These days, it seems that businesses have finally embraced how digital transformation is the best answer to all their problems. However, most are still wondering about the real question: How do you make digital transformation really work for you?
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, more entrepreneurs from various sectors adapted online tactics and strategies to keep themselves afloat despite the economic challenges and limited means of doing business. The sad thing is that 90% of these businesses found themselves falling off the wagon with poor planning, implementation, and data analysis.
Open source, cloud-based business solutions provider Couchbase recently conducted an international survey of Western countries comprising a representative of 450 digital business owners and found that only a few are able to really keep abreast of the evolving digital landscape.
It’s as if the proverb “many are called but few are chosen” applies here, but the main problem is really about being clueless on where to begin one’s digital journey, sustaining the efficiency, and ending it with strong growth.
In order to further understand how digital transformation happens, here are three key aspects that will allow you to experience exponential growth for your business.
Live and Breathe Digital
Going digital doesn’t always mean having a good grasp of the latest tools and technology available for your business’s disposal. It goes beyond that in a way that certain assessments and adjustments are needed to calibrate and fully-understand what you are doing. That’s because the trio of marketing, customer needs, and industry continue to evolve.
One of the best (or worst) examples of how businesses fail to implement their digital marketing strategies is when COVID-19 rendered 75% of companies with problems concerning supply and demand making huge impacts on their revenues.
Around 25,000 brick and mortar stores were caught off-guard in the US and are expected to close down due to lockdown and social distancing measures to mitigate COVID-19. In the Philippines, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) rang its alarm bells as 26% of local businesses were shuttered due to the pandemic.
However, more businesses were able to weather the storm by re-inventing their digital marketing strategies by reaching wider target markets online and expanding networks to allow themselves to deliver the goods. Today, 80% of businesses have digital solutions in place—though not many really make the most of them.
How can you achieve a successful digital marketing campaign? Of course, by plotting out genuine customer experiences that will build your brand first, and let everything else soon follow.
Treat Your Customers Like the Bffs That They Are
Reaching your target market is not as simple as doing a great job on your social media accounts. It takes more than a well-designed ad or captioned post to hook in customers and make them serve you their loyalty on a silver platter.
What most customers are looking for now are authentic experiences that address their pain points and define their true personalities. With how online tech giant Amazon captured the imagination of its customers through online retail and delivery, businesses have discovered that first-party data is definitely today’s most valuable commodity.
By analyzing what your customers’ need and prefer, you can make their purchasing experience more satisfying that they’d come running back to you when they need something else. Just be sure you’re always ready and willing to communicate with them because today’s consumers have a short fuse when it comes to non-replying companies.
Making sure that your business is customer-centric can reap you with great rewards for the long-term, establish your brand in both on and offline playing fields, and create more opportunities for you once you get more nods.
Today’s e-commerce is shaped by how customers can relate to a brand. But it’s not just compelling content that keeps them on board. 72% of consumers buy products that enrich their life experiences more than what brand made them or who’s wearing them.
By going out of your way to really understand your main and lookalike customers’ needs via data analysis, you can gain valuable insights that can create more campaigns that will improve their experiences all the more.
Brace for the Digital Olympics
So back to the question—where do you begin your digital transformation? As in all businesses, careful planning, creating a vision, and drawing a roadmap is always key to achieving real business value. The more you become successful in streamlining your online marketing processes, the more support you’ll get from your customers, employees, and partners.
Approach it in a way an athlete trains for the Olympics. You study constantly, practice and apply, analyze stats, make a playbook, and see yourself in the win column!
After all, that’s what digital transformation is really about—organizational agility. This year, 44% of companies have undergone a digital-first approach to generate customer engagement out of the total 89% of businesses that went digital. By funneling all of your resources to digital marketing initiatives, customer experience, and business agility, the more you can keep up with the changing times in the digital age.
And perhaps that’s where the only difference lies with our athlete analogy. Athletes wane in strength with age, but your business has the potential to grow as time passes.
Being consistent with the services you offer your customers is also vital but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep improving the way you handle their needs. Transforming digitally is always both for you and your customers so the business experience is also important so that you can efficiently do what’s new and different for better marketing, production, and service delivery. Solely relying on technology without taking into account what matters to both your business and your customers can prove futile and a lot of money wasted.
Digital transformation is mostly driven by growth opportunities rather than having the latest technology available for the show. The top three benefits that businesses get from doing things right on their digital transformation journeys are more efficient processes (40%), faster turnaround time (36%), and meeting customer expectations (35%). If you have to recreate your business model to align it with your digital marketing goals, then do so. 60% did so and are already reaping the rewards.
Always remember that the promise of digital transformation takes a lot of work, careful thought, and expertise from those who know how everything works in the digital landscape. Time is shorter these days for most businesses but there are always plenty of solutions that can give them a big push with data analysis and result-oriented marketing campaign strategies. All you really need is to ask for help.
Go ahead and start making your digital transformation work for you. Send us a message and get started with a free, quick, 15-min call!
