Part I: Innovation
Global players and a rapidly changing digital landscape are shifting how companies must operate to be profitable and experience sustainable growth. Markets are saturated with competition. And the internet as well as social media have entirely altered how businesses engage and interact with their customers.
To achieve tangible results, organizations have to be brave by tackling challenges and transforming their traditional tactics. It’s smart to partner with digital experts and highly creative contractors to guide your team through the actions, techniques, and practices that will drive positive outcomes and measurable change.
Start by telling the team – “We’re breaking out of the status quo.”
Every strategy must have business alignment, engaged team members, and focused execution. Your aim is to position your company to innovate and pursue effective strategies.
Important first step is defining the following:
- primary success factors
- unique value proposition
- key performance indicators
- target markets
Business objectives are critical so that you have a ‘North Star’ before strategy deployment. For each initiative, be thoughtful and explicit in establishing the goals that you want the team to reach.
Sidebar – be ambitious with your objectives! Now is not the time to be conventional or cautious.
Parts of a strategy include:
- core elements and the principle means of project management
- well-defined project phases and clear timelines for deliverables
- teams with intrinsic motivation, agility, and self-organization
- commitment to iterative processes, experiments, and testing
- shared value in the goal and full transparency of the final outcome
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) may be comprised of the following:
- capture more of the market share [how to outperform the competition]
- increase organic traffic to the website and social channels [how to better attract the audience]
- enhance customer engagement [how to create resonating experiences]
- reduce bounce rate [how to demonstrate value and relevancy to compel interest]
- improve conversion rate [how to enhance the customer journey to trigger action]
- raise incremental sales [how to effectively position products to motivate a purchase]
- consistency with monthly revenue rate [how to decrease churn and maintain a steady flow of new visitors]
When creating strategies – aim for impact and efficiency. Be willing to forego strategies that cannot offer these requisites. You will waste significant time and resources if a strategy is executed that has little impact or efficiency.
Groundwork for Innovative Digital Strategies
Tip #1
Give paramount projects utmost attention across departments. This means infusing priority strategies into day-to-day operations to secure full integration and adoption.
Tip #2
Fine-tune strategies during execution for continual improvement of processes and clarity on production output.
Tip#3
Craft a data management plan, including organization of records, cleansing and structuring of data points, and standardizing the range of data sources. Remove barriers, such as data fragmentation, and enable unification of categories and conventions.
Tip #4
Curate content (a lot of it) in order to be a reliable – and searchable – resource for information and an authority within the market space.
Tip #5
Use data to better understand current conditions and to benchmark performance. Also analyze data to create buyer personas, segment broad markets to highly refined audience groups, and develop customized brand experiences.
Tip #6
Test novel concepts and divergent ideas to see what transforms sales velocity.
Tip #7
Set a company-wide commitment to make strategies customer-centric. Focus on a holistic customer experience, which means to:
- offer essential information and insights
- have consistency and quality in all areas of service
- provide distinction in how you serve
- respond to problems and needs without delay
- maximize and deliver value
- be on the forefront of what’s new
- be authentic in your appreciation and care
- continually ask for feedback and calculate satisfaction scores
Tip #8
Encourage an agile, autonomous work environment that has team members engaged, empowered, and capable of measuring their own success with a strategic project.
Tip #9
Aim for consistency during execution. Continually monitor progress, listen to ideas, address concerns, and promptly deal with any underlying conflicts.
Tip#10
Perform quality checks throughout the project. Be willing to quickly alter the plan and change course when there is evidence that another direction is prudent.
Strategy and Data
Unquestionably, a company must utilize business intelligence (BI) and analytics to drive critical strategies. You want to use data for insights into the three P’s: predictions, propensity of certain outcomes, and patterns.
With that said, being data-informed does not equate to being entirely data-led. Be careful to not have models and analytics alone set a strategy’s course of action. Translate the information from data to business terms and bring in the perspectives of subject matter experts (SMEs) to offer their experienced thinking.
Next Week
Part II: Problem-Solving will have more insights and ideas to help maximize the performance of your business in today’s digital landscape.
