In the era of doing digital business, what stands out very clearly is the ability for any kind of business to benefit from it. The extent to which it drives your business to growth will depend on two critical factors:
Your intent to invest in digital domain for your business
The maturity of business models in digital domain era relevant to your business.
Your intent to invest in digital domain for your business
Whether you are an already existing business or getting newly setup, digital component of your business is a no-brainer in this era. However, leveraging the digital technologies effectively will ensure better return of investments. Just opening up social media accounts or letting a marketing agency manage your digital marketing implementation may give you some quick fix results. However, for better returns of investments (or achieving the optimal investment level on digital technologies to boost your business) is a science that only you can learn by taking the journey of digital business adoption. No consultant, agency, marketer or industry expert can do it for you. They may be the tools which you, as a business owner, can use efficiently at various point in times of your digital components deployments. In analogy, you will always play the role of brain while others will play the role of limbs. Set your intent to not succeed but to explore into digital domain. Trail-and-error could be the best fit. Take step-by-step approach than going big bang with several components.
Your first step towards going digital is to make sure your business strategy is first defined with very specific vision and goals. While the vision will set the long-term perspective of going digital, goals will give priority to choosing the right digital components to pilot with.
The maturity of business models in digital domain era relevant to your business.
Although we would like to assume that we have reached the zenith of digitalization through the advent of Industrial Revolution 4.0 era, it hasn't yet ensured that all the business domains are equally matured when it comes to its digitalization. We have seen every other business being disrupted through their "digital platformization". Uber for commutation, Air BnB for tourist accommodation et al. However, not all the business domains fall into the same levels of achieving "digital maturity". Hence, it is important to understand the current trends and to what extent can you leverage them suiting your business models or business domain.
One of the key factor which decides the maturity (or value proposition from digital technologies) for your business are the extent to which the technology stalwarts like Google, Microsoft etc. have invested upon it which either directly or indirectly is linked to your business. For ex: Local commutation or hotel booking business has boomed through digital platforms because of "Google Maps".
In conclusion, the optimal extent of investment on digital side of your business and optimizing the better return of investments is a continuous improvement journey and there is no sustainable short cuts. It is like steroids will give you temporary muscle power, but disciplined gym regime will give you natural and long term results.