The Digital Development Loan has become one of the most familiar terms in the UK. The nation’s government brought this into the market to delay the virus spread. Due to the ongoing rise in the application, there is an increase in its processing time.
The Scottish Government Digital Development Loan is a service that provides loans to organizations for enhancing online capacity and capabilities. It also encompasses digital skill development to boost economic productivity.
The loan provides financial assistance to companies for the implementation of online integration, security, processes, software, hardware, etc., costs.
The Requirement for a Digital Development Loan
● Provides Digital Marketing Training
A large number of companies, entrepreneurs, and startups get established globally every day. Therefore, the competition doesn’t stop, and neither do the online marketing trends. Learning about consumer behaviour and digital marketing can help to drive large targeted traffic to a website.
Social Media Expert or a Digital Marketing Manager’s role is to ensure that this objective is met with rising numbers every week, month, and year. Often companies, and indulge in online advertising to avail this benefit.
However, a digital marketing expert can lower advertising cost through organic means like blogs, case studies, news articles, keyword research, etc. Therefore, learning about digital marketing can open doors to financial success for an individual and a company.
Furthermore, with the assistance of Digital Development Loan, training can get incorporated. It can help people from the ranks of business owners to a digital marketing intern. Additionally, it would provide familiarity with ongoing trends and establish the website on search engines and social channels.
The training also helps to provide knowledge, assist with doubts, create self-confidence in teams and provides a window of opportunities. These help businesses to generate more money, and provide ongoing success for the long term.
● Helps to Bring Transformation in an Organization
A Digital Development Loan can save company costs from expenditure on e-commerce platforms through hardware and software purchases. Many startups don’t have the budget to avail these options without taking a loan.
Unfortunately, the Digital Development Loan cannot get utilized for hiring an outside organization for marketing, or for corporate marketing. However, companies can avail unsecured personal loans to serve these and other purposes without handing over any security.
But, as mentioned before, the loan can get utilized for internal training on digital marketing. Therefore, it can help provide a knowledge boost to interns or refresh managers’ concepts or even open doors to new ideas.
Therefore, a Digital Development Loan can help to create inbound resources for managing a company’s marketing. It saves time and money for recruiting an experienced person. Simultaneously, it keeps the company for providing additional new employee training.
Additionally, the trainees can indulge in new concepts that can boost the online presence of a website on social platforms, and search engines. Therefore, it provides immense benefits compared and minor drawbacks.
● Establishes the Importance of Digital Marketing
An IAB UK report suggested that sixty-one per cent of people use online ads to attract new customers. Fifty-one per cent make use of online ads for creating company awareness.
Forty-one per cent SME’s and managers claim that bring new customers can become challenging in the next year. Seventy per cent SME’s believe in the importance of customer communication, especially during the pandemic.
Therefore, the need for digital marketing training keeps rising every day. As mentioned before, the training is possible by hiring an outside organization after availing any of the easy loans.
However, businesses can choose a Digital Development loan to cover hardware, software, and training expenditures. According to a report, the growth of the tech sector is rising in Scotland.
Unfortunately, Scotland also lags by ten per cent of the necessary digital marketing skills of UK citizens. The Digital Development Loan can help develop business marketing capabilities and support SME’s to foster, especially during the dire pandemic circumstances.
According to a source, digital marketing on e-commerce platforms would help drive 17.5 per cent retail sales by 2021. Eighty-seven per cent of shoppers believe in shopping after reading about product experiences on social media.
Similarly, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps to generate thirty-nine per cent of e-commerce traffic globally. Moreover, a single ‘abandoned cart’ email generates sixty-nine per cent orders. Therefore, the value of digital marketing is established by all businesses.
● High Loan Capacity
One of the best benefits of availing a Digital Development Loan is that it comes with high borrowings. A business can borrow an amount ranging between £5000 and £100,000 to cover software, hardware and training expenses.
Furthermore, the repayment tenure of the loan ranges from three months to five years. This Scottish Government loan incorporates no early repayment fees. Therefore, businesses can recover the expenses, and become debt-free without waiting for the tenure elapsing date.
Another benefit of availing the loan is that it comes with a zero interest rate. There are also no administrative fees associated with this loan. However, it is only available for businesses in Scotland, UK.
A Digital Development Loan serves versatile purposes. These include financial costs for hardware, software, and training. Businesses can use these benefits to lower their digital skill gap and costs from hiring a new employee.
The training program can assist a group of people who can share ideas to generate more money and traffic. The knowledge boost can help an intern skip over the learning hurdle through experience, or provide refreshing knowledge to managers.
Simultaneously, business owners can utilize the training, software, and hardware expenses to boost the business through new approaches. It would also help monitor the ongoing digital marketing practices of organizational employees, and take new leaps.
The digital marketing concepts, such as PPC, SEO, social media advertising, email marketing, etc., can provide extended-lasting benefits. For example, an intern with affirmative knowledge and guidance can boost career by incorporating the practices in a resume, and interviews.
Similarly, business owners can reach out to potential investors through new digital marketing approaches and become debt-free in no-time. Managers can refresh their concepts to incorporate least used or forgotten marketing practices for a domain.
Besides this, familiarity with new hardware, and software would make any marketing candidate more approachable for an organization. Similarly, entrepreneurs can make use of them for scaling the business.
Conclusively, a Digital Development Loan can provide enormous benefits but is limited to citizens of Scotland in the UK.
