Though the COVID-19 pandemic has burdened the entire world with unprecedented problems, it has also offered an opportunity for accelerated digital transformation. COVID-19 has caused a shift in the way transactions are executed, has expedited the migration to an enhanced digital environment, and has influenced purchasing habits.

This has resulted in a considerable rise in the region’s digital marketing sector, giving women entrepreneurs a significant opportunity to excel and explore global and regional markets.

Women entrepreneurs are seen as key to economic growth because of the multiplier impact on job creation, labour force participation, and uplifting families out of their lower socio-economic background. They can help achieve several SDGs, especially SDG 5 – gender equality.

Women entrepreneurs in the developing nations within the SEA region, on the other hand, face challenges in terms of access to finance, ICT and are unable to expand their businesses and join wider regional and global supply chains, owing to a lack of knowledge and the small scale of their companies (micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME)).

E-commerce could be a powerful tool for interacting with customers and participating in a larger supply chain.

At the same time, the studies discovered that in response to COVID-19, women business leaders exhibited greater flexibility in their business models and were more likely to earn more than 50 per cent of their sales through digital channels.

Despite the passage of time, which has resulted in over 252 million women entrepreneurs worldwide, they continue to struggle to overcome the obstacles they encounter daily.

Also Read: Meet the 13 UN Women Care Accelerator startups transforming care work in APAC

With women accounting for around one-third of all entrepreneurs worldwide, things have never looked better for them on paper. Unfortunately, these figures only tell half of the picture.

Gender norms are impacting the ecology of entrepreneurship and posing tremendous obstacles for women worldwide, just as they do in other sectors today.

Between 2013 and 2019, the number of female-led businesses that became unicorns increased. In 2019, there were 21 new female-led unicorns reported globally, six more than the previous year.

There were only four new female-led unicorns recorded in 2013; therefore, unicorn numbers rose by more than 400 per cent over this period.

Being a woman entrepreneur is challenging since you must look after everything on your own. Being the primary caregiver makes the job double as hard. In addition to taking care of the household, unless heavily funded, you must be a jack of all trades at business– operations, sales, marketing, product development, and finance.

However, with a solid digital outreach plan, you may at least minimise the strain of obtaining excellent sales and keeping the cash flow going. Most businesses don’t know what they want to or can achieve with digital marketing, and as a result, they fail at the first hurdle. You must sit down and write out the goals you want to attain by investing time and effort in advertising your company online.

In the long run, a strong band helps with organic growth; however, in the initial days, the approach is towards customer acquisition, successful servicing or order fulfilment to keep the engines running.

The approach begins with identifying the businesses target audience. Understanding wherein the internet world they lurk, what content they consume, who they follow.

Next is to build a detailed plan to reach this identified audience group through social and search channels, influencers and sponsored campaigns.

When constructing the tactics, consider:

Numbers to define success, including time, budget and Objective KPIs to measure

As soon as someone decides to start their own business, they have a sales goal in mind. It is, by far, the essential KPI that companies should focus on. However, in addition to sales, it is critical to focus on growth and scalability.

Also Read: A woman among women: 27 female-led startups in SEA that are going places

Direct and indirect competitors and their most successful campaigns

Who are the top five direct and indirect competitors? What is their marketing strategy? Which platforms are they putting their money into? Do they have a hyper-personalised or localised approach? Most of the time, the answers to these questions will assist you in developing your marketing plan.

In my opinion, most businesses ignore some of the most critical techniques that their competitors exercise. It usually pays more to improvise than to reinvent the wheel. Whether it’s an off-page SEO plan or influencer marketing on Instagram, you could overlook fundamentals that your rival is flourishing online.

Ways to localise your product or service

Finding the correct marketing platforms is the simplest of all if you can complete all of the processes, including establishing your goals, identifying the right consumer persona, recognising your local competitors and drawing inspiration from successful ones in your space.

Digital marketing is broad and offers many various ways to create revenue for every firm. Still, it’s critical to pick the correct approach for your budget to avoid going overboard with your marketing costs.

Multiple variations of your campaigns to test resonance with your target audience

You must decide on your marketing budget based on your desire to create sales for your brand. For example, as an eCommerce business, if you can only send ten orders per day, decide how much money you want to spend on advertising to achieve those ten orders. As the adage goes, “never put all your eggs in one basket.”

As a result, distribute your spending over several channels to determine which ones perform best for you. Regular experiments and assessments of each platform provide the highest ROI and adjust your spending appropriately.

Once the basics are covered, focus on building a brand for longevity and organic growth.

The life of an entrepreneur is hard and lonely. With the community’s help and a robust support system of customers, partners, the team with a similar vision, the statistics say, less than 2 per cent of startups survive.

The mechanics do not change as per the gender of the entrepreneur. However, given the nature of one’s surroundings, for the fairer sex, statistically, it is much harder to build a business.

Also Read: Why women and tech are a rocking combination!

Although I’d like to believe the struggles are more internal and one can overcome the challenges with meticulous planning, undeterred execution and perseverance, the truth may be far from it.

It takes a village to run a business, and for women, the process is multiple times harder. Time and again, successful entrepreneurs have established to build for a brand, network, lean in the community to learn, grow and pursue the goals with grit and determination, which will lead to success, so let’s build one for one another.

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