Digital transformation, though frequently discussed these days, remains somewhat vague and indistinct. While optimizing digital systems has some obvious applications for improvement purposes, does digital transformation really hold any meaning or bearing for marketers in our ever-changing world?
The digital transformation took root when businesses replaced manual filing systems and processes with computers; as technology changes quickly, every business must undergo increasingly intricate transformations in order to remain up-to-date and competitive.
Where should marketing fit into this discussion of digital transformation, or should “Digital Marketing Transformation” stand as its own catchy phrase?
This article introduces Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT for short), including its definition, impact on marketing practices, its benefits, challenges, and best practices.
Defining digital marketing transformation
Digital transformation refers to the practice of moving away from complacency towards digital excellence by optimizing and employing all available digital channels to gain deeper customer insight and foster long-term loyalty.
Businesses looking for growth should develop a digital transformation strategy that quickly responds and adapts to customer demands in order to effectively meet them. Businesses will gain further insights by optimizing and improving digital channels, which may also support growth strategies.
Before the digital transformation, traditional marketing techniques were typically utilized. Traditional marketing approaches make it hard to attribute sales directly back to marketing; therefore, digital transformation, an integral component of the digital marketing mix, becomes essential here.
The impact of digital transformation on marketing
Technology advances rapidly, and many are reaping its many benefits. Traditional marketing tactics have given way to programmatic advertising strategies focused on cultivating personal connections between brand and consumer.
Digital marketers adopted technology that allowed them to track customers at every point in the customer journey and play an integral role in the digital marketing mix. Digital transformation has greatly transformed marketing in multiple ways:
Digital Funnel
Every digital marketer uses funnels as a metaphorical device to demonstrate potential client journeys from initial awareness through several stages and, finally, purchase decisions.
Before digital technology made marketing funnels more dynamic and dynamically changing, their structure was fairly simple and secure:
- Awareness – Consumers realize they have found what they were searching for when they find your company or product.
- Interest – Clients conduct more research to assess if your offering fulfills their requirements.
- Consideration – They actively show interest.
- Intent – People start to make a decision that favors a company
- Decision – After making a purchase, a consumer becomes a client.
In the days before digital marketing, companies could create promotional materials and hope for success.
Digital marketing transformation has given businesses more control over the entire process, giving them two new valuable marketing digital tools: analytics and multi-stage interactivity.
Personalization
The digital marketing transformation is changing the marketing landscape in a big way. It allows you to personalize your content marketing for each customer.
Combining metrics with interactivity allows the company to monitor customer behavior and actions at the individual level. The statistics can then be used to create customized marketing text messages.
Keeping track of consumer purchases and offering related products or ‘refills’ for consumables is just the beginning. Metrics from social media sites like Facebook allow any business to study consumer preferences in advance of a purchase and tailor emails and other communications to each person.
Thanks to social media analytics, marketers no longer have to speculate about what topics might pique customers’ attention.
Data & Analysis
Before the digital marketing revolution, there was a major blind spot in marketing: the absence of actionable, high-quality data to help marketing professionals make better decisions.
Analytics has become a powerful tool that will help in future digital marketing. Marketing teams can find out how many viewers a particular video received on YouTube or other social media sites. It’s also easy to track the effectiveness of a video if viewers are able to click on the button that takes them to the site.
Marketing digital transformation has given professionals much better user metrics and helped build a customer database, which allows them to optimize and tweak marketing strategies and generate leads. It is possible to become more responsive and agile by knowing what works and what doesn’t. Data-driven marketing techniques have quickly become an indispensable element of today’s digital marketing mix, providing professionals with access to cutting-edge insights that enable effective strategy formulation and contribute to significant cost savings.
Automation
When it comes to buying decisions, timing can play a major role. The consumer might be doubting about making a decision and even go so far as taking the first steps towards a possible purchase. However, they may stop at the stage of the shopping basket before actually committing.
The combination of marketing automation and metrics can track consumer behavior and address it without the huge need for a person to watch and monitor it and then react in time. Digital marketing tools can detect specific actions or stats and use this knowledge to send personalized emails directly to customers or act quickly on time-sensitive matters. Also, chatbots have become an increasingly common source of customer support as well as improving response to marketing campaigns.
Interactivity
Interactivity has been transformed in a way that was never before possible by the digital revolution. Digital media allows people to choose when and with whom they want to share their content.
Social media, advertising, and other new technologies can be used to exchange information. Consumers can watch live advertising or live streams on Facebook while watching an influencer talk about a particular product. Viewers can now interact with social influencers in their everyday lives by commenting, making suggestions, or even receiving responses from them during a live stream. Digital marketing transformation has enabled a new level of interaction and customer engagement. This is an innovation that wasn’t even possible before.
