Creating a digital experience for your brand was once a nice thing to have. Icing on the cake. A way for clients and customers to interact when they couldn’t get outdoors.
No longer.
The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside-down. The icing has become the cake. No business can overlook the digitization of their brands and ways their customers are now engage with them.
In essence, COVID-19’s crunch on businesses included an acceleration of what McKinsey calls “digital Darwinism.”
It’s not survival of the fittest. It’s survival of the “most digital”.
Even before COVID-19, increasing digitization was a battleground for brands. McKinsey describes “Digital Darwinism” as including:
We all felt the pain of the new changes that arose with the COVID-19 pandemic. But with the world becoming increasingly digital by necessity, expect Digital Darwinism to accelerate. Those with digital branding options can no longer treat these as “nice-to-have” features.
They’re must-haves.
Here is what your business can do if you’ve decided that you’ve waited long enough to go all-in on digital and mobile:
Optimize the Customer Experience for Mobile and Digital Features
There may be no better example of brands that need to migrate their customer experience to the digital environment than banks. According to one survey before COVID-19, 86% already believed that “digital will fundamentally change the economics and competitive landscape in corporate banking.”
There’s no time left for banks to emphasize the in-person experience. In short, you need to migrate to a simple and robust online banking app. Concentrate on the most popular customer interactions:
“Banks and credit unions that digitize can achieve a 20% increase in revenues and a 30% decline in expenses,” noted The Financial Brand. How much more pronounced will this effect be in the current economy?
Lead Generation: A Digital Mindset
Even before COVID, lead generation was tricky.
65% of businesses identified lead generation as their top marketing challenge. It outpaced other significant problems like not having enough money in the marketing budget and team training.
We don’t have to remind you how important lead generation is to keep a company growing—or even afloat. Consider how rapidly these lead generation channels are changing:
The solution? Moving to email-based digital lead generation.
According to HubSpot, “79% of B2B marketers credit email as the most effective distribution channel for demand gen efforts.” The ability to personalize messages (the next best thing to in-person networking) is the “#1 tactic” email marketers use, says HubSpot.
There’s no time to wait. Building an email networking framework for lead generation is a powerful way to improve marketing ROI at a time when every marketing dollar counts.
Communications: Keeping the Lights On
There are many tools available to help keep communication flowing in a digital world and now is the time to incorporating them into your client and employee experiences.
There are some additional tips available at MIT that you can use to run effective mobile meetings: 1) designate a meeting facilitator to herd the cats, 2) prioritize audio over video to prevent issues in communication, 3) utilize a speaker queue for larger meetings, and 4) don’t stress about which meeting technology to use, as most of them are perfectly acceptable.
How to Succeed in a Digitally-Accelerated World
These changes aren’t something that you can defer. The culture has already changed, and if your brand isn’t digital-capable, you’re already lagging. But it is possible to succeed in the accelerated environment we find ourselves in. Here’s how.
If you aren’t prepared to conduct business in a digital environment, it’s to play catch-up. Work with INK to transform your business when there’s no more time to wait on the sidelines. The future of your business depends on how well you adapt.