It is hard to deny that over the last couple of years, the digital tide has brought down the floodgates and swept away everything in its path. As a result, all facets of our lives have been profoundly changed by digital tech. Of course, the business world has not been excluded from this tectonic movement.

On the contrary, being so dependent on the latest fruit of tech innovations, companies of various scales and industries have always tried to catch the wave and get ahead of the competition. Of course, this competitive edge is reserved only for the leaders of the pack.

So, let us take a look at a couple of ways you can set your business for digital transformation and set the pace of the industry instead of following disruptors.

Embrace the idea of perpetual evolution

Let us start this discussion by stating that all the steps we are going to cover in the following passages are not a temporary measure. Digital disruption has become a new normal. Smartphones have become an integral part of our lives and AI is taking over more and more tasks from human employees.

These circumstances are not going to change, let alone revert to the old status quo. On the contrary, the shadow digital technology is going to cast over the business world is only going to grow. So, be prepared to approach this issue more as an ongoing evolution rather than a one-time overhaul.

Take a cue from other industries

This is especially true if you are working in the SMB sector and don’t have the privilege to engage in expensive experiments. What you should do instead is always keep one ear on the ground, see what’s going on in other niches and do your best to emulate the moves that are making the most sense for your specific industry.

For instance, we are all noticing that the sale of printed media is on a constant decline. This could be one of the cues telling your marketing team that traditional printed newsletters and leaflets are probably not the best way of appealing to a modern tech-savvy audience.

Consider outsourcing tech-related departments

Setting your company up for a digital transformation doesn’t necessarily have to entail extensive and taxing infrastructural changes. On the contrary, one of the greatest advantages of present-day digital tech is that all these tasks can be carried out by third-party vendors while your efforts can still be concentrated where the money is made.

Let’s say you want to move your operations to Cloud and start using Amazon Web Services, you can simply outsource this activity to a professional AWS cloud management team without having to develop the department in-house and train new employees.

Think outside the box

When talking about digital transformation and disruption, most business owners think about the ways to leverage the latest digital assets in order to increase productivity and efficiency. However, you have to be aware that digital tech is far too holistic for such short-sighted goals. So, while you are building the foundation for your future transition, keep in mind that digital technology can be used for team bonding activities, encourage creative thinking, provide your workers some much-needed distraction, and as a reward. Setting up all these things from the get-go will save you a lot of effort down the road.

Update your business model

Tying your business closer to the currents of the digital world can only be effective if changes are not applied only at a surface level. A couple of useful cloud tools and cheap gimmicks simply won’t cut it. That is why you should adopt the very core of your business for the changes awaiting ahead.

So, think about how digital technology can become an integral part of your business facets and particles in the following period. Some of the most important questions you should answer are:

• How digital technology changes daily operations
• How transition affects workforce (existing employees and new hires)
• At what instance will new tools be implemented
• Will you need to adjust the essential functions of the company
• How digital tech affects the market position
• How new tech affects the customer base

Improve core products and services

The goal of every big corporate overhaul is to improve the efficiency of the company and generate revenue. This job will be made considerably easier if your digital transformation goes hand in hand with the new set of improved products, features, services, and marketing strategies. Digital technology can do a tremendous job in helping you grow, but it can’t carry the weight of the entire company on its shoulders. The foundations of your company should be made of top-tier products and services. So, using the digital transformation to fine-tune your business portfolio can only help your efforts.

We hope these few suggestions give you some general idea about the steps you should take to tie your business closer to the ongoing evolution of the digital world and, as a result, set yourself as a leader and disrupt your own market. The business world always relied on the latest-gen tech to evolve and grow. Digital tech only speeds this process up to an extreme and makes early adoption imperative. So do your best to be the disruptor rather than disrupted.

A national survey on vaping conducted in 2018 revealed that 9% of the American adult population, roughly 34 million people, constitutes moderate to regular vapers. The substantial ready market attracted countless investors to set up shop in the vaping industry.

