Despite being one of the most important aspects of businesses; marketing is often neglected by businesses or it might not receive the same level of attention as other functions. Many businesses try to plug their marketing gap by increasing their marketing budget, but this might not be the right method; especially when revenue drops due to market forces. According to Gartner, the average marketing budget of companies in 2021 has dropped to 6.4% of overall company revenue as opposed to 11% in 2020.

As marketing budgets get reduced, companies will need to use and allocate the available funds to more effective methods and solutions. The article reports that for many CMOs this means the highest allocation is on digital commerce while market analytics continue to drop in priority. As the world continues to experience extraordinary events, it might be more important for businesses to build a strong customer base. For businesses that had to migrate to an online only format, many tools are available to help users reach a broader audience and maintain a strong connection.

In this edition of InnoVEX Editorial, we discuss exhibitors in InnoVEX ONLINE 2021 that bring digital marketing solutions to help improve customers' communication capabilities. From improving customers' communication capabilities to growing business visibilities and encouraging customer conversion.

SEO as a Starting Path

Businesses certainly still benefit from having a physical presence beyond a mailing address or a PO Box. From personal experience, customers are more likely to have faith in businesses that have brick-and-mortar shops. At the same time, it is undeniable that physical stores, offices, and warehouses can be quite the significant burden on a business' finances. During the pandemic when social distancing is a must, having a physical store might not be in the best interest of the business and visiting them might not be a good idea for the customer. Instead, digital presences and locations will be the main alternative for shoppers, customers, and users to engage with businesses. However, some businesses that have to transition to an online only presence might face many problems because they haven't built a strong (if any) online presence.

As customers often turn to search engines to find potential stores, SEO will be the best first step for a newly online business. SEO is one of the many services provided by WWHaT Digital, a full-service digital agency based in Taiwan. Local expertise is firmly ingrained in WWHaT's services as they will provide SEO that fit the local market in terms of linguistics, tones, and of course preference. From a more technical standpoint, they will also build an extensive backlink portfolio to the users' website to build up credibility and visibility to their brand and business.

Maintain Customer Engagement Organically

Customer engagement is one of the keys to building a successful customer relationship and often has little to no clear formula to them. When building relationships with new customers; often businesses have to compete with not only their competitors, but also the prospective customers' biases that might not be applicable. However, as many businesses had to downsize or operate on a skeleton crew, having dedicated personnel be in charge of all communication channels such as email, messaging app, and even landline will definitely be out of the question. Currently some channels have a built-in chatbot that can help reduce the load on human employees, but they are not always the best solution.

With 8 Interactive, chatbots might be usable as more than just an answering machine. Their solution includes a variety of chatbots for different purposes including marketing, business introductions, event registrations, shopping support, and more. They also provide statistics and growth curves of the message data that users can use to track and adjust marketing strategy and budget allocation to make the most effective use of each sales resource. 8 Interactive's platform can also summarize information to understand the interaction between customers and businesses with their intimacy indicator.

Conclusion

Businesses will have to undergo changes to adjust to external forces to survive and while conventional methods have their merits and their place, too often they become risks when unexpected problems occur. Major events such as a pandemic, natural disaster, or national crises of any sort will have an impact on businesses no matter the size. While some businesses might be reluctant to adopt the online migration, they will have to reconsider their reluctance for some aspects of their operations that can be digitized, especially marketing. Efforts such as customer outreach & correspondence, broadcast announcement, etc will be easier, more convenient, and more effective with the appropriate digital tools. For SMEs, the tools might also include digitally available skills & expertise that they needed, but sorely lack; or time to build a close & strong customer relation that a tool might be able to help with.

Learn more about WWHaT Digital, 8 Interactive, and other InnoVEX Online 2021 Exhibitors here.

Look forward to more updates from InnoVEX
Operating for the whole year, the InnoVEX ONLINE platform is active 24/7 and visitors can check out the exhibitors at any time and even contact them directly through the PinChat function built into the platform. There will also be news from InnoVEX regularly that will be published and sent via the weekly InnoVEX Tech Startup News digital newsletter. The content will also include highlighted exhibitors, pavilions, and other features of InnoVEX ONLINE 2021. Subscribe to the InnoVEX Tech Startup News here and never miss an update from InnoVEX.

InnoVEX 2022 is now open for Registration
In addition to the online platform, the 2022 InnoVEX onsite exhibition will take place in Taipei, Taiwan from May 24-27,2022. Online registration for both the hybrid exhibition or the InnoVEX ONLINE platform has started for global exhibitors. For more info or registration details, please click here.

Look Forward to the Next InnoVEX Pitch Contest
The InnoVEX Pitch Contest has been a mainstay of InnoVEX since it started in 2016. In InnoVEX 2022, the Pitch Contest will return to give participants an opportunity to showcase their innovations and solutions in front of the panel of judges for a chance to win prizes, investments, and more. Follow us on our social media channels to get the latest news from InnoVEX!