Expert advice: What should digital teams do to prepare for 2030?

Contentstack recently released our Digital 2030 report, featuring 18 digital experience experts sharing their visions for the future of the industry. 

We also asked a few of our participants to share additional advice on what digital teams should start doing right now to get ready for what’s to come. Read their answers below, and be sure to check out the full Digital 2030 report right here.

Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing @ SparkToro

“Start designing content that delivers standalone value, even if the buyer never clicks. That means rethinking how you repurpose content — turning long-form pieces into feed-native insights, useful visuals, and platform-specific takes. 

"It also means rethinking how you'll measure success especially in non-linear customer journeys. Digital teams should get deeply familiar with how their audiences consume information before they’re ready to buy, and invest in tools and workflows that prioritize visibility and trust over gated conversions.”

Jaina Mistry, Brand and Content Marketing Leader

“It’s time to evolve from a team of specialists working in isolation to agile, interdisciplinary squads focused on audience outcomes. We need cross-functional teams that bring together brand, content, ops, product marketing and even community, all focused on crafting end-to-end buyer journeys.”

Eric Stoll, CEO @ Arke

1. "Turn every product, service and policy into an openly-described API. Adopt schema.org GS1 Digital Link or similar standards
2. Ship an ‘AI-readiness spec’ next to your brand guide
3. If you're not already, move towards an API-first architecture for your entire customer experience
4. Upskill your team from page builders to ‘agent operators’
5. Begin exploring AI commerce flows”

Julia Connly, Manager, Digital Products @ U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee

“Teams should be on the lookout for unconventional ideas and be open to exploring concepts that are unfamiliar.”

Andreas Westendörpf, CTPO - Chief Technology and Product Officer @ Babbel GmbH

“Rethink every process in an organization's value stream to be supported, improved or replaced by AI-based automation.”

Cody Slingerland, SaaS SEO Consultant, author of ‘What Will SaaS Digital Marketing Look Like in Five Years?’

"Gone are the days of 'easy' organic search traffic. I’ve seen traffic drop as much as 30%+ over the past year for one SaaS brand, impacted heavily by AI (this comes even with a refined keyword targeting strategy and producing exceptional content). Traditional digital marketing and SEO strategies won’t be enough. Brands need to:

1. Focus on building an unbeatable brand that establishes trust through consistent design and messaging. Building a strong brand is timeless. Additionally, branding efforts through digital and traditional PR can help strengthen your domain authority and acquire more brand mentions in top-tier publications, both of which can be beneficial in showing up more in Google and AI search.

2. Avoid creating content targeting zero-click searches where AI provides direct answers. Realize that broader, “higher-level” topics will be more easily answered by AI. Refine your SEO strategy to prioritize high-intent searches, even if traffic is low.
3. Invest in community-building strategies as platforms like Reddit experience massive growth. Traffic to Reddit has exploded in the past few years. With the influx of AI-generated content, people will look to recommendations from real human beings.
4. Extract more value from existing traffic through conversion rate optimization and personalization at scale. Platforms like Webflow Optimize and Mutiny can help brands personalize content. You should be consistently running A/B tests on your most valuable pages (e.g., demo request page, signup page, pricing page, etc.)
5. Create content AI can't easily replicate, like expert-driven thought leadership, video storytelling, and data-driven original research.
6. Finally, develop a multi-channel strategy that doesn't rely solely on search traffic, including YouTube and other video platforms where AI has less impact.”

Anna Cole, E-Commerce Director @ Best Buy Health

“Digital teams need to start building governance into their workflows now. That means developing brand guardrails, tone of voice systems, and ethical guidelines that AI can operate within. They should also invest in upskilling so they know how to train, audit, and tune AI tools to stay aligned with brand values. The future is not just about speed. It is about strategic control.”

Danielle Diliberti, CEO and Co-Founder @ Sommsation

“Pairing intelligent tools with real human expertise will be critical. AI can scale content and personalization, but without subject matter authority, the experience falls flat. Exercising these strategies as part of daily business operations over time will help prepare teams to meet the future.”

Charles Austen Angell, CEO, EPIRA.ai + Founder, Modern Edge Inc.

“Digital teams in all organizations almost immediately need to diversify their set of inputs and begin developing their point of view, or the philosophical framework, to guide their development beyond technical considerations. The word ‘ethics’ in terms of AI is almost overused already, but the notion of blending technical expertise with human perspective with a bias towards human agency will be critical. 

"I think continuing education will become more important in the social studies area, where a lot of technical teams lack an adaptive perspective and understanding of how and why humans interact the way they do. High performing technical teams often have a blind spot when it comes to alternate perspectives and that will be dangerous in a rapidly changing environment. This can come from having experts on the team but the entire team has to be much more open to understanding potential biases that affect not what their systems can do but address what their systems should do.”