SMALL and medium enterprises (SMEs) that go online are expected to increase their sales by four folds in average than those that are not, says Google Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines managing director Sajith Sivanandan.

“This is because there are more than three billion people who are online globally and the numbers and hours they spend are also increasing. In Malaysia, smartphone penetration is quite high, well above 80%.

In view of this, SMEs in Malaysia must take the opportunity to be online but they must have the know-how on digital marketing and advertising, he tells StarBizWeek in an interview.

“Google Malaysia, together with our local partners, are proud to train Malaysian SMEs nationwide for free on how to maximise their products and services market globally via a programme called ‘Go Global’ in the next few months.

“Gone are the days that SMEs could only sell to people living around them – you can now sell to pretty much anybody in Malaysia and anywhere in the world,” Sajith says.

To be more comprehensive in its training, Google Malaysia is partnering Alliance Bank, Maxis and Mastercard.

It also has collaborations with the International and Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti), Malaysia External Trade Development Corp (Matrade), SME Corp Malaysia and Malaysia Digital Economy Corp.

Both Alliance Bank and Alliance Islamic Bank provides full suite of products and services as well as advisory services on preparing businesses for expansion beyond Malaysia.

With Maxis, SMEs experience new ways of working with a complete suite of solutions from fixed and mobile connectivity to digital tools.

“This nationwide free of charge training programme covers various locations all over Malaysia. Apart from Klang Valley, we will also conduct the workshops in Penang, Johor, Ipoh as well as Sabah and Sarawak.

“Those who are interested can register at https://get.google.com/mygoglobal/.

“Our conservative target is to get at least 1,000 SMEs and we will help them in going global,” says Sajith.

In the realm of the digital world, Sajith says Google covers the whole spectrum of what he calls the “micro moments” extremely well.

“People go online to decide on where they want to go, shop, watch, buy and et cetera. People also search YouTube for entertainment, learn about something, to get better informed by searching all kinds of content.

“Meanwhile, Google display network has very significant reach reflected in a very high percentage of Internet users across the world.

“As people are browsing content that are relevant to them, we serve the ads that are relevant to them. It’s not just a search based-initiative but very much across everything else,” he says.