5 Essential Tips to Boost Your Digital Strategy by Bridging The Digital Gap
The article shows the existence of the digital gap and how it is an issue that most multinationals and corporations are facing. It’s something that needs to be addressed at the earliest opportunity. Managing the digital gap is not only about being competitive but also about economic survival.
In the last years, consumer behavior has evolved from someone who only had the option to buy what was advertised on the main media, to someone who has the tools to question everything and demand more.
Nowadays, 90% of consumers say they use multiple devices to complete everyday tasks and 53% say the will abandon a site if they have to wait more than 3 seconds for a page to load.
In other words, consumers have been empowered by technology to a point where the speed of brands’digital transformation is much slower, opening what is known as the digital gap between CX and brands, affecting brand competitiveness and business results negatively.
There is no digital readiness of B2B companies to respond to this changing landscape, and this is something that should be taken into consideration when creating your company’s digital strategy.
How to Measure the Digital Gap?
Identify the digital gap
The first and most important step is to identify this gap and to analyze how well your business is currently competing. For this, it’s vital that you have a clear view and understanding of the CX in your company, and how it compares to the leaders of your industry.
You also need to have a comprehensive view of your customers, what they currently expect from your brand, and what they could expect in the future.
Comprehensive understanding of your current business model
What are your business objectives, market landscape, and current strategies? Are they bringing the results you expect? Identify alignment opportunities by meeting with stakeholders, top management, and other departments to gather all the information you need.
Having a clear idea of your company’s culture is also detrimental to be able to understand how your company could react to the process. By having an external perspective of your business and culture, you can increase the opportunity to be successful and consistent in the following phases.
Conduct a digital audit
The third step is to conduct a full digital audit. This means, running an in-depth analysis of your current digital channels and marketing tools to obtain customized reports that help you understand how are your digital channels responding. Is your digital strategy bringing the desired results and meeting the needs of your customers effectively?
This analysis is crucial to formulate your new omnichannel strategy. The more data points you can access from your channels, the easier it will be to understand how well your company is meeting the customer’s digital expectations. After analyzing all this information you will see a clearer picture of your digital efforts with actionable insights for improvements.
Check out this article that will guide you through the steps to conduct a digital audit.
Re-discover your buyer personas & re-connect with them
Without a deep understanding of who your customers are, it is impossible to evaluate and bridge the digital gap. To get you to know them better a buyer persona profiling is essential. Even though demographic information is important, more in-depth behavioral information is necessary to create a connection. What are their needs, goals, and ambitions?
You need as much information about them as possible to create a richer customer experience that attracts, delights, and retains your customers. If you need more information about creating a buyer persona, check out this guide with 5 vital steps to build a comprehensive buyer persona profile.
Once you have analyzed and understood the digital gap existing between your company and your customers, it’s time to start taking action to bridge it. The following 5 tips will help you fulfill the gap to get closer to your customers.
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Define your digital strategy and objectives
Once you have a clear picture of your buyer personas and the digital audit insights, you can use this information to define your new digital strategy and strategic business objectives. After determining your objectives, you can decide which channels and marketing tools are the best options to help you fulfill your goals.
Remember a complete digital strategy requires a comprehension of how your customers interact with your brand across multiple channels.
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Create a digital ecosystem
A digital ecosystem is an effective integration of your business strategy, digital channels, and technologies to meet the consumer. Activating the digital ecosystem will help your company succeed in the digital age. It also eliminates silos within a company and democratizes data to optimize your marketing strategy.
The agile approach of a digital ecosystem enables companies to determine new revenue streams, new products, and create personalized experiences for the consumer. Activating the digital ecosystem will bring your company up to speed with the consumer.
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Embrace digital transformation and automate processes
Businesses that have successfully achieved digital transformation have managed to bridge the digital gap through the implementation of AI & Big Data technologies that help in automating processes and drawing accurate insights that otherwise would be impossible to find.
Automating processes is crucial for bridging the digital gap and providing personalized experiences for customers. Personalization should be at the top of your list as it will help your company cut through all the noise and allow you to connect with the modern and demanding consumer.
For example, 71% of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal, and 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.
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Identify a hypothesis to test
A clearly defined hypothesis is fundamental for structuring ideas, increasing efficiency, and making sure that results are replicable and scalable. New technologies allow you to collect and analyze data at a very rapid pace, so the hypothesis can be formulated, tested, and confirmed or disproved.
Without testing, it will be very hard to learn fast and reduce output uncertainty. In the end, testing is a scientific and data-driven way to expand your digital presence, attract new customers, and boost the ROI of your marketing spend.
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Define actionable KPIs and measure them
The first thing to bear in mind when defining KPIs is what essential activities will contribute to success, helping your company achieving its goals. KPIs should be based on these crucial factors.
By identifying what factors will bring success to your business, you can then highlight the metrics that will help you achieve your objectives. By doing so you will make sure to be measuring what matters to your business.
Conclusion
The digital gap is an issue that most multinationals and corporations are facing and it’s something that needs to be addressed at the earliest opportunity. Managing the digital gap is not only about being competitive but also about economic survival.
We are entering the era of 5G, which means there will be faster internet speeds and increased information that will keep empowering consumers, and bridging the digital gap is the only way of moving at this speed and getting closer to consumers.