Essential components of digital marketing transformation
We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. It’s important to understand your organization’s marketing maturity level before making any major changes. You will need to be brutally honest and use metrics and hard data in your assessment.
The analysis of your existing situation involves the identification of the current status of each of the key elements of any project involving technology-driven digital marketing, constituting the digital marketing mix: process, people, data, technology, and culture.
Let’s talk about these elements one by one.
- Process. Take a look at your entire marketing process. How many tasks are done manually, and how many are automated? Would more automation or a better one help? It’s inevitable that you will identify procedures that are too complex or time-consuming. Break down each marketing channel. Are there any differences between your in-store or online experience? Do you have departmental silos that are preventing your business from achieving its goals? Would integration of marketing technologies make your business more efficient?
- People. If you assess how the current jobs contribute to digital marketing efforts, it’s likely that you will identify bottlenecks or skills gaps. The digital transformation requires new technology and people who can use it. What is the best way to develop your people in order for them to be able to perform their roles and meet their own personal development goals? Do you have the right leadership within the relevant sectors to drive the transformation, enforce new behavior, and champion departmental projects?
- Data. Your digital marketing campaign and other decisions are based on information about your customers. Poor quality data can hinder any digital transformation in marketing. It could even be misleading. Find out where the data for your organization is stored and who owns it. Also, check to see if it’s up-to-date. Understanding and optimizing data flow between systems are integral parts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to provide customers with a superior experience. You can create a successful marketing strategy and fill in the gaps by analyzing the stats that you have.
- Technology. Examine the technology you already have and how it can help you. What is the integration of your existing systems, and will new technology assist in your digital marketing transformation efforts?
- Culture. Digital transformation in marketing must be aligned with the corporate culture, wider organization strategies, and overall business model and goals. People are reluctant to change the status quo. This makes cultural transformation the most difficult part of any marketing project. To overcome resistance to change, collaboration across your business is essential. You can find potential resistance points by analyzing the cultures of different departments and then plan how to remove or work around these obstacles. Marketing transformation projects must be supported by all departments and the whole company to succeed. Big brands all share a common desire to be customer-centric, driven by the CEO.
Overcoming challenges in digital marketing transformation
Big Data Management
When we talk about “big data,” it refers to information in quantities that are so vast they can be difficult to handle with traditional databases and tools. Big data management is essential for the digital marketing revolution.
Large corporations tend to generate massive volumes of information that are difficult to interpret, while many firms possess disjointed systems that only permit basic consumer or operational analysis of information.
Big data management is an integral element of digital marketing strategies, particularly Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Organized data creates an efficient system. Proper management and processing of large volumes of information is integral to any company’s success, and centralizing all staff information simplifies handling and processing for everyone involved in managing or processing information.
Finding the Best Possible Team
Digital marketing expertise is necessary when leading and overseeing marketing transformation efforts involving artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented realities, or other cutting-edge digital technologies; traditional marketing graduates lack the experience needed for the effective execution of such efforts.
Staff expertise plays an essential part in meeting changing demands and adopting digital transformation in marketing. Digital transformation necessitates having access to marketing leaders with appropriate knowledge and capabilities.
Analyzing Customer Online Habits
Customer-centricity is at the core of successful digital transformation efforts. Enhancing customers’ experiences requires tailoring experiences according to individual customer requirements while mapping out an entire journey for these digital customers. This challenge lies within its very existence!
CMOs must first analyze the actual needs of their clientele prior to taking any steps toward digital transformation. After understanding those actual needs, CMOs can then ascertain if digital transformation will meet those requirements and enhance customer experiences. However, 71% of marketers state their main challenge is understanding customer behaviors and their effects.
Solving the Digital Marketer’s Dilemma: “Transformation Is Important, Yet Not Urgent”
Senior executives frequently discuss the necessity of digital transformation. Most often, they believe this process should not be implemented immediately if revenues are sufficient and management is content with operations.
Other companies – likely competitors of theirs – have begun adopting digital innovations, giving them a distinct competitive advantage over those content with what they currently do.
Companies should share and create an enterprise digital marketing vision to protect market share and stay ahead of competitors.
Digital transformation of marketing should be treated as an imperative. Adopting it can allow you to gain traction and outpace competitors; customer experience must drive improvements rather than digital
Shifting to Mobile
Mobile technologies have had an enormous impact on customer journeys and experiences. It is because of this rapid growth that the digital customer’s needs are increasing.
Software, which was previously only available on desktop computers, is expected to now be accessible via mobile devices. Many companies find it challenging to meet the mobile demands of digital clients.
