Digital channels are exponentially growing and touching the lives
of individuals today. Every organisation wishes to grab this opportunity and be
at the forefront.
With this expectation, many organisations invest in the best of
breed technologies and expect an exponential growth in digital revenue. But
seldom people realise, that marketing is an art which cannot reap benefits with
mere use of technology.
In the last few years, I had the pleasure of participating in
digital transformation journey of various well-established organisations. As a
project manager, my role is to partner with our customers to help them achieve
organisation's digital transformation goals.
Through the various implementations, I observed 3 key
issues/barriers in their digital transformation journey:
1. Customers have presence
on all digital channels but proportional contribution of digital on overall
revenue is not significant and impacts their ability to negotiate a good budget.
2.
Customers have a strong
dependency on partners to execute their digital strategy and in-house teams are
not equipped to meet all the specialised knowledge skills.
3. Customers have invested
in marketing technologies but often struggle to quantify the return on
investment.
Value realisation, percentage increase in digital revenue and
return on investment on technology implementations are some common questions
raised in senior management reviews.
As a member of the digital team in your organisation, have you
been subject to these questions?
Is your new website able to bring in more traffic? Are your social
posts impressive and helping achieve Marketing KPIs? And above all are these
initiatives converting to dollars?
If the answer to these questions is not a confident “Yes”, then
you and your team are not talking about the elephant in the room - “Gaps in
Digital Learning”.
Learning a new skill takes time and effort which is often
overlooked due to our busy schedules and constant work pressure. Your mangers
& senior leaders also play a very important role in enabling their in-house
team, as a team with business knowledge is more valuable than hiring
professional from the market.
A collaborative effort from team members and their managers to
up skill their team has been the key to success in many of my engagement’s.
There is no shortage of learning avenues in the market, but teams
should evaluate options based on your unique learning requirements. Course
content should provide you real world case studies which you can relate to your
business. It should provide hands on practical experience and feedback from
industry experts to compliment your learning.
I enrolled in Udacity digital marketing Nano degree as their
course meets all requirements for working professionals like us. Udacity
provides a unique learning experience and has a knowledgeable panel of industry
experts who become your mentors in your digital journey. Click here to know more about my mentor, Udacity.
To conclude, if you find yourself or your team on this difficult
road to digital success, it’s time for you to pick up the skate board of
digital learning and slide smooth on this “Digital curve”.
