Why your Digital Strategy Never Works Out the Way you Plan
Are you starting a small business, or have you been in one for close to five years? If your answer is yes, then pay attention to why digital strategy matters in your business. In this age of online business, the valiant world is today embracing new technology, and we are slowly becoming small business digital marketers. It doesn’t matter if you are a small business owner, a beginner, or have been in the business for a few years; your digital strategy could fail. The big question that we aim to answer in this article today is why digital strategies fail. If you are reading this article now, you are probably an online entrepreneur whose digital strategies have failed in the past and need answers, lessons from these failures, and tips to avoid digital strategy failure.
Digital strategy refers to using digital technologies to enhance your business performance by creating new differentiating business skills. It is a faultless ability to connect to people, services, goods, and objects worldwide and a risky endeavor for any small or established business.
Why digital strategies never work out the way you plan.
It is no secret that digital strategies fail in most businesses. Research shows that about 70% of digital transformations fail, as Forbes records the figure as 84%. Your business's digital strategy is likely to fail or already failed because your strategy fails to reflect on the ever-changing economic basics, industry dynamic forces, and competition in the market. Entrepreneurs often underestimate the rising momentum of digitization, consumer behavior changes, and the technology driving these changes, not realizing that much disruption will come to your business' ways due to digitization.
Your digital strategy never works out the way you plan because you underestimate the rising momentum of digitization and its scale of disrupting your business. Your businesses are not open to change.
Your digital strategy fails because business leaders assume that their IT department can play this role. Digitization is in progress, and in the coming days, almost everyone across the world will be connected to digital devices. If your small business marketing team isn’t for fast movers, then your digital strategy will fail. This is because digital strategy gives reward to fast movers and followers.
Even though you know how critical it is to embrace technology and develop digital processes and solutions, most small business marketing efforts end up hitting roadblocks.
Another reason why digital strategy fails is overlooking the future competitors. While in business, you need to have a wider lens for your possible competitors who might turn out to be your partners or friend/enemy. Whenever you fail to grasp this important aspect, you will likely miss out on opportunities and underplay threats.
Ford Company and Proctor and Gamble
Examples of companies that failed in digital strategy are Ford and P&G. Ford company or businesses failed in digital strategy because it created a new digital service that alienated itself from the rest of the business. Ford created or implemented a digital unit that did not integrate with the rest of the company and other digital solutions.
In the company’s attempt to embrace digital strategy, Ford introduced a new segment called Ford Smart Mobility to build new cars with greater mobility. The problem came up because this new segment wasn’t joint with the rest of the business but rather viewed as a separate entity alienated from other Ford business units. The company concentrated on the new segment but ignored other business areas. The consequences were a huge drop in the stock prices, and the CEO had to step down.
On the other hand, Proctor and Gamble had set out to become the most digital company on earth; unfortunately, as the company decided to introduce a new digital strategy, it had broad initiatives that lacked an objective. Economic challenges then coupled with the company leading to the CEO's resignation.
Lessons
As an entrepreneur or looking to start a small business, some lessons you can learn from these failed strategies are:
Ensure that you integrate digital strategies with the rest of your business. Any preference or alienation of specific segments in your small business will cause you a failure. To be successful in your small business, digital transformation should be an integral part of the entire business or company.
Secondly, technology is an enabler, but not a business solution, and that it is customers or the people who mostly determine your business success. Do not focus on enhancing the product more, forgetting about the people who make your small business successful. Your online presence today as an entrepreneur helps you get customers who will turn out to be loyal. Ensure that you focus on your customers more, determine their needs, what they really want before changing your product.
Another lesson is that you need to look at your competitors before thinking of a digital transformation. Always focus on smaller digital efforts that do not necessarily target your existing products. Look at what is going on in the industry and the economy, and don't assume you are already ahead of your competitors. Do not implement a digital strategy for the sake of it. It will fail!
Tips to avoid digital strategy failure
Today, digital technology has integrated with businesses to become something more than hardware or software.
Virtual assistant services are one tip to help you avoid digital strategy failure. As an entrepreneur, you should embrace virtual assistant services to help you market your goods and services online. By hiring these services, you reduce your overhead costs. Other benefits you get from hiring virtual assistant services include a quick scale for your business operations, increased efficiency, and around-the-clock customer service to your clients, and you get to free up more time for strategic thinking.
As a small business owner, you should actively be engaged in small business marketing to remain competitive and continually seek to improve and innovate. Ensure that you integrate small business marketing in your business because, through effective digital marketing, your small business will learn customers' online habits, hence opening up an opportunity to target better and ideal customers. If you want to engage consumers today, you have to be present online.
As a small business owner, your presence online helps you identify the target market and consumer habits. You also learn how to personalize and create your target clientele marketing campaign for a specific demographic who will turn out to be your loyal customers. Employ a marketing specialist today in your business, no matter how small, and gain an advantage over your competitors. You can hire a marketing specialist to carry out the digital marketing role on your behalf. Just like illnesses need doctors, marketing your business needs a marketing specialist. The marketing specialist gives you an answer to why digital strategies fail.
Even though the above-mentioned lessons and tips may not fully apply to your businesses’ digital strategies and transformations, they provide you with a guideline and the true picture of what should happen to avoid digital strategy failure and the most common mistakes that startups small business owners make.