If you have been studying digital transformation, website design, social media methods, online marketing or reading my recent articles, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed. It might seem like you need to have a masters degree and five years of experience in pretty much everything to do with the web to even start to develop a digital strategy. Many business owners decide to quit early and stick to traditional model and methods.

Unfortunately, traditional methods of doing business are becoming less effective. People are switching their business behaviors and doing everything online. You could be doing everything right, but not turning as much profit as your competitor and possibly working a lot harder as well. How do you get out of this fix?

Get help from someone who knows

We've lost count of the number of seasoned businessmen we have shocked when we presented a full digital strategy to them. There are so many components that have to work together to make it work. The first impression they have is, “My goodness, I’m not a digital guru! I don’t have time to learn this and keep my business going!” In short, they panic.

It’s true, there is a lot to keep up with. Not only that, but things like the online marketing landscape is always changing making it even more difficult. Google algorithm changes, PPC ad placement shifts, new social media portals, new acceptable use policies, and many other things require digital strategists to constantly be on their toes. In fact, I would say 95% of all marketers don’t know how to properly implement a digital strategy. The technology and mindset is so new and so fast-paced that it’s hard to keep up unless you’re in the thick of it every day.

Part of what a digital strategist should do for you is to take away all that stress and just make online strategies work. Any good strategist will remove the feeling of being overwhelmed by your digital strategy and things like social media and website conversions become a source of excitement and not stress. Our clients tell us that by turning websites into conversion engines, we help them, as business owners, focus on their core business, while also building positive online reputation.

Doing it yourself can kill your business

Being an entrepreneur myself, I really respect business owners that try to dive in but this can hurt more than it helps if they haven’t done adequate research. Many business owners make the big mistake of thinking that SEO is the digital strategy. This is just a tiny component if at all anymore but businesses fall prey to companies that hound your business with “get ranked quickly ” schemes but if it’s done incorrectly, it could get your business completely wiped off of the search engines. Again, SEO is not a digital strategy, it is just a small component but let's spend a moment on it.

SEO is a big culprit here. SEO is a set of methods used to boost the visibility of your website on search engines. If you’re easier to find, and ranked higher on the page, the more likely your site is to be clicked on. Sounds reasonable, but there’s a lot of ways that people have tried to manipulate the rankings over the years. Using methods that worked back in 2012 or earlier could get your site de-listed. Many of the strategies from that era focused on manipulating links back to your site in ways that went against Google’s core mission. When they implemented their Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates to their engine, many sites got trashed in the rankings. Not just small time businesses either. JC Penny had to completely start over with their overall SEO strategy after they got hit by these updates.

Does that in itself sound overwhelming? If you don’t know where to begin, or if you thought you implemented a digital strategy and it's just not gaining any traction, hire a digital strategist to transform your business. The investment is well worth your time and instead of just losing market share to your competitors you could start taking some of theirs!