“Digital Transformation or Digital Marketing” which is better for my business?

Does this question keep wandering in your mind when you think about enhancing your business?

I hope we can help you out with it.

Digital transformation is a process and digital marketing is a technique that can be used while you are working to enhance your business. Digital transformation is something that you work to improve your business process, its workflow through hassle-free and automation processes. Digital marketing is the implementation of various advanced marketing techniques for promoting your business’s online presence organically.

Want to know more about this? Keep reading.

In this article, we have covered all the essential techniques and real-time examples to understand the difference between digital marketing and transformation.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation is the complete redesigning of your business. This is the process of modifying or creating new business culture using the latest technologies. The implementation of digital transformation will result in fundamental changes to how the business processes, culture and delivers value to the customers.

The transformation begins when we have moved from paper to excel or any application to maintain your business and is further implemented in every area of your business – sales, customer service, marketing, and more. Digital transformation is all about how you think and engage with your customers.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the process of promoting your business/products via different digital channels. Businesses can leverage digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, content creation and more, to reach their potential customers, increase brand awareness, and improve online presence effectively. The scope of digital marketing is motivating and has a generous amount of opportunities in the future.

Techniques involved in both digital transformation and marketing

Adapting the latest techniques to your business is something essential to keep yourself in line with the trend. These technologies would help in improving your connectivity with the world and be more effective in the acquisition and retention of customers.

Digital transformation techniques

Artificial Intelligence — AI is the stimulation of human intelligence by machines. The implementation of AI in a business will generate better productivity and make use of data efficiently collected by the company. This technique can help in analyzing the customers’ behavior, gather insights to identify the trends in real-time and improve customer satisfaction by automated customer service.

Augmented and Virtual Reality — There is a misconception that AR and VR are only for gamers but, it is multifaceted and is utilized in various industries by understanding and tailoring the business needs. VR can help healthcare professionals to practice complex procedures in a safe and realistic environment. AR and VR can also be utilized in the military for training soldiers. The technology can also be effectively used in industries like retail, automobile, and more.

IoT — The Internet Of Things is the system of interrelated computing devices, machines, and objects that can transfer data without any interaction. This helps in gathering information like user preferences, which would help marketers to reach their audiences efficiently. IoT helps in understanding and informing businesses about what is happening.

Bots — Bots are improved intelligent systems on the internet that can interact with the user. This helps with the two-way communication between the customer and the brand. This is commonly used to provide searches, and product recommendations in the sales department.

Big Data — It helps in improving data collection as it is capable of handling a large amount of data collected by organizations. The data analytics technique also helps in analyzing the performance of your campaign, which can be useful for your business to decide on what improvements are required.

Block Chains — Blockchain is considered to be a key player in digital transformation. This technique allows enhancing business with the automated business processes, and launch of new digital products. The information on blockchains are linked with cryptography, decentralized, verifiable, and easily viewable for the public. It helps in improving the trust, security, and transparency of the data shared in the business network.

Digital marketing techniques

SEO — Search engine optimization is a digital marketing technique that is implemented to improve the website traffic and its online presence in search engines like Google. This technique also helps businesses in increasing their brand awareness.

Content Marketing — It is the marketing strategy that is used to attract and retain customers by creating and sharing relevant content/articles representing your brand. The content could be a blog, article, social media post, campaign, video content and a lot more. Through this strategy, you can help your customers to know more about your business and its objectives.

Email Marketing — It is a great technique to keep your customers engaged with your business. Whether you want your visitors to sign up or bring back customers to your store or acknowledge your customers or retain your customers — email marketing is a great strategy. This even helps in maintaining a good relationship with your customers.

Social Media Marketing — Social media is an outstanding way to make a strong online presence for your business. This is an efficient way to promote brand awareness globally. Posting your products/services on different social accounts, or promoting your brand with the help of social media influencers.

Referral Marketing — This is a smart way to bring in more customers to your business. Introducing a referral program can bring in more customers and conversions to your business.

Examples of Digital Transformation and Marketing

Successful companies that have adopted digital transformation

Porsche — The well-performing German automobile manufacturer has adapted transformation right R&D centers to software development projects that are focusing on collecting user information. The company has set up a separate entity “Porsche Consulting Innovation Lab” which completely drives innovation. The implementation of big data, machine learning, blockchain, and IoT technologies has helped in improving customer satisfaction resulting in more sales.