Google has announced its shift to mobile-first indexing. The search results will then be based primarily on the mobile version of a website, giving preference to those sites that are mobile-friendly. It will seriously impact the way business is done.
Best practices for implementing digital marketing transformation
Find a platform to bring your goals to life
Once your business goals have been established, the next important step should be identifying digital platforms that both align with these and expand your capabilities further. Make sure the platform you choose supports features and functions essential for meeting your goals successfully.
FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) is a collaboration platform designed for client-oriented businesses. It stands as a solution in this quest for an ideal platform. Carefully tailored for client-based businesses, FuseBase provides comprehensive collaboration services tailored to impressing clients while simultaneously streamlining teamwork. Imagine having all your digital marketing, communication, and other tools working together within one hub to streamline campaigns while making changes quickly to satisfy clients. You could impress them not just with marketing techniques but with organized workflow, too – FuseBase makes this possible for clients and staff!
Take a more personalized approach
Since traditional marketing strategies like newspaper and billboard advertising were popular decades ago, customers’ attitudes and purchasing patterns have undergone a dramatic transformation. Marketers recognize this shift and emphasize more tailored approaches designed to build long-term consumer relationships through data-driven approaches like Client Portal that focus on tailoring experiences instead of product or brand promotion.
Client Portals offer organizations and professionals alike effective means of seamlessly engaging their audience in an authentic manner.
Client Portals enable companies to quickly build visually striking hubs for consumers to easily access project details in an engaging, customizable format – not only improving consumer experiences but also reinforcing brand identities through each interaction with them. FuseBase ensures each interaction meets individual customer requirements specifically – forging lasting bonds between the brand and its customers.
Client portals make collaboration easy by replacing platforms like Google Drive and Google Docs and seamlessly incorporating external multiple tools like Calendly and Figma directly into consumers’ individualized spaces – streamlining collaboration while giving clients familiar tools for engaging with your brand.
Transform raw data into a reliable source of information
The collection of all first-party customer data can be a huge undertaking. Most of the data will be in a raw format that cannot easily be incorporated into AI customer journeys and analytics tools. To create a ready-to use ‘fuel,’ you must first deduplicate and standardize your formatting.
FuseBase makes managing data much simpler by organizing it for use in future marketing endeavors! FuseBase’s knowledge base feature turns that organized information into actionable marketing knowledge ready for implementation!
The knowledge base feature goes far beyond simply creating searchable wikis and documentation; it serves as your solution to ensure data consistency. Here’s how:
- Structured Workspaces. Create individual workspaces for specific projects or departments to ensure all pieces of information have a place they belong.
- Granular Permissions. Give only authorized contributors access to your knowledge base while still having control over who can view or customize content within it. This ensures only relevant individuals participate in data cleanup processes.
- Efficient Organization. Utilize tags, folders, and an effective search function to organize data quickly and enable team members to contribute towards initiatives of “clean data.”
- Simplified Workflow. Knowledge base’s no-code setup makes implementation, management, and customization simple – acting as the cornerstone of internal processes while keeping all information safe and organized.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have quickly become integral parts of digital marketing strategies, playing an increasingly significant role in campaigns and shaping digital strategies. AI tools have quickly revolutionized digital marketing’s landscape in ways unimagined before; Artificial Intelligence has quickly emerged as an industry game-changer, and FuseBase leads this charge through cutting-edge AI integration.
FuseBase AI goes far beyond automation: it acts as your virtual assistant, simplifying decision-making processes while revolutionizing content marketing and production with effortless creativity and flair.
AI assistant helps you improve your email marketing and provides content creation solutions efficiently and affordably to make your brand’s messaging stand out against digital noise. More than simply automated creation, this virtual assistant also offers insightful analysis for each piece of content FuseBase creates for you.
FuseBase AI aids better decision-making by offering insights that may otherwise go overlooked by humans. While crafting new ideas, proposals, and briefs takes up too much of your team’s time, FuseBase AI makes this journey efficient by swiftly producing comprehensive proposals on your team’s behalf, giving your staff time for other aspects of marketing campaigns instead.
Final Thoughts
Organizations often struggle to respond swiftly enough to the quickly evolving digital age, missing opportunities that arise from insufficient flexibility. Customers do not care which brands are popular – they will select those offering maximum value and ROI regardless of reputation. New as well as established businesses must continue adapting in response to consumer preferences in order to remain relevant within our globalized environment.
Digital marketing transformation projects can have far-reaching ramifications on any enterprise; marketing departments play an especially vital role during such initiatives, representing an unparalleled opportunity for transformational, positive change! Companies who take up this challenge will enjoy incredible outcomes as a result.
