You're Probably in the Top 50%

THE DIGITAL ADOPTION OPPORTUNITY GAP IS BIGGER THAN EVER

“We’re a mess - our competitors’ digital strategies are so well put together, why can’t we be more like them?”

Sound familiar? It’s a near-direct quote that I’ve heard hundreds of times.

If there’s one consistent phenomenon I’ve noticed across every industry or size of business, it’s that we’re all convinced that everyone else has it figured out while we’re flailing like an inflatable tube man outside of a car dealership.

I try to use that experience to help people understand that none of us has it all figured out, but this week a study came out that puts a lot more weight behind my anecdotes.

Digital Adoption Rates Among SMBs

A recent survey by Ionos showed that less than half of small businesses in the US have an active, working website and email domain for their company name.

Fewer still meet the rest of the survey’s standards for digital adoption, including an online shop, virtual meetings, and online marketing and communication, but it’s not for lack of interest or awareness.

Why So Low?

75% of American companies surveyed said that they believe that digitization is important, but that something is standing in their way. When they rated the factors that are holding them back, they listed the following:

• Cost - 60%
• Lack of time - 56%
• Lack of know-how - 52%

When I saw the gap in those numbers between the overwhelming acceptance of digital as essential, and the shockingly low adoption of even the most basic practices, it explained the belief that we all seem to have that we’re the ones lagging behind.

It also reinforced for me just how important our Digital Adoption consulting services are, but I’ll save the shameless plug for the bottom of this section.

So What?

First, if you’re reading this, it probably means that you’re in that top 50% of businesses who are operating with a working website and email, so give yourself a pat of the back.

However, this isn’t a suggestion that you can, or should, take your eye off the digital ball.

Instead, it’s obvious to pretty much all of us that digital is at the very core of how people do business today, and that digital adoption is an opportunity to better serve our customers. So these survey results should be a flashing light that’s pointing directly to where all of the opportunity is.

Your competitors do not have it all figured out. You absolutely can deliver a high quality digital customer experience that sets you apart. And you can do it without a massive budget or a team of expert staff.

It’s tempting to think that the big upsides from the digital revolution are in our past - that if we could only go back to the early days of SEO/Adwords/content marketing etc. that we’d really be able to leverage those channels, but those same opportunities exist today.

If we look at the data, we can see that there’s a fairly simple path to becoming one of the top 10% most digitally-enabled businesses among those surveyed:

• Have a working website that uses your business name
• Have a working email domain with the same business name
• Some form of online conversion/shop/booking
• Digital marketing & communications of any kind
• The ability to do business online (virtual meetings, digital contracts, etc.)

Once you have those checked off, then things get really exciting. And here’s where the plug comes in: Our Digital Adoption consulting looks at the whole business to diagnose and identify opportunities, then builds easy to follow implementation plans. If you’d like to learn more about what that could look like for your business, hit reply and let’s start a conversation.

Bonus - if you’re a Canadian business, 90% of the project’s costs could be eligible to be covered under the Canadian Digital Adoption Program.

TIK TOK’S BUSINESS STARTER GUIDE IS REALLY GOOD

AT LEAST ONE COMPANY IS TRYING TO MAKE IT EASY TO EMBRACE DIGITAL

The team at TikTok is just so far ahead of their competition when it comes to useful business resources. Sure, Facebook Blueprint and Google Learn are amazing resources too, but TikTok’s tools are consistently simple, fun to use, and really helpful.

This one is an interactive 5 question experience that delivers a personalized guide to getting started with TikTok ads & content. It even goes so far as to give step-by-step instructions on how to connect your ecommerce platform of choice, create high quality ad content, and offer examples from businesses like yours to help get you started.

Even if you’re not currently thinking about buying ads on TikTok, you should really check out the guide - it’s that helpful.

TikTok Starter Guide

CHATGPT IS GETTING WORSE

AND THAT’S A GOOD THING

At least one study shows how the June version of GPT-4 is objectively worse than the version released in March. Specifically, when it’s asked to give answers to precise mathematical questions, show its work, or cite its sources the results are degrading, buy why?

It turns out that AI models need reliable human-generated content that they can train themselves on. Every piece of content that is created by ChatGPT and similar tools is going to come with some flaws, so when the models start to learn from their own content, it just multiplies their flaws until you’re left with a horribly distorted version of the original.

That’s a good thing because if it wasn’t the case, we’d be screwed.

If AI models were able to learn from their own content, getting recursively stronger and more powerful, then not only would human-generated content become useless, the machines themselves would quickly realize that they have no need for our input or direction at all.

So, at least for today, we have entered into a dystopian endgame. And for now, that means that high quality, original content that’s full of human-qualities like opinion, creativity, and insight has actually become more valuable and necessary than ever.

Read the GPT-4 analysis here

POKEMON WANTS TO IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP

NEW GAME COLLECTS POKEMONS WHO MATCH YOUR SLEEP PATTERNS

The game is called Pokemon Sleep, and it’s the latest in a series of popular apps that track, analyze, and help to improve users’ sleep patterns.

It launched on July 17th into 13 countries, already has over 200k downloads a day, and is the #1 app overall in Japan.

There are two very different ways to interpret what’s going on:

1. An app developer, not satisfied that they’ve already dominated every waking minute of our attention, found a way to also capitalize on the time spent sleeping
2. Pokemon Go first got us to leave our homes and move our bodies, and is now working to make our sleep healthier too

The truth, as of often does, likely lies somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile the trend of sleep optimization appears to be stronger than ever.

A FEW MORE STORIES WORTH A CLICK

STUFF THAT WILL MAKE YOU JUST A BIT SMARTER THIS WEEK

• Soon you may be able to see your competitors’ ads on TikTok - they’ve introduced an ad transparency tool (limited to Europe for now)
• Vox writes that social media & best-of lists may be ruining the travel experience by creating a sense of entitlement, expectation of perfection, and a lack of appreciation for new experiences
• Is Google getting worse? How people are switching to TikTok and Reddit for their search results
• With cookies and other tracking tools going away, Meta & Deloitte teamed up to produce this guide on using first-party data in your marketing strategy

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting