What will you do about digital?

It is the year 2030 and a class is studying digital in 2020. You already know this. That was the year the one where everything happened. A student asks, "What do you mean when you say digital?" The teacher stares up confused, not knowing how to explain digital in a world that is all digital.

How can you describe the opposite side of something that doesn't exist anymore? The teacher is looking around and trying to imagine how the student lived before digital.

They thought digital used to be something. Digital is now the status quo. It's a non-differentiating element in a world that doesn't remember the predigital age.

Although the conversation between our fictional characters takes place in 2030 it is still our reality.

It is no longer a strategy to be a "digital" company. It's not a strategy.

Today digital means pushing a 10-word notification to your users' phones to encourage them to open your app and read that latest blog post.

Digital means making your website machine-readable so that your information is as accessible from a car as it is from a mobile phone.

Digital is having Instagram as your main shop window with a minimal website because you sell directly through their platform as your customers spend most of their lives scrolling through their Insta feed.

Digital is taking advantage of a moment and implementing a rapid social media campaign to connect with users you would otherwise not be in contact with.

Digital is being able to touch invisible buttons in the air whilst controlling something on a screen.

Digital is gaming the algorithms to help drive your YouTube subscribers or utilizing its user interface to generate a completely novel social media campaign.

Digital is customer service with smiles, based on the past experiences of your customers with you.

Because everything can be digital.
Digital is dead. As internet-based services become more commonplace in our daily lives, 'digital' companies are becoming less visible. How can you make your company stand out from the crowd?WhoYou are what you do, not the services you provide to your customers.

Businesses that grow rapidly in the next years will already be aware of this. They will be able to pivot quickly and realize that users don't care about brands that can't follow them into new markets. The ones left behind will continue to look at their existing platforms as opportunities to grow their businesses and accelerate their business. What happens to your business if customers don't care how they use their services? It's easy to get blindsided by the changes in the world around you. But you have control over how your business responds to these new challenges and can make a leap into a new future.

What are you going to do about digital?