You already play in the major league of digitalization. Our digital maturity assessment defined your company as an "inbound" company, which means you reached the impressive 3rd level, just before 'digital-first,' the highest echelon in our ranking.
In this article, we will review what are the gaps to close to become the digital champion.
The primary trait of a digital-first marketing company lies in recognizing the significance of connecting with buyers online through a multi-channel strategy and aligning all interaction channels. To embrace a digital-first approach, certain key characteristics should be ensured:
- You offer full freedom to your customers to interact with your company the way they want: through human (analog), through digital or hybrid interactions. They know you will treat them the same way whatever the channel they use. They know they can interact with you in a full self-serve mode if this is what they want.
- Your sales forces are fully digitally-enabled. Internally, their life is made much easier as tedious administrative tasks of data entry and reporting have been automated, with the help of AI. Externally, your sales reps can rely on AI assistants to support sales interactions regarding product selection, tech support, pricing or product availability.
- Your sales process is hybrid. You know when it makes more sense to perform some steps digitally or when an “analog” interaction is more adequate. These choices are data-driven.
- You are truly omni-channel with full use of search engines, selection platforms, marketplaces, AI assistants. Through your product, content or staff, you are digitally present on every channel that matters for your businesses, be they your own, earned or paid.
- Sales and marketing departments are merged into a single Revenue Team. Purely marketing or purely sales activities are hard to distinguish.
- New positions have flourished in your revenue team: channel managers, Inside sales, CRM owners, AI-assistants owners, Search Engine experts, Data Analysts, AI-pricing experts…
- Your sales channels are so versatile and effective that you have the capabilities to digitally serve the long tail of small customers too if you wish to do so.
- Thanks to machine learning, you are able to score and predict the intent of the people who interact digitally with you, both of your customers but also the unknown, new users.
- Thanks to the use of AI, you adjust your pricing dynamically, depending on the channel, the moment in time and the customer’s organization.
- Your technical, market and product knowledge has been formalized into systems, processed and made accessible internally to all the people who need it. Externally you offer digital tools that help your customers: product selection, new product development support, regulatory or sustainability support, problem solving…
- A few big and highly structuring platforms constitute your entire information system. Your ERP, CRM, PIM, and BI are fully connected and inter-operable.
- Your data is extracted from all your platforms and hosted into data lakes that enable you to cross different datasets and to generate a whole new set of insights. Your AI tools detect trends and insights from this huge amount of data.
- Your data is clean and structured thanks to a sophisticated data governance that ensures data integrity for each of its usages.
- Your systems are connected with your business partners’ systems through the value chain: your customers, your distributors/principals, your suppliers. You feed them with data or provide insights.
The outlined characteristics - from embracing a multi-channel approach to leveraging AI for streamlined operations - serve as a roadmap for companies aiming to thrive in the digital era. As your dedicated partner in this transformative journey, we stand ready to guide you through implementing these strategies seamlessly.
By aligning your organization with the digital-first ethos, you not only enhance customer experiences but also unlock unprecedented efficiencies across sales, marketing, and beyond. Reach out to us. The future of your digital success story awaits, and we're here to write it with you.
