We are talking about #DigitalTransformation… but what does this mean? At the end of the day it’s about how we interact with our (potential) customer and how to deliver the right #CustomerExperience (online & offline).

This is a huge area. On the one site it’s about the communication, products, services. These days customer get more and more power through the data they share. In the past we just promoted our products & services from our point of view and what we thought the customer needs. Today the customer tells us what he needs. He does not care about the channel, he is always on and is switching between online and offline channels. He just want the right information at the right time and right place.

Digital Transformation is a transformation of communication or better interaction. It’s an #InteractionTransformation which is driven strongly digital, but by far more than digital.

So how to we develop a communication strategy?

1. Identifying  business goals
   1. Demonstrate innovation
   2. Raise brand awareness
   3. Raise lead generation
   4. Improve shareholder value
2. Analyze what is the current situation
   1. Market entrants
   2. Loosing market share
   3. Solving a crisis through communication
   4. …
3. Gain insight into your target audience
   1. What is their pain and how to solve this?
   2. What is their next step?
   3. Where to find them (online & offline)?
   4. How to get the right data to gain real insights?
   5. What type of information / service do they need?
   6. How to build a #CustomerExperience
4. Start a holistic communication approach without thinking in channels
   1. Bringing all departments (like marketing, client service, IT, PR, etc.) who interact directly or indirectly together and make sure they act as one
   2. Make sure if a customer interacts with in one channel this will be known in all other channels. To do so build a centralized customer / user profile
   3. Build up broad content and information which is flexible (fragmented) and possible to place in real- or near-time through all channels (the next channel someone comes up, doesn’t matter if it’s online or the call-center for example.

It is important to understand and predict the next step of a customer / user. We are now enabled to do so through the massive amount of data we get through digital. That’s why a #ModernCommunicationStrategy is holistic and driven digital.

To get this understanding we need tho think about first-, second- and third-party data as well as owned, earned and paid data. This is an own topic which I don’t want to talk about in this article. However, one of the best channel to get data is social.

Please read this article how to “Start a Successful Social Media Strategy“

But let’s get back, we need to build a…

• CRM Strategy
• Content Strategy
• Communication Strategy
• Life Strategy

This is what I have covered in detail in the article “CRM, Content and the Life…. the Customer“.

Finally said, let’s throw the channel thinking away, this is old-school marketer thinking and not #CustomerCentric. The possibilities though the digitalization are amazing today and still growing. They are growing quicker then we are able to implement them. That’s why it is so important to start step by step and build it up from bottom, always aligned to the big vision we build before. For example we do not need to start with artificial intelligence (AI) today, but we should be prepared to do so tomorrow. Our data and communication strategy & vision needs to be able to implement AI and all the other topics we do not know today.

A communication strategy in the past was more a corporate strategy, now it’s a customer strategy to build the #CustomerExperience through digital data.