Not that long ago to ‘have a website’ was something both novel and leading edge and, for many, considered to be one-upmanship on the competition.
Hopefully it would provide the level playing field required to help the local butcher become a world-famous sausage brand with thousands of international orders flying in over the ether.
Just add a few keywords to your web site title, description and keyword meta tags and millions of folk would instantly find you on the first page of search engine results.
These days it’s just not that simple.
In fact, some are questioning whether websites are dead or at least dying.
My own view at the moment is that it’s more a case that the role of the website is having to change and adapt as a result of other elements being fed into the online mix and which do certain jobs better .
For me, the main role of the website is now to act like the ‘virtual head office’ where visitors can gain access to official information and library-type content, obtain ‘About Us’ and investor-type information and find links that lead to outsourced tools and applications branded to the organisation but hosted by specialist third parties such as e-commerce, e-learning and webinars.
As far as online marketing is concerned, this responsibility without doubt is now being handled by social media. If you think of social media as being your marketing department situated across the road from your website head office then this kind of helps you appreciate the relationship. The two maybe separate but they’re still connected.
Social Marketing
Marketing is principally about promotion.
Ideally it should also be about customer acquisition, engagement and brand relationship building which ultimately leads to new and repeat sales.
In the pre-digital age brands often attempted to encourage this by inviting consumers to write to them with their feedback or to obtain future new product information. Now they’re using social media.
Social media has opened up a whole new world of customer acquisition and engagement possibility.
Millions of people are now members of online social communities and the interest in online socially based engagement has been well proven by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
By establishing a social marketing presence, brands and businesses can engage with both existing and new potential customers in ways never previously possible via their website.
To be successful with social marketing though, it’s just like it was with websites – once you’ve created it you have to support it and keep it fresh and up to date.
Video is a great form of social content and allows you to provide interesting insight into your business or brand – e.g.: going ‘behind the scenes’; ‘meeting the team’; seeing how things are made etc. This is all good fodder to kick-start conversations and relationship building between the outside world and the business.
It’s also very easy to propagate content between different types of social media so that by taking one action you automatically multiply the effect and increase social reach.
For example, if you have a YouTube account linked to Facebook and Twitter then whenever you post a new video to YouTube it will be instantly flagged on your Facebook and Twitter sites so that your different communities are all made aware at the same time.
Furthermore, your communities can easily spread the word by clicking simple links to notify others they know about content that they like and is worth sharing. (A process known as ‘viral’).
Social media activity is also very search engine friendly and can generate good early visibility for brands and businesses in relation to natural search engine listings.
So, let social media fulfil your online marketing function – but where does this leave your website?
The New Website Role
Your social media site can and should of course be linked to either your main website (or a dedicated campaign site if part of a specific promotion).
Whilst social media channels are setup to handle online communication and engagement well, they are still limited in other ways and because they are template based they do not allow for the conveying of strong individual brand identity – something which websites do well.
So, use social media sites to attract and engage, develop on-going relationships and promote new products, services and PR events but also use them to drive visitors to your website where they can actually then either buy something or e.g. obtain more in-depth information, search other digital content libraries and gain a more comprehensive overview of the organisation and it’s people.
An Overall Digital Marketing Strategy
These days, more and more companies are using digital advertising in addition to TV and the press.
Digital advertising allows for more tailored customer group targeting and the return on marketing investment can be easily measured by reference to website statistics analysis.
Ideally, any contemporary digital marketing strategy should include elements of paid search and pay-per-click advertising as well as the use of social media as well as re-purposed website.
In addition, all elements should pay conscious attention to issues such as search engine optimisation (SEO), user-centric design, user journey planning and the identification of key marketing goals and targets which are measurable via web analytics software.
On an ongoing basis, website owners the need to ensure that they constantly analyse the results of website data and identify problem areas which need further action.
End.
Mark Wilderspin 