In the late 90s, every brand moved to the web, even though no one quite knew what it all meant. Websites were initially little more than printed brochures in an online format. Even then, digital natives knew this was a seismic shift, but even they couldn’t articulate exactly why, and in what form. But they were right.
For brands, the shift in the subsequent 10 years wasn’t to create new form-factors for brochures and other traditional marketing material, but rather it represented a fundamental change in how is the brand is consumed by customers. Today, the website is sometimes the first interaction a brand has with a new customer, and often the thing existing customers interact with most often. It’s not just another form of billboard, it is the brand.
Recently, there has been a new shift, driven by social media, mobile, and content publishing. On top of this, businesses and consumers have become more sophisticated, the brand and the website are one and the same. Now we are in an era of ’brands as publishers’.
Get the first impression right
A customer can now engage with a brand in so many more ways. The company website, Facebook and Twitter are just a few examples and these are now accessible through a number of different devices. The first interaction could now be a re-tweet, or an infographic hosting on that brand’s publishing page, or an eBook being passed around an office, or a teaser on Facebook that leads to a long-form article. The diversity of content formats and ability to target persona groups is crucial in the shift to ‘publisher’.
The customer is a moving target and so engagement strategies and content have to respond to it. Making your website the centre of this journey is a great way to build advocacy with a customer. Whether it’s the main corporate web domain, an internal intranet, campaign site, or microsite, a ‘call to action’ will nearly always drive the user to a dedicated web page where they can learn more, conduct research, be entertained, or hopefully buy.
Updating content is king
Brands can no longer leave their website as it is, they need to be proactive and engage with their customers in real time. They need to treat websites as living, breathing domains, constantly changing and updating. Brands now have a lot more visibility of the types of content which interests their target audience. Previously, they had to rely on industry averages and best practice guides to decide how often they should post different types of content. Today, new measurements such as engagement metrics and click through rates provide an additional level of analysis which can be used to target their audience more effectively.
This is a time consuming job so organisations are increasingly moving the ownership of content to specialised content teams. In line with this, they need to make sure the technology that underpins it is right. Agility, flexibility and speed to market are essential for all and WordPress is a solution that matches these ideals. So it stands to reason then, that fast growth and start-up companies build their websites, and other web assets, on the WordPress platform. There is definitely a lesson for enterprise organisations to learn here about how to embrace the ‘nimbleness’ and agility that characterises smaller companies.
Prepare for the unknown
In this new world of ‘brand is publishing,’ brands need to plan for an uncertain future in a shifting world. Brand engagement has fundamentally changed over the last two decades and it will continue to do so, often in unexpected ways. Just as the purpose and implementation details of ‘brand is website’ changed over the last decade, so will ‘brand is publishing.’ You can’t learn the playbook and then execute it blindly. But you can deploy flexible, future-proof technology and processes that allow you to adapt and quickly pivot when the market dictates.
There are lessons we can all learn from how fast growth and start-up companies are planning for future growth. Following these and becoming the right kind of publisher can help drive traffic, add value, educate your customers and raise your profile.
By Fabio Torlini, EMEA MD of WP Engine.
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