Starbucks — The implementation of the AI-based tool “Deep Brew” has helped Starbucks to analyze and collect information like population, income level, traffic, and more. This has helped them to choose the most appropriate location for their new restaurants.

Keller Williams — The “KW Command” is the replacement of a third-party CRM system that helps agents to run their business efficiently.

IKEA — This traditional company has implemented augmented reality, allowing users to choose furniture before making an actual purchase. The company also bought “TaskRabbit” to help customers to find people for assembling furniture. The implementation of advanced 3D and AI technology allows customers to upload pictures and that would be automatically displayed in 3D.

Walmart — The company has a great commitment to digital transformation. It deployed autonomous robots offering on-shelf inventory, self-driving floor scrubbers and many more. It also invested in new markets, eCommerce stores for increasing revenue.

Successful companies that have adopted digital marketing

Airbnb — Airbnb with its implementation of outstanding social media campaigns has brought in more interaction and followers to its travel forum. They were keen and aimed at bringing in more guests and hosts to their platform, hence investing more in creating relevant content for their business. This strategy helped in creating more demand for their business, resulting in Airbnb becoming the superstars of social media in the travel industry.

Slack — Slack is an effective collaboration tool that allows teammates to communicate and share files on one platform. It aimed at delivering an excellent customer experience by handling nearly 8000 desk tickets every month. Slack provides outstanding solutions with a positive and appealing customer experience. This has naturally increased the usage of the platform by various companies.

Mint — Though Mint was not much popular, they invested in high-quality content production. They concentrated on creating attractive infographics, informative blog posts, and more for grabbing visitors/customers attention. Dedicated and high-quality content production with standards can bring substantial revenue to your business.

Zappos — Zappos is an eCommerce platform store exclusively for shoes. The store has keenly focused on its customer needs and has implemented effective digital marketing strategies that keep its online presence in a more stabilized manner. The 365-day money guarantee, free shipping, and many more policies are quite attractive and urge more customers to sign up for their policies and purchase from them often. Zappos hasn’t invested much in marketing strategies, but its policies and social media campaigns have grabbed the attention. They planned and worked on content marketing with the right strategies by listening to their audience.

A table representing the difference between

Digital transformation consultation — Why & when it’s needed

The main objective of digital transformation consulting is to help businesses to achieve their goals and to adapt to the transformation to keep them in line with the trend. Cloud migration, artificial intelligence, big data, custom software development, automated business processes and more are the latest techniques involved in the transformation.

The consulting services can help you in opting for the best suitable technology for your business, producing better results. As we live in the digital era, we would have come across scenarios where you can switch on/off and even adjust the brightness of the lights using the “Bluetooth” connectivity. Hence, it is essential to take steps for making your business presence globally. This can be done through a digital transformation that could help your business to stand out from the crowd.

The below infographic illustrates why a digital transformation consultation is required,

• Helps in evaluating and analyzing the business
• Suggests the most suitable technology for enhancing the business process
• Creates a roadmap for the digital transformation
• Helps in developing the business strategies and assessing the impact

Digital marketing consultation – why & when it’s needed

The digital marketing consulting services will help businesses to unlock potential opportunities by analyzing and investigating the marketing strategies and their relevant data. As the digital marketing trends keep changing all the time it is quite difficult to decide on the strategies for your business. Here, the digital marketing consultation can sort it out by understanding business objectives, marketing technology, and data to establish an effective marketing strategy for your business. It is an efficient way to approach a digital marketing consultation as they can guide you with the implementation of the most suitable strategies for your business for keeping its growth inclined and stabilized.

The below information illustrates why a digital marketing consultation is required,

• Helps in developing an efficient digital marketing strategy tailoring your business needs
• Increase in sales and conversions
• Standing up among your competitors
• Suggest innovative ideas
• Helps you in deciding on suitable strategies as the marketing trends keep changing

Myths of fast adoption

Digital transformation will drain your budget

This statement is a misconception and that is the reason many businesses hesitate for a transformation. The budget creates a great impact and is the most important factor when it comes to the transformation or enhancement of a business.