However, regardless of the ever-growing vape market customer base, customer acquisition remains a big challenge for most vape vendors. Online and traditional media restrict overt advertising, limiting contact with potential consumers. While vape product marketing is dicey, it is doable. Find out how to promote your brand’s premium vape juice flavors and venture into new vape markets below.

1. Position Your Brand as a Consumer Education Hub

The internet is rife with businesses peddling countless products due to the immense potential online platforms present to vendors seeking to venture into new markets. However, the downside to the crowded marketplace is numerous adverts that cause advertising fatigue among potential consumers, causing them to avoid engagement with sales brands.

Consequently, effective customer acquisition strategies entail offering a value proposition rather than direct selling. Customers respond to and share enriching content, like consumer education pieces, generating organic traffic to your website.

Therefore, helpful information like types of vape products, buyer’s guides, vape kit maintenance, and vape tutorials attract more engagement. Moreover, investing your marketing resources into consumer education helps position your business as an authority in the vaping industry.

You can achieve your consumer education goal by posting blog posts about pertinent vaping subjects on your website; blogs are also fundamental SEO tools. Use Keyword tools and data from your analytics page to create evergreen content that potential and current customers will find helpful and shareable. Alternatively, you can create a community forum whereby consumers interact and share their vaping experiences. Consumer education helps nurture trust and confidence in your brand, prompting consumers to buy your products.

Image Source: Pixabay.com

2. Create and Implement an Online Marketing Strategy

The FDA regulates vapes and imposes display requirements for vape product advertisements; it recently issued marketing denial orders for over 50,000 e-juice flavors. Besides the FDA, major search engines and social media platforms restrict paid adverts that stimulate or make vaping seem attractive from their platforms. However, you can do much more than blogging to promote your vaping business online despite such restrictions. Here’s how to do it:

Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is an essential part of digital marketing, which entails positioning your brand to rank top in a search engine’s algorithm. These are some of the most effective SEO strategies:

·         Optimize your product descriptions, landing pages, about pages, and social media pages providing valuable content.

·         Use internal links and backlinks on your blogs and landing pages.

·         Enhance your website’s navigability with a user-friendly interface, shopping category filters, and a word-predictor search function.

Email marketing: While social media platforms and search engines impose bottlenecks for marketing vape products, email marketing tools have no restrictions. Statistics show that email marketing has the highest ROI of all online marketing strategies and that personalized emails have a 50% open rate. Therefore, create prompts that urge customers to submit their email addresses without coming off as pushy and create a customer database.

Lead-generation tools and web browser analytics: These tools help you monitor customer behavior and create customer cohorts based on customer behavior commonalities. Use the submitted contact information from your customer database to send emotionally appealing content that addresses innate customer needs to specific customer cohorts.

Promote your website in top vape sites:  You can also have reputable independent vape-centric websites feature your brand on their platform or pay for pop-up ads on such websites and legit mobile vape apps. You can also enlist your brand on reputable online vape shop directories for enhanced visibility.

Image Source: Pixabay.com

3. Consider Influencer Marketing

While social media platforms can restrict vape product direct advertising, they cannot sensor individual opinions on vaping. Therefore, influencer marketing is a viable marketing strategy to boost your vape business.

Some vape marketers are wary of influencer marketing due to supposedly high budgets and difficulty in measuring ROI. However, you can lower influencer marketing costs by partnering with micro-influencers and nano-influencers rather than macro-influencers with exorbitant rate cards. Moreover, micro-influencers and nano-influencers have better engagement rates that translate into better ROI.

A clear influencer marketing strategy with preset KPIs and associated metrics also increases campaign success. However, the most crucial element is selecting an influencer whose brand aligns with your business’s core values; give them creative freedom.

Photo-centric and video-centric channels work best for influencer marketing. So, have an influencer post about their favorite vape flavor from your product catalog and other relatable experiences that will draw customers.

Image Source: Pixabay.com

4. Incentivize Potential Buyers

Consumers attach great importance to added value and actively search for brands with a little something extra to offer. Meeting customer needs for supplemental value will endear your brand to your customers.

