It's a Complex Digital World...Except For the Offer in this Blog!

My partners and I were out meeting with the SVP Marketing of one of Canada’s largest retailers a few weeks ago. There was a special reception area reserved for vendors, so we signed in, got our security badges and sat down. We were slightly early (our usual tendency) so we had time to look around. I noticed a very large display board with the names of very familiar vendors listed on them. Then I looked closer and realized that each vendor had been assigned a numerical rating percentage.

Vendors that had scored 100% were all on a list on the left side. I looked up at the top of that list and there was a large green check mark indicating that this was a good place to be. When I looked to the list on the right I saw a large red X at the top of that list. I looked at the Vendor ratings on that list and soon saw that this was not the list you wanted to be on. Because right there, for the world and your competitors to see – was your score card. Some of the world’s largest brands were there, and their report cards ranged from very close to 100% - Mondelez scored 97% I believe, and then it went down from there. At the bottom of the list some vendors were in the low 60’s. In other words – close to a failing report card.

I immediately thought – if I saw that one of my competitors was failing, I would do everything I could to steal share from them – and get myself over to the 100% list with more business as a reward. And that’s exactly the way we see companies dealing with digital transformation. Some of them are pushing the envelope and gaining share, some of them have failing grades, and the majority of companies probably don’t really have a handle on how they stack up against their competitors in the rush to digitize the mission critical levers of their business.

So that’s why we decided to create our version of a digital score card.

It’s called the Simmons Sharpe “Digital Marketing Asset Audit”, and it tells you clearly how you stack up against your competition in 8 critical zones of digital transformation. Here’s what it looks like:

SSI's Digital Marketing Asset Audit Scorecard

We’ve already used the DMAA across a wide variety of industries with companies varying in size from less than a million in revenue to over a billion dollars annually. In each case, the digital audit has provided a roadmap for rapid improvements such as reducing sales cycles and demand generation costs, increasing close rates and time spent on site, and turning social media into a more efficient customer care medium. But sometimes you just need to see it for yourself.

And for that reason, we’ve decided to open the kimono and offer you and your company a free – yes, we said free – Simmons Sharpe Digital Marketing Asset Audit.

All you have to do is apply by filling out the simple questionnaire below.

There’s only one catch – isn’t there always? And that is we are only going to chose one company, and we’re only making this offer for the next ten days. So if you’re interested, just fill out the questionnaire below by December 16, and we’ll let you know if you’ve won or not by December 18.

Now if you don’t win, you also don’t lose. Because we are going to publish the actual results in January so you can see what we found, and what the designated winner discovered about their own business and their own category. The name will be masked, but otherwise the numbers and the data will be real and real-time.

This is truly an act today moment for every company that needs to transform its business. When a grocery giant like Sobey’s lays off 20% of its staff in order to transform and “automate” its business it needs to be seen as a sign that digital transformation has hit a critical tipping point. It’s no longer when or if – it’s now.

So if you want to avoid the big red X and get on the list with the big green check mark take a minute now to fill in the questionnaire. It’s the first step in navigating your digital future. And we guarantee it won’t be boring.