Australian small and medium businesses with effective sales and marketing activities increase their chance of achieving revenue growth by 18 percentage points – from 33 per cent to 51 per cent– according to a new Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by Salesforce.
The new report, Small Business Imperatives for the Digital Age, also found many small businesses are not taking full advantage of digital technology, as 25 per cent of small businesses are primarily using digital tools to acquire new customers, 22 per cent of small businesses personalise their marketing content, and 29 per cent are regularly using social media to interact with their customer base.
The top three benefits of digital technology for small businesses included:
- finding new customers (45 per cent)
- increasing revenue (32 per cent)
- broader market reach (30 per cent).
Adrian Towsey, Salesforce Area Vice President for Small and Medium Business, APAC, said, “Customers expectations have changed. They’ve been trained by companies like Airbnb to expect business of all sizes to deliver frictionless, personalised experiences at every touch point.
“Customer relationship management technology has never been easier to set-up and use, and is crucial to growing and delivering the level of customer experience expected today. We’ve seen customer Trailblazers like Blackdot and Big Red Group invest in digital technology to power better customer interactions and help grow their business. There’s a huge opportunity for small businesses to use the unique personal relationships they have with customers to personalise the offers and content they share with them,” Towsey added.
Principal report author, and Deloitte Access Economics partner, John O’Mahony, said, “Businesses with CRM earn significantly more revenue than businesses that don’t, yet only 30 per cent of SMEs use CRM software. Our modelling also did not find any statistical difference in average revenue for businesses that adopted CRM at the start of their operations compared with those that introduced it later. More important is how effectively digital tools like CRM are utilised as part of overall growth strategy.”
The report was based on a survey of over 548 Australia and New Zealand SMEs (defined as having up to 100 employees).
