changing algorithms and search parameters.
And it’s the same when it comes to search-based digital advertising, although the choice is a little bit better, depending on the product offering. While Google has dominated this space for a long time and it is the company’s most important cash-cow, it is difficult to see anyone usurping it.
On the other hand, Big Tech companies like Google has a lot to offer Irish SMEs trying to get on the digital ladder and it is heartening to see the company involved in various state agency initiatives that are aimed at helping Irish SMEs to put digital marketing at the centre of their business strategies.
The only question that remains unanswered is what are we waiting for
In addition, Google runs numerous free online courses for companies that want to kick-start their digital journey.
While Pat, Jane and Mike and the thousands of other SME owners who used the pandemic to tweak their businesses have really only dipped their toes in the water, there remains a sizeable proportion of Irish SMEs that, for whatever reasons, have not even taken off their socks.
While it is often said that every business is a digital business, there is a large element of truth in this. This makes it even more important for Irish SMEs and their staff to acquire digital skills if they want to future-proof their businesses.
Unfortunately research shows that there is an alarming digital skills deficit among SMEs. According to a recent piece of research carried out by Amárach Research and, yes, Google, 45pc of Irish companies don’t even have a website.
However, the report noted that if a significant investment into developing digital skills were made by the various stakeholders, including SMEs and government agencies, an additional €9.5bn could be added to Ireland’s GDP by 2025.
Source: https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/the-sme-digital-pivot-that-could-add-95bn-to-irish-gdp-41939880.html