Even though the FDA prohibits issuing free vape samples to consumers, you can offer alternatives like complimentary gifts, bulk purchase discounts, and free shipping according to specific terms and conditions. You can also utilize email marketing to inform customers of your latest deals.

Conclusion

Despite multiple bottlenecks on vape marketing, vape marketing campaigns are powerful if targeted at a ready audience with the correct message. Using these simple tips in your marketing strategy will help you nurture leads and grow your vape business.

Resources:

Vaping statistics 2021

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-denies-marketing-applications-about-55000-flavored-e-cigarette-products-failing-provide-evidence

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/email-marketing-statistics

Life after the pandemic has changed the way people work. Companies who never considered remote work, are now embracing this as the new way of doing business. Their staff are working from home in higher numbers than ever before, and they are thriving. This new way of doing business has been tricky for some. But once they implemented these technologies, they are finding more success in the virtual workplace. It’s important to recognize that companies in many different industries can use remote workers for much of their support staff if they have the right infrastructure in place. Here are some of the essential tech needs of any remote team.

Good Computing Systems

Send your staff home with good computers. Systems with enough RAM and storage are more likely to work harder and can better access cloud storage files. They’ll be able to process larger files which can benefit companies with creative design teams. Additionally, tech teams need good systems so they can access other computers remotely to repair problems and identify issues. Good computing systems are essential tech tools already but are even more important when everyone is working remotely.

Video Conferencing Tools

It’s possible to have a meeting with people from all over the world by leveraging the power of video conferencing. While there is an energy and a dynamic that happens during in-person meetings, the ability of people to meet and get things done remotely is possible. There are many different conferencing tools on the market. Each one has strengths and weaknesses that businesses can use for their specific needs. It’s also important to choose tools that can be used on lower internet bandwidths in the event that some of your staff don’t have higher speed internet service at their home location.

Time tracking tools

The concept of work-from-home offers an unprecedented level of independence for an employee, which is a change for good. There is a strong correlation between the level of job control and productivity, confirmed in a number of studies. At last, it is the remote employee’s own responsibility to optimize his or her work style for better performance and well-being. That brings us to the concept of time tracking, developed all to make your time expenditures accountable. While the market offers numerous time tracking apps for the purpose, software-mediated time tracking is often a tedious task, to say the least. Luckily, smart time tracking gadgets have emerged lately, making the process much more user-friendly and engaging.

Team Chat Apps

It’s easy to walk by someone’s office in the middle of the day to ask a question. But if you send an email, you’ll likely get lost in the sea of messages they get each day. When you work from home, you probably aren’t going to drive by their house just to ask one question. Instead of emailing a coworker, many companies use chat apps for asking quick questions when you need a response right away. This is especially helpful for teams working together on projects. It helps people communicate quickly so everyone can be as productive as possible.

Cloud-Based Storage

On site servers are becoming a thing of the past. The security needs for servers can be costly and they are difficult to maintain. Instead, many companies are moving their documents to cloud-based solutions. These storage sites are easier for individuals to access from home, but still provide security that protects the documents and intellectual property of the company. Cloud-based solutions mean that employees can access the information they need from anywhere in the world as long as they have their login information. It also allows better collaboration between teams because documents can be easily shared within the cloud systems instead of emailed back and forth.

Social Media Customer Service

More companies are moving towards offering customer service solutions via social media. Let’s face it, more and more people would prefer not to use the phone to follow-up with a company on an issue. Using social media improves client retention by offering help where they spend their time. This is a great tech opportunity for companies with remote staff. It’s easy to create a customer service team focused solely on giving help via social media. When people look online for help desk info, it’s more likely people are looking at your social media pages than at your CPA website.

VoIP Phone Systems

VoIP phone systems used to be very expensive and difficult to implement. Because of the rise in VoIP, especially in call centers, more companies have developed solutions that can route phone calls to your cell phone instead of a clunky desk phone. There is still a market for both types of systems, but if you need to go remote with your team quickly, one of these app-based systems provides a quicker solution. You can route any extension to any phone you want, create customer service profiles, and even show who’s on the phone at any given time. Additionally, many of these systems record phone calls which can be great for training purposes.