Overcoming Hurdles: 3 Common Digital Transformation Challenges for Media Organisations and How to Solve for Them

Overcoming Hurdles: 3 Common Digital Transformation Challenges for Media Organisations and How to Solve Them? Check out our article to learn!

Sammi MarwanContent Editor

December 9, 2021
4min read

It is no secret that media organisations, particularly those who experienced a bump in traffic and demand for digital services throughout the pandemic, are entering a critical time. How can they maintain growth in the “new normal” in which we’re all living, and accelerate the pace of digital change and transformation to ensure they remain at the forefront of their customers’ thoughts when making purchasing decisions?

Here are our top three “watch-outs” and some ways to address them during your digital transformation journey:

 

1. “Data Overload”: What should I collect, how do I utilise it?

Many organisations are obsessed with data for the right reasons. However, data overload can actually be a drag on decision-making and create barriers to innovation and digital change. During a recent project, for example, one client in the publishing sector wanted to increase digital subscriber acquisition in their key market by 16%. They had a great product that would appeal to multiple segments, so it was an achievable goal for their market. However, although they had excellent data on why their current customers subscribe, which parts of the country they were based in and what would incentivise registered users to convert, they just didn’t know where to begin to extract, manipulate, and turn that data into insights. We worked with them to identify things they could do in the next week to month like reviewing their existing analytics tracking to determine what data points they’d absolutely need to build a better picture of their customer, identifying what experiments they could release online to collect better data, and processes for talking to customers and feeding that back into influencing their key metrics. Prioritisation is absolutely critical to ensuring you do not drown in the data lake you have created, and the sooner you can prioritise the sooner you can begin execution of your digital initiatives.

 

2.”Metrics, metrics, metrics”: What metrics do I use to track the performance of my organisation, and to ultimately judge if my digital transformation has been a success?

Many organisations have several quantitative data points, and a long-term metric in mind (e.g., to increase acquisition, reduce churn, or improve customer satisfaction). However, they didn’t know how to connect these metrics to specific actions and other related metrics. For example, if an experiment was run to have a better email on-boarding campaign for new registered users for a digital news organisation, how would they know what impact it had on conversions? Knowing by how much conversions moved could then impact future tweaks they do. The key here is to ensure you understand linkages between your metrics for success, and how to track their interdependencies over time.

 

3. “Alternatives to buying or building more tools”: How can I enhance my digital transformation in a cost-effective way?

Budgets are still tight in the current economic climate, limiting the flexibility to invest in a large array of tech, tools and capabilities. Therefore, we need some low-cost, quick-start ways to enhance our productivity and increase our likelihood of success as we look to accelerate our digital maturity. Working in cross functional teams (many of our clients do not typically come together in this way to solve problems, preferring to work in siloes) and utilising methodologies such as sprints and experiments can help to accelerate testing and learning initiatives, weeding out bad ideas and promoting excellent ones to help make better investment decisions more efficiently. In short, not everything needs to be built – rather, rapidly prototype and sense check with real users before a penny is spent on development budget!

If these challenges sound familiar, and you’d like to dig a little deeper into how we can help you identify others and more importantly, solve for them, contact us at [email protected]