Several of these recommendations aren’t siloed in sales or marketing but apply to overall business strategy. Company size doesn’t matter, but geography does: All business strategy should be oriented to the global digital community. And two major issues dogging digital business—privacy and security—will be considered more carefully.
1. Think: Mobility first!
A quick statistic: Almost half of Americans who own a smartphone say they couldn’t live without it, according to Pew Research.
People live their lives on mobile devices. Companies need to place mobility at the forefront of their strategic thinking and business development, particularly when it comes to interacting with customers.
2. Make personalization as personal as possible.
Personalization means delivering a unique, informed, productive, one-to-one experience to each of your customers. It requires sophisticated real-time data collection, integration, and delivery capabilities.
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I use Google Waze, a mobile traffic app. Waze collects logistics data from its millions of subscribers. It tracks your route and can tell you, in real time, the fastest, least-congested way to reach your destination based on traffic patterns and problems reported by subscribers, such as accidents and police activity. It’s a personalization feedback loop, whereby information that you provide contributes to the overall intelligence of the service, which at the same time delivers meaningful data back to you.
With Waze, I give up a certain amount of my privacy, but I gain 20 minutes in my travel. It’s a trade-off more and more consumers are likely to make.
3. Serve customers better via the cloud.
Cloud computing addresses the demands of modern digital business: agility, flexibility, and scalability. By using cloud services, companies can be more competitive, innovate faster, and bring customer-oriented products and services to market quicker than they would otherwise. And when the needs or interests of their customers change—and they will—the cloud enables companies to pivot sharply to address those shifts.
Conventional wisdom questioning the cloud’s security is eroding. Companies are starting to realize that cloud providers can put in place more comprehensive security measures than they themselves can manage or afford.
4. Integrate social media throughout the organization.
What used to be thought of as two separate business areas, and two sharply defined marketing strategies—B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer)—is blending into one marketing thrust: B2P (business to people).
That’s because the technologies that we use in our personal lives—Facebook, messaging, document sharing—can be used to interact directly with customers, partners, and suppliers.
I submit that B2P should be an overall business strategy, with two facets.
First, the components of social relationship management—listening, engagement, analytics—should be easy to use and available, so any part of the organization can tap into and manage corporate sentiment around the world.
Second, the use of social media technology should be integrated into all areas of the organization, both external (sales, customer support) and internal (HR, recruiting, communication), so that social media is elemental to your business workflow and how you connect with customers.
5. Exploit market influencers and user-generated content.
It’s always been the case that certain people drive markets. Put another way: Not all Twitter users are created equal. It’s also true that 90% of customers say that their buying decisions are influenced by online reviews.
That’s why market “influencers” are an effective way to communicate with customers. Such influencers can aid customers in their decision-making, but also help ameliorate problems.
A related strategy has to do with user-generated content (UGC). Unprofessional content is a staple of the internet (cat videos, anyone?), and such home-spun appeal attached to your brand is a potential viral blessing from heaven. Just make sure respect for privacy is part of the bargain.
6. Track the tsunami of images washing over social media.
Tapping the torrent of images posted to Snapchat, Pinterest, Facebook, and other social media sites for indicators of brand sentiment is as important as “listening” to social media conversations, likely more so. Brand associations in images provide important real-world feedback, and found i