One of the great challenges facing all businesses, both large and small, involves the subject of digital transformation.
Digital technology is rapidly impacting on every aspect of business including customer experience. Customer expectations are growing as quickly as technologies continue to grow. A failure to digitally transform your business is not just a growth issue but more immediately, one of survival.
It’s a fact that businesses that fail to digitally transform and meet growing user expectations will be left behind and will most likely be out of business in the next 2-3 years, or less.
In my role as head of a digital marketing services company, I get to talk to many business owners, CEO’s and key decision makers. No one I talk to disagrees with me about the need for digital transformation and the need to address this issue fast. However what concerns me is the widespread reluctance to act decisively with respect to digitally transforming their businesses.
So why would so many highly motivated and mostly intelligent business owners be so reluctant to address an issue that they know full well, could lead to the extinction of their business if left unaddressed? In answering that question I’d like to share some of my insights on the matter with you.
Digital Transformation Insights
- Firstly, most business owners and CEO’s I talk to agree on the need to improve the customer experience in order to increase competitiveness and sales.
- From an external perspective, website content, e-commerce, social media, mobile and email marketing are perceived as key in improving the customer experience.
- Very few people say that they have a sufficient handle on utilising and managing digital channels and content.
- Internal systems also need updating as part of the overall customer experience program.
- Smaller businesses typically site lack of expertise and time as reason for not adequately addressing digital transformation.
- Larger organisations with the available expertise, often report a failure of cooperation between marketing and IT as a reason for a less than satisfactory position.
- Almost all people I talk to about digital transformation admit to being anxious about their lack of progress in this all important challenge.
However, in terms of insights, the single biggest standout for me is the fact that very few businesses have a clearly defined strategy for digitally transforming their business. As a result, these businesses do not know exactly where they are going or how they are going to get there with respect to improving the customer experience and meeting growing customer expectations. Expectations that involve things like speed, efficiency, convenience, personalisation and consistency.
Digital transformation requires investment but before any investment dollars are spent, a digital marketing strategy is critical to ensure that those dollars are spent wisely.
A centralised digital marketing strategy would help the larger organisations ensure that Marketing and IT are on the same page and working together as one. It would also act as guidance for the smaller business owner who lacks the internal expertise and therefore needs to control the process of outsourcing digital marketing resources.
As one of Adelaide’s most experienced and qualified digital marketing consultant teams, Baker Marketing would welcome an opportunity to discuss the digital transformation of your business today on 83523091.
