How do you use other industries' best practices in your digital strategy?

1 Why look outside your industry?

One of the benefits of looking outside your industry is that you can discover new ideas, trends, and solutions that you might not have considered before. You can also avoid getting stuck in a rut or copying your competitors. By exploring other industries' best practices, you can gain a fresh perspective and inspiration for your own digital strategy.

2 How to find other industries' best practices?

Finding other industries' best practices can be done in a variety of ways. You can use online search engines, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, and social media to uncover successful digital strategies. Additionally, attending events, conferences, workshops, and meetups can help you connect with professionals from other sectors and gain insight into their experiences. Finally, you can hire consultants, freelancers, or agencies that specialize in other industries to help you apply their best practices to your digital strategy.

3 How to adapt other industries' best practices?

Once you have found some best practices from other industries, you need to customize them to your own context and goals. It is not enough to merely copy and paste them without considering the specific needs of your audience, value proposition, brand identity, and resources. To help you adapt other industries' best practices, it is important to analyze the practice to understand why it works, what problem it solves, what value it delivers, and what metrics it uses. Additionally, compare the best practice with your current practice to identify any gaps, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities between them. Finally, modify the best practice to fit your needs by making changes that are tailored to your industry, market, customers, and objectives.

4 How to apply other industries' best practices?

After you have adapted the best practice, you need to apply it to your digital strategy and test its effectiveness. You can't expect immediate results or success without measuring and optimizing your performance, so here are some tips to help you apply other industries' best practices: planning your implementation by setting a timeline, budget, and scope for your implementation and assigning roles and responsibilities to your team; communicating your changes to stakeholders, partners, and customers about the changes you are making and how they will benefit from them; and monitoring and evaluating your results by tracking and analyzing your data, feedback, and outcomes to compare them with your baseline and goals.

5 How to learn from other industries' best practices?

The final step is to learn from your experience and improve your digital strategy. You can't simply apply other industries' best practices, you need to keep learning and evolving. To do this, reflect on what worked, what didn't, and what can be improved when implementing and applying the best practice. Additionally, share your findings, challenges, and recommendations with your team, peers, and community to gain feedback and suggestions. Finally, keep looking for new best practices from other industries and repeat the steps outlined above to keep your digital strategy fresh and innovative.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?