Digital transformation for digital consumer is new market reality, that forcing companies to change their business models, what’s interesting about this is, instead of the companies driving this change, the change is being driven by the customer, Digital Consumer.
According to IDC research, around 66% of Global 2,000 companies will shift their focus from traditional, offline strategies to digital strategies to improve the customer – with 34% of companies believing they’ll fully adopt digital transformation within 12 months or less.
However, despite the forecasts, the trends are not showing the positive results, In the State of Digital Business Report, Progress revealed that 47% of companies haven’t started their digital transformation yet – while 59% are worried that it might already be too late for them.
One of the many reason behind this is the Skill sets available in the market, the people with digital marketing professional skills are very less throughout the organizational structure that make transformation difficult.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes in how a business operates and the value they deliver to their customers. The Digital Marketing Training for Entrepreneurs & Digital Marketing Course provided by Suvidit Academy cover the Digital Transformation in detail.
The companies that do transform digitally are creating highly engaged customers and highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase, and have 3x the annual value (compared to the average customer).
And These highly engaged Digital Consumer are:
- Six times more likely to try a new product or service from their preferred brand.
- Four times more likely to have referred your brand to their friends, family and connections.
- Two times more likely to make a purchase with their preferred brand, even when a competitor has a better product or price.
A study at MIT found that companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable and achieve a sustainable growth.
The New, Digitally Conscious Customer
As Digital technology steps in the life of the people, their habits and mode of communication get transformed.
The availability of Mobile devices at budget prices, the kind of apps that are designed to share the Images – Videos – Audios in real time, machine learning environment growth, automation and much more shifted the balance towards the Digital Consumer.
This shift in balance towards Digital Consumer have caused a shift in Digital Consumer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern buyer and because of the opportunities that rise from using modern technology, customers often rate organizations on their digital Consumer experience first.
The Digital Marketing Course will help you understand your Digitally Conscious Customers and there shift in search and buying behaviour.
Getting Started with Digital Transformation
Beginning with digital transformation should be focused on creating a personal connect with Target Audience, While there is no one-size-fits for all organization, below are the 5 points that will help you to start with Digital Transformation.
1) Learn Digital Marketing :
The first step is to join a Digital Marketing Course, Why a course?, A Study by Harvard Business Publishing shows “$1.3 trillion that was invested in digital transformation in 2018, $900 billion has been wasted.” because they fail to
- Figure out their business strategy before they invested.
- Leverage insiders and bring in an army of outside consultants who tend to apply one-size-fits-all solutions in the name of “best practices.”
- Design customer experience from the outside in.
- Recognize employees’ fear of being replaced.
- Bring new culture inside.
The Digital transformation worked for those organizations, where the leaders went back to the fundamentals after digital marketing training and they focused on the organizational culture and processes before they decide what digital tools to use and how to use them.
2) An agile, flexible IT environment :
Having the right technology to power up digital strategies is fundamental in today’s business world but 45% of executives believe their companies lack all the necessary technology to conduct a digital transformation strategy and in today’s Scenario 86% of businesses believe that cloud technology is critical to digital transformation.
The next big thing is Data, collecting and analysing the right data is key to the success of the business working in digital environment, in-fact the possibility to analysing the data and generating the insight in real time is one of the big motive behind digital transformation, to make it right business should invest in the right tools and technology that is needed to support your business and have a capability to upgrade as business grows.
3) Personalized customer experiences :
According to Accenture, 75% of customers admit being more likely to buy from a company that:
- Recognizes them by their name,
- Knows their purchase history, and
- Recommends products based on their past purchases.
The best part is that customers love to share their data with organization if they feel that organizations use their data to improve their experience. But, the organisations need to implement the CRM in order to take advantage of this opportunity, with a CRM system, you can analyze and study customer-related data based on a customers’ previous interactions with your company.
4) A seamless multi-channel experience :
Everything is now happening in real time, which is why those companies that can offer immediacy, personalization and accessibility to their customers will win out in the long-run.
Majority of consumers now expect a customer service response within one hour, even on weekdays. This demand is forcing organizations to remain accessible 24*7. Not only this the customers are available on multiple digital channels and can interact or ask questions using any of the channels, to exploit this business should try tying all of these interactions together allows you to create a single digital profile every time a customer interacts with your business, but to exploit this business should invest in social listening tool, automation and quality trained staff.
5) Creating strategic presence :
Today’s consumers are not tied to a single channel. They browse in-store, shop online, share feedback through mobile apps and ask questions for your support team on social media networks.
All businesses should have their presence where there target audience spend time, apart from this Every business should have do following :
- Design or Redesign the Company Website : Design your website for today not for future, website should be redesigned in every 2-3 years and should follow the trends to keep engaging Digital Consumer.
- SEO From an Experienced Professional : Either hire a experience agency with the professional having clear understanding of your business domain or industry and your Digital Consumer otherwise do provide him the necessary information or the best way to get SEO done is by hiring in-house Professional or team and there should be a proper arrangement of their training over the period of time to keep them updated and effective.
- Create High-Quality Content : Your virtual digital agents need quality contents to interact with your target audience or Digital Consumer, the quality of the content will decide the effectiveness of your digital business performance. A few good types of content to create include – Video tutorials, How to guides, Interviews, Infographics, Q&A sessions, Slideshows, Listicles and Animations
- Use Social Media in An Effective Manner : Businesses should engage their target Digital Consumer without spamming their followers – share only high-quality, valuable content and respond to comments and questions. Until necessary multiple posts in one day should be avoided to prevent spamming. A few other basic tips for proper social media usage include – Providing links to your website, Try to connect with your followers, Use humor but carefully, Keep your profiles up to date, Humanize the brand with posts.
- Use Influencer Marketing : An influential industry figure if recommend your brand to their followers, it can paint your company in a positive light and help you to create an emotional connection to a large following of Digital Consumer, and help to build an authentic brand reputation.
- Form A Strategic Alliance : striking up a strategic alliance or co-branding is a great way to reach an entirely new audience, finding the right business that is not a direct competitor but has the same target Digital Consumer as you so that both can benefit working together.
- Implement A VOIP Phone System : Exploit the Benefit of the VOIP which allows you to scale call volume, plus use other features like automatic call distribution, call management features, data collection, video conferencing, and much more to woo your Digital Consumer.
- Add Live Chat : A live chat function on website allows people to get instant Digital Consumer service without connecting through phone. This is a proven way to increase the engagement and can increase conversions. This also give a competitive edge and help to build a connection with your target customer.
- Reduce Environmental Impact : Encourage the positivity to save the resources of mother earth and connect the same to Digital Consumer as more responsible partner is their life by using Alternative energy, Energy-efficient appliances, Using local and/or green suppliers, Going paperless, Remote working, Starting a carpool and Increasing recycling.
Conclusion :
Every year the trends is changing as the digital customers want it to be, but this also brings an opportunities to the businesses to learn, grow, satisfy and create the loyalty among their target audience. The above mentioned strategies will help businesses of all sizes and in all industries to stay active among their target customer, and compete with the more prominent brands.
The business owners and working professionals should learn the nuances and should be ready for the changing aspects of the digital consumers, the best way to learn the same is the Digital Marketing Training or Digital Marketing Course that focuses on the target audience before creating the plan or strategy.
