Are You Winning Digital Customers?

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For a book that’s extolling digital sales and marketing, Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance by Howard TIersky makes a bold impression as a hardcover book.  It arrived at my home in a hard box that looked exactly like the book that was inside. Then, of course, there was the book. Along with the book was a full-color printed bookmark and a note from the author.

I can’t promise the same delivery experience for you, but if book reviews only included first impressions, this would be a winner.

So let’s dig into the meat of the book and see if you think the inside is as good as the outside.  Because of the way I received this book, I thought it might be fun to do this review from the perspective of the questions that I asked myself as I explored the book.

Who is Howard Tiersky?

The first and obvious question I had was “Who sent this?”

When big enterprise companies like Verizon, NBC, Avis, A&E, Mattel, AAA, & Airbus, GM, Amex, and about two dozen more want to get into the business of digital transformation, they call Howard TIersky.

He’s led the digital transformation groups at several large consulting firms and ultimately started several of his own; FROM: The Digital Transformation Agency and Innovation Loft.

FROM is the digital transformation consulting practice and Innovation Loft is a workshop space that helps organizations bring their teams together.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation means designing or redesigning your business for existence in a digital landscape rather than an analog one.

For large enterprise brands (which is who this book is written for) digital transformation means that your “Legacy” brand can continue to provide the kind of experience that they’ve come to expect.

Remember that these legacy brands are like ginormous global container ships.  The slightest change creates a ripple effect you can’t imagine. If they are going to provide you the experience you’ve come to expect.

So, creating a digital marketing, sales, distribution and service channel that exactly mimics the experience you have in real life takes something.

While you and I are moving “dinghies” rather than container ships, there’s so much we can learn from Tierney about Digital Transformation.  And, even though he’s writing from the perspective of a large enterprise organization, the principles are exactly the same no matter how big or small your organization.

Tiersky gives a short history of digital transformation that you will appreciate as a walk down memory lane:

Stage 1: During the 90’s we started with AOL and putting brochures online

Stage 2: Ecommerce made it possible to complete transactions online

Stage 3: Being digitally driven; meaning that your customer experience is seamless.

What would you give up to have a mobile device?

While you and I (and our customers) may not use corporate phrases like “Digital Transformation”, we all know what that means. It’s no longer the “internet of things” it’s the internet is everything; invisible and enmeshed in every aspect of our lives. Don’t believe me? Here are some stats from “Winning Digital Customers”:

• 64% of Americans said they wouldn’t dine out for a year if they had to give up their smartphone.
• 50% said they’d skip a vacation rather than give up their smartphone.
• More than half said they’d work an extra day…
• About 30% said they’d skip sex for a year…

If there was any question that digital devices, information, and anything else related to internet technology, I think we see that we, as consumers are digitally transformed – but are the brands we grew up with?

Container Ships Slaloming Through the Digital World

84% of us say that our digital experiences with the brands we love and engage with simply don’t meet expectations.

This is the number that’s driving the premise of “Winning Digital Customers”. And, just like Vince Lombardi’s “This is a football” speech at the start of every season, Howard Tiersky has structured “Winning Digital Customers” with the basics:

1. Understand your ideal customers
2. Map our the customer journey
3. Build the future – building the journey
4. Optimize the journey
5. Leading the change – implementing throughout the organization

Here’s the great news if you’re an entrepreneur. The principles in this book will be infinitely easier for you to implement because you aren’t moving a container ship and training tens of thousands of employees!

There are even more resources online!

As you might expect, “Winning Digital Customers” has a significant online set of resources over at WinningDigitalCustomers.com.

What You’ll Love About “Winning Digital Customers” if You’re Not a Professional Marketer

As I said before, this book is written for C-Level executives from enterprise organizations who are decision-makers on digital transformation projects, but are not marketing experts. So, this book breaks down the process in a way that a lay-person organizational leader can understand.

This is good for small business owners because you’ll get a top level understanding that you can apply to your own business without the unnecessary complexity that doesn’t apply to a smaller business.

How YOU Will Benefit From “Winning Digital Customers”

Here’s the big question. How will “Winning Digital Customers” help you as a small business owner?

Powerful Research and Data: Tiersky shares some powerful consumer research data that you can benefit from.

Resources and support materials: You don’t have to hire Tiersky to get access to the same tools that he uses with his enterprise clients.

Case studies and stories: Even though your business is smaller than an enterprise business, you’ll gain deep insights and understanding of where your business needs to be so that you can serve customers where they are.

What I loved most about “Winning Digital Customers” is how Tiersky shows you how marketing fundamentals are evolving in order to serve a new generation of customers.

So, if you want to win over digital customers and move the needle on your business in a significant way, I highly recommend “Winning Digital Customers“. You’ll not only get tools and strategies but also reinforces how important it is for digital transformation to happen within an organization in order to achieve true customer loyalty.

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