On March 29, in partnership with Accenture, The Information hosted a conversation to discuss how platforms are helping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to establish digital maturity.

While big businesses have largely weathered the ill effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many SMBs face tumultuous waters when navigating the disruption and uncertainty. Although the pandemic has provoked digital transformation for many SMBs, not all have the resources to

achieve digital maturity. One-third of SMBs remain digital stragglers as of January 2021, said Louise Barrere, Managing Director within Accenture's Applied Intelligence.

As the crux of the U.S. economy, SMBs make up 60 percent of employment and help drive innovation. However, to ensure they preserve their competitive edge, larger companies are stepping in to assist, contributing their expertise to enhance the digital capabilities of SMBs.

John Nicoletti, vice president of product and sales activation in Google Customer Solutions, noted that the reluctance to move online is mainly due to digital skill deficiency and unrealistic perceptions of consumer habits.

"One in four businesses don't have a website," Nicoletti said. "What is more interesting is that a third of small businesses said they don't have that presence because they don't believe their customers are there. That is a little more concerning because I don't think that matches the reality of where consumers are and where consumers are definitely going."

To combat this misconception, Google uses its well-established platform to offer digital support for SMBs through a program called Grow with Google. Through training programs, SMBs can grasp the digital basics to help understand and measure the value of eCommerce.

Another way Google assists SMBs is via well-timed digital advertisements that can display service offerings, product listings, or videos to consumers. For Co-Founder of BILLY Footwear, Billy Price, algorithms used by Google Ads allowed his company to pinpoint valuable consumers.

"Within the last two years, we've started investing more so in Google Ads," Price said. "We find that in terms of conversions on our site, Google Ads consistently outperforms any social investing by two and a half times. We find that through the social channels is more for the window shoppers and raising brand awareness, but when it actually comes to driving those conversions, it's much stronger going through Google."

Not only do Google Ads have massive reach, but they also utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the appropriate consumer base meticulously. Nicoletti attributes Google Ads' transcendence over competing brands to the implementation of AI in software because of their ability to help niche companies locate their precise consumers.

"Machine learning is a big phrase, but it's effectively looking at millions of different signals, and in the case of Google or Google ads, it's doing that in real-time. That's things like bidding for a given auction with things like smart bidding or showing up at the exact time to the right customer with things like smart creatives. It's basically in taking a lot of signals in real-time and then serving the best experience for the consumer, but also in a way that drives results for the brand," Nicoletti said.

Considering the cutthroat nature of the economy, the director of business value services at Salesforce, Erin Landry, says AI could also be a "survival imperative" since smaller partners have a more challenging time generating traffic over bigger, more established sites like Nordstrom and Amazon who have more loyal consumer audiences.

"The biggest thing we see, especially with this segment, the biggest hurdle is overwhelm. There's so much technology out there," Landry said. "At Salesforce, we have many different products. Where do you even start, and what will have the most impact on your business as one of those big questions. We invest a lot of time in helping make sure our customer base has that, and we can guide them along the journey."

For SMBs, taking fiscal risks without certainty of the outcome is often discouraged because of the unstable nature of the economy, Landry said. Instead, looking at advertisement and web search bar data can unlock critical information to guide marketing and product strategy.

“There's a crushing amount of data that can be very powerful if you know how to use it. If you don't know how to do it, there's no value in that, so I think a lot of it is getting a handle on what's making the most impact, especially for small-medium enterprises. Budgets are tight, so you want to make sure you're maximizing every dollar that you're spending,” Landry said.

Accessing the value of SMBs will require enterprises to harness the outreach provided by AI services, while also understanding SMB support is not one-size-fits-all, said Barrere.

“The role of AI for SMBs is also critical for enterprises,” Barrere said. “Because there’s 30 million SMBs in the United States and we’re talking about digital savviness and how, depending on the digital maturity of the SMB, we know they want to be interacted with and treated and have a different level of service with enterprises. We know digitally savvy perform much more of a self service where somebody who’s less digitally savvy wants more support.”

While advertisements and AI support from larger businesses can reap tremendous benefits for product leaders, Price emphasizes the continual goal of remaining personal to customers and creating a community around the desired product.

Ultimately, as the pandemic continues to evolve and eCommerce becomes more deeply embedded in marketing practices, keeping personalization at the forefront of company objects will ensure consumer preferences are tailored to their experiences.

“You can duplicate a widget, but the thing you can't duplicate is the story. You can't duplicate the journey. We would utilize the tools to be able to find the audiences out there and elevate their stories and their success stories with the brand,” Price said.