How companies can make digital marketing strategy work for them

ADAPTING to the ongoing digitisation of the economy is arguably the most challenging transformation that every business is currently facing. Digital tools and trends are invading the business environment faster than companies can react, provoking significant changes in the way that we communicate, consume, work, buy and sell.

The scale and pace of the change brought by "digital" is matched only by large-scale industrial revolutions that leveraged coal or electricity and energised entire industries by removing fundamental constraints under which manufacturing operated, leading to unprecedented increases in productivity and lower costs. Digital media and application platforms are now driving a new revolution, creating richer dynamics between people and disrupting business. But where the electricity revolution empowered and enriched businesses rather than individuals, the digital revolution has the potential to empower everybody.

Pre-digital revolution, the function of companies was to produce, the function of media was to broadcast and consumers consumed. Digital tools have broken the monopoly of the media, enabling everyone to become a publisher and in some sectors they have broken the hold of companies on their industries, such as taxis and hotels. Companies no longer control their own narrative nor do they control the provision of goods and services.