If your business doesn’t adapt to the changes within its own industry, it’s destined to fail.
This is something we continue to see time and time again with offline businesses, that never fully make the move to online. For both B2B and B2C businesses, it’s important to make sure you aren’t just changing with industry trends and technology, but also making sure these advancements are working for you as well.
One clear observation that businesses of all types should be focusing their efforts on, is the automation of everyday tasks.
When this is done correctly, it’s almost like a ‘nirvana’ feeling for your business. However, there is actually a term for when digital tools are being used as intended and to their fullest extent – which is called ‘digital adoption‘.
With more businesses relying on automation and marketing tools to run their day to day operations, isn’t it time you did the same?
Before we get started…
If you want to reach digital nirvana with your business, you need to first know what it is and how to get there. In short, it’s the ability to look at your business and know that everything is running at max optimization and potential. This can be through marketing, lead generation, email marketing, and/or a conversion basis.
A perfect example of this would be if we were to look at our mobile devices. As bloggers, entrepreneurs and fans of technology, we pretty much use our mobile devices for everything. However, if you were to hand that same mobile device to your grandparents, they would likely just use it to make phone calls – and also probably be quite confused in the process.
From the grandparents perspective, this is the complete option of digital adoption. As a business owner or brand, you want to be using all of your technology and automation for everything it’s been created for.
While this is a very simplistic and minor example, the difference between having complete digital adoption for an enterprise level business could be the difference between several hundreds of millions of dollars.
Examples of how brands are utilizing digital adoption today
Every business wants to have the highest profit margins, productivity levels, and lowest costs, but it takes a lot of work to get there. Even if you are using the best automation and time-saving tools out there, they might not be getting used to their fullest potential or seamlessly across all platforms.
As reported by Business.com, every business has the potential to improve in all of these areas, as long as they have the following focus points in place.
- Digital adoption training is flexible and personalized.
- Digital adoption is a clear competitive advantage.
- Digital adoption supports a wider audience base.
- Digital adoption supports accelerated growth.
With all of these now in mind, we can take a look at some of the many businesses who are winning on a daily basis, thanks to the time, money, and focus they have put into the digital adoption efforts.
Amazon is always evolving
Amazon has completely changed the way shopping takes place in the world today. Not only have they knocked out thousands of retail businesses along the way, but they’ve also continued to master their business and learn from the failing competition as well.
What seems like a B2C business to the average person, is actually fully catering to the needs of B2B as well. This is both through their shopping portal at Amazon.com, and through their other wide range of services like Amazon AWS and more. Daily features and data management of Amazon include free shipping, Prime subscriptions, shared payment methods, discounts, tax payments on purchasing and much more.
With hundreds of millions of products being ordered, paid for, and shipped, Amazon must absolutely have digital adoption running through their business at all times. In fact, their business is now more automated and computer/robot driven than ever before.
Without digital adoption in place for a business the size of Amazon, their day-to-day operations and growth would simply not be attainable.
McDonald’s makes winning online/offline formula
When you look at a company like Amazon, it’s no surprise that they are using technology and automation to make a big difference. You might not think the same when seeing a localized retail-focused business like McDonald’s, but they most certainly do.
McDonald’s has been one of the most successful businesses in the world over the past century, but if they were to relax and only focus on their ‘offline’ business, they would likely fail like SEARS and Toys ‘R’ Us, who never fully took advantage of what the internet and personalized data had to offer.
A perfect example of this can be seen in consumer behavior. McDonald’s is well-known for its golden arches, drive-throughs, and getting your food pretty fast. Their menu is also small, which makes the decision process easy and fast. To speed this process up even faster, McDonald’s started to implement kiosks into their locations back in 2015.
This ultimately leads to an increase in orders, lowering employee costs and usage, and also provides the company with valuable customer behavior analytics as well.
As noted by Datum Strategy, all of this proved quite useful when McDonald’s ran a Super Bowl commercial in 2015, while also using social media to offer giveaways to their audience of customers. Being able to manage and measure the audience behavior, actions, and orders at stores while all of this was taking place was extremely important.
The effort drew over 1.2 million retweets and was just another proven example of digital adoption at it’s finest.
Under Armour fights for prime position
If you are going to jump into a competitive industry and fight for your place alongside the ranks of companies like Nike, Reebok, and Champion – you better be good at whatever it is you have to offer! Of course, it also doesn’t hurt to have Steph Curry as your brand ambassador.
It seems like just a few years ago, not many people were aware of Under Armour and what they had to offer. What’s another ‘fitness’ type of company to offer that hasn’t been done and recycled a million times over? “Connected Fitness” is the answer.
Jump forward to today, and Under Armour is now the world’s largest digital health and fitness company.
How did that happen? Digital adoption of course.
While other brands were selling shirts, shorts, and shoes, Under Armour was working on a platform that allowed them to track, analyze, and share personal health data with their customers right through their mobile devices.
This isn’t just about user stats and offering something new, it also helped Under Armour to discover new industry trends before the competition, and even before they knew what they were looking at! A perfect example of this is how the company is based in Baltimore, yet they were able to recognize a walking trend that started in Australia – all the way across the world.
Through the use of innovative technology and seamlessly integrating digital adoption into their business, Under Armour has been able to beat out the competition and launch localized marketing campaigns based on their customer stats and behaviors.
Look to the leaders of today, for the answers of tomorrow
It’s easy to look at some of the biggest brand names and businesses in the world today for innovation. After all, they seem to have an endless amount of money and resources to advance technology and get work done.
However, these same business trends can be adopted by bloggers, entrepreneurs, and brands of all sizes. You might not be working with customer data at the scale of Under Armour, or have the massive volume of orders that Amazon deals with on an hourly basis, but you are still likely working with both of these components.
Take a moment to pick from any of your favorite entrepreneurs or technology gurus and see how they have transformed the world we live in today. Jeff Bezos changed the way we shop with Amazon. Steve Jobs brought innovation to the world with Apple. And Elon Musk is changing global and outer-space travel and transportation for all of us.
The common theme among all of these entrepreneurs is that they’ve continually pushed the envelope and inspired others to do the same.
Don’t just look at these brands and leaders as mentors and organizations that have changed the world and got rich in the process. Instead, look to them as inspirational examples and for ideas on how you can implement similar methods into your own brand, business, and personal goals.
Guest author: Zac Johnson is a world-renowned blogger and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space and has helped his readers generate millions of dollars online. He shares his story and guidance at ZacJohnson.com