It is important to understand that money will be spent only on what you have implemented in your business. With proper guidance from a digital transformation consultation, you will be able to decide on the strategies and the technologies that need to be configured for the enhancement of your business.

Hence, the digital transformation seems to be sounding big with a big spend but, with the right implementation, you can achieve your goals at an affordable cost.

Will I lose my employees due to digital transformation?

Some businesses tend to think that the implementation of digital transformation would reduce manpower. Some even think that the existing employees would find it difficult to get in phase with the technology. But, the reality is that businesses can get better when digital technologies are implemented along with the skills of the existing manpower. Automating the business process will help employees to concentrate on planning and brainstorming that are required for the strategic work.

Moving too fast in your digital transformation journey is risky

This statement has misled many businesses into adopting the changes. Businesses tend to think that revamping their business with digital transformation is quite risky. But, the reality is, digital transformation is in trend and has produced outstanding results for many businesses.

Well-performing businesses have shown the importance of digital transformation and are also influencing many businesses to have a makeover. It is better to adapt to the trending transformations at the earliest instead of delaying it further.

Digital transformation means updating the website and creating an app

Many think, just having an optimized website and application is all about digital transformation. Digital transformation is much deeper than that, it is equipped with strategies and approaches that could help you in producing potential results for your business.

So, before you start your transformation, analyze all the latest technologies involved in digital transformation and choose the most suitable one for your business. If required, you can even approach digital transformation consulting for better understanding and the implementation of innovative strategies to your business.

Digital marketing can result in overnight success

This is the common expectation and belief among many businesses. Actually, like any other technique and tool, digital marketing takes its own time to show the results. Patience is important in digital marketing whether you want your content to get indexed in google or you need to make a website’s presence on Google’s 1st page, a well-planned digital marketing strategy needs to be implemented.

The best things take their own time, the same as the digital marketing strategies. So, it is better to come out thinking that you can experience overnight success soon after the implementation of digital marketing strategies to your business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a dead concept

This myth sounds weird as it states that “SEO is dead”.

Do you think it is possible to get your presence online without optimizing it with SEO? Only when your website is SEO optimized, you can expect its online presence globally. For making your business grow efficiently, SEO is an essential factor in helping you out to make your online presence globally.

Digital Marketing is only for big businesses

There is common thinking that digital marketing is meant only for small businesses. This is a completely false statement. The size of your business does not impact digital marketing strategies. So, businesses of any size can implement digital marketing strategies to enhance their performance.

Email Marketing is not effective anymore

This is quite a common myth and is widely spread that email marketing is out of trend due to the establishment of new technologies and strategies. But, the reality is, email marketing is capable of bringing a lot of conversions and more when they are tweaked personally. Yes, most of the users feel appealing about receiving personalized emails to their inbox, regular updates on your business, special personalized offer emails, and more. Email is a standard mode of communication between a business and its customers and well, they are more effective with a personal touch.

How does technology help small businesses?

Technology for small businesses can help in producing a better user experience for your customers. Small businesses can leverage the technologies like cloud, AI, machine learning, SEO, content marketing, email marketing and more to automate the complete process of your business and to deliver the best services to your customers.

When technology is implemented effectively and efficiently, it generates aggressive results for small businesses. If you are yet to start a business, it’s better to implement suitable technologies before the establishment of your business. This may help you in avoiding the enhancement cost. When it comes to cost, high range and affordable technologies are available, depending upon your business needs you can choose and implement them into your business.

ColorWhistle with digital technology services

ColorWhistle – The Digital Marketing agency has an in-depth connection with the technology. With over a decade of experience, we offer 360-degree solutions that help to drive more traffic and conversions to your business. We have adroit developers, designers, and marketers who are skillful in developing, designing, and marketing your business using organic methods.

Whether you require a new website for your business or revamp an existing website for your business or even a logo design, the optimal option to consider is – ColorWhistle.
We also have skilled marketers with advanced marketing skills who can efficiently improve your online presence and bring more revenue and conversions to your business.

You can contact ColorWhistle by sending us a message or call us at +1 (919) 234-5140, we’ll get back to you at the earliest. We provide services tailored to your requirements at a favorable cost.