Digital transformation is no longer an option but a necessity for companies to stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. The term digital transformation refers to the integration of digital technologies into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes to how the company operates and delivers value to its customers. However, implementing a digital transformation strategy is not without its challenges. In this pots, I will expose some of the main issues that companies need to face when implementing a digital transformation strategy.
Everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how is going to reshape the future. But this future may be closer than you expect and will have significant impact on many business and how we understand the customer experience.
Many years ago, having a website was a big deal. When I started in the digital business, you had to know how to code in HTML. The revolution came when software started to come out that allowed you to design websites using predefined modules. In the 2010s we started talking about responsible websites. But for a long time Flash design was everywhere. I remember those oversized images or banners that took up most of the home page of the website. And you had to scroll down for a while to access real content. Finally, HTML5 banished Flash and ushered in a new era, and new social media platforms pushed brands to stop worrying so much about their website, as they could approach their customers in a better and more direct way.
A few years ago I remember asking some of my senior colleagues if we knew the reasons why some markets suddenly started to growth exponentially. Their answer surprised me. They didn’t know. And after more than a decade working in direct sales I came up with my own theory.
One day I got a call from the boss’s boss. I was during summer, so a lot of people were out of the office and when you get a call saying “the boss wants to talk to you”, unannounced, you get worried. I remember that day because I thought it was going to be the end of that trip. And in a way, I was right.
In previous posts we have talked about how to create and implement a content strategy. We have gone over the basic of content planning and how to adapt it to the customer journeys. Now it’s time to talk about how to distribute your content.
After all the work that we have put into creating a great content, it will be a shame if you don’t promote your content through the right channels. And it’s now when your customer persona plays an important role. How do you think your customers and prospects will access your content?
We are now ready to start creating content. We have prepared our strategy, defined our objectives and we have our plan ready. Now we are faced with the question, what kind of content do we want to create?
It´s common sense that not all the content is interesting to all users. We have many different users, who experience our products or services in different ways and they are at different stages of the customer journey. A newcomer is looking for very different information than a regular user. And it will also be different when targeting a potential customer. Many experts recommend creating a buyer persona, but I would rather recommend starting with your customer journey first, as part of the strategy, and then creating different buyer personas to define the specific content to create.
We love to make plans, well, most of us love to make plans. We plan our vacations, what to do on the weekend and, of course, we analyze and plan before we launch into a new business venture. Why should content be any different?
The first thing you should do when thinking about your content strategy is define your goals. What do you want to achieve with all this? It can be something as simple as helping your customers use your products to generate more leads and sales. I always recommend defining SMART goals: they should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound.
When first meet my team in Mexico, working for the Thermomix brand, I soon realized we needed to work on our content. I don´t know if you know the Thermomix brand. It´s a cooking appliance that helps people prepare amazing recipes. So it was important for us that our customers and potential customers were inspired with new recipes and ideas for cooking at home. Our biggest challenge was that we were a small team. The company had started its business in Mexico for a few years and I was asked to come and help promote sales and set up the marketing team and strategy. At that time there were only three of us on the team, and we had to do the same work as other countries with larger teams (and of course more sales).
When you have realized that having the right content is important to promote your brand, your products and get new customers, it’s time to start planning and organize your work. Content creation and content management is not about creating content without a plan. You must think first, and then create your content.
The first thing you need to understand is that create new content is not free. It will either cost some of your time or, most of the time, also some or a lot of your money. That´s why it´s important to have a plan before jumping into the creation phase.
Few days ago, I was talking with a friend who needed help promoting his business. He had come up with an idea to generate more customers with a new service that he could easily implement in his company. “This sound like a good plan”, I told him. “But I don´t know how I can implement it, my customers don´t know they need it”, he said.
This may sound familiar. Many times we come up with ideas about new products and services, good ideas, that we don´t know how to share with our customers. They´re many things you can do to try to solve this, but we are going to talk today about one: content generation and content management.
After many years working in marketing and customer experience, I´ve always believed that the best way to support a sustainable business growth is to develop and implement the right customer experience. For many years, many different companies and industries have been trying to design the perfect customer experience and organizations jumped into the race of accumulating historical customer data. The problem many companies faced is that most of the time no one knew exactly what to do with that data.
A few years ago I shared this post in Spanish and I think it is still relevant today. That is why I want to share it again in its English version.
Since we were children we have been taught that arguing is not good and that it is better to get along. There is a saying that goes «a bad agreement is better than a long fight» and that is what we strive for when we argue with other people.
But it is something that is not right. Some time ago I wrote about the positive of having different opinions in a work team and generating debate around the strategies you want to develop. Teams that allow disagreement and discussion from the original or official idea are more likely to succeed than teams that simply follow a single-minded leader.
I have applied this point of view, I believe, since I was a child. I still remember one of my first jobs, when in a meeting with the top management of the company, the CFO stopped the meeting and said to me «Jaime, tell me what you are thinking because you won’t stop sit still and you are making me nervous». You can imagine that I almost had a heart attack. Suddenly the whole room turned to me wondering who this brat attending the meeting. There was a set of coincidences that led me to participate to provide support on a very specific topic that was to be discussed during the meeting, but my role was basically to stay quiet the whole time. So, all of a sudden, I became the center of attention of the entire board of directors and the top management of the company, who were looking at me anxiously to find out what was so important to stop the meeting.
A different view 