Are you ready for 2021?

Every year around this time the Internet is filled with two things:

1. People debating how early is too early to put up the tree
2. Trend predictions for next year

Of course, this year is like no other — could even the best prognosticator have called pretty much anything that happened in 2020? And, if trends are derivative outcomes that build on what's taken place in the past, then any attempt at picking what specifically is going to happen next year would be like buying a lottery ticket from an email that landed in your spam folder.

The question more important than what the 2021 digital trends will be, is the question: What can we be doing to prepare for them?

If 2020 has taught us anything it's that the businesses that are the most digitally enabled and paying the closest attention to their customers are the ones that are best able to adapt when things go sideways. Every one of the big winners this past year had a digital from the inside out strategy going into the pandemic, whether that was Peleton's online community, or Zoom's ability to quickly pivot to match the surging demand.

But were those all just examples of businesses that rode the right wave at the right time? Consider the fact that GoToMeeting and WeightWatchers were faced with identical market conditions, and either stagnated or lost market value.

SOURCE: BARCHART.COM
RANGE: NOV 30, 2019 - NOV 30, 2020

So what can we learn from the winners? If we can't predict the future, then how can we put ourselves into the best possible position to be more Zoom and less GoToMeeting?

At the beginning of 2021, we're going to be publishing an entire suite of digital strategy tools, tactics, (a few trends), and even a live session where we'll share with you how we're helping our clients to plan for the year. So, watch this space to be the first to know where and when.

In the meantime, here are the key principles of what we'll be sharing:

We believe that every business today is a digital business, which means that digital strategy can no longer be treated like a sub-category. Digital is a core business function, and it spans customer acquisition, loyalty & retention, brand development, stakeholder engagement, even recruiting & employee engagement.

In order to accomplish all of these things, in service to the overall organizational strategy, businesses must take a digital from the inside out approach, and that starts with the following four questions:

1. How does digital contribute directly to the overall success of the business?
2. Look at what you're doing right now – what is getting you there? What isn't?
3. Look at what else is out there (this is where those trends articles come in handy) – which of those tactics can you add in to build value?
4. How do you get from here to there in a way that sticks? I promise that if you try to do it all in Q1 you'll end up back where you started.

I'm sure that you know of a few people who could benefit from the full suite of tools, and I want to make sure that all of this guidance gets to as many people as possible, so get them signed up for The Brief by sending them directly to brief.wearejunction.com.

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting