The evolution from website design onto social engagement and digital strategy

Is website design dead?

From leading consultancies and agencies that deal in digital marketing, there has been over the past 6 months a downturn in the importance that is afforded to website design. Far from hailing the death of website design; a centralised company / brand / campaign presence on the Internet is still as important for digital marketing as it was 10 years ago.

The shift in focus is because audiences have now evolved to a degree where digital strategies can be put in place that expand beyond a single presence, channel or technology. Whilst audiences use the web; websites will be an important component in any digital strategy, but as with most things in life it is about selecting the right tools for the job.

What are the right tools for the job?

Before selecting tools the job needs to be ascertained. The job in most instances that Red Ant deals with is the communication of a campaign or brand to their audience. There are a number of tools available the mixture and use would change for every digital strategy, some of these are:

• Targeted Microsites
• Facebook fan pages (groups at present to not afford the same level of function or analysis)
• Twitter channels
• MySpace and Bebo pages
• Mobile applications along with standard mobile routes (SMS, geo-targeted SMS, Bluetooth, etc.)
• Crowdsourcing
• Search term creation and seeding

And there are so many more (anyone for persona aligned Spotify playlists?).

It's called the web for a reason

As well as being one of his cheesiest lines, Paul hit the nail on the head when discussing multi-channel digital marketing approaches at Internet World recently with this cliché. None of the previous tools should operate in isolation and they certainly shouldn't operate in seclusion from offline brand strategies.

Each tool in the armoury of a digital strategy should be intertwined, connected to provide a seamless audience journey from initial touch points through to conversion. These of course should already be defined in your KPI index.

Building a social engagement platform

Using an idea from a recent brainstorming session as an example; the client has a number of different audiences for their product line which falls across function and fashion. This idea focused on one of their audiences female, 16 to 28, interested in fashion and empowered lifestyle.

The core proposition of the idea was to drive awareness and through awareness produce purchase and / or brand advocacy by focusing on the role of the product within the audiences lives.

The chosen seeding advocate for this was to be a campaign persona initially called Jenny (first name that popped into my head). Jenny is mid-twenties, successful in her career and is either aligned or inspirationally aligned to the target audience. Using Jenny as a seed the following channels were targeted to point to a central converting microsite.

• Bebo

  The approach on Bebo was to use Jenny as an inspirational hook for the younger part of the audience. There would be a mild drive towards the microsite to gain further brand converts the chief hook would be for the audience in these areas to want to become like Jenny.

• Tagging

  Using the microsite as a central syndicating source we would look to create and seed tags tied to the product that would then be relayed through the microsite for audience generated content. This enables the brand to engage directly with the audience as well as the audience to communicate about product use. The chosen channels for these were Twitter (for quick posts), Flickr for pictures, YouTube for any videos and Google through general search.

• Facebook fan pages

  The campaign content would be relayed to Facebook, and in turn would allow Facebook generated content to be relayed back to the website. In short we are pushing the message to where we felt a larger part of our audience was residing rather than waiting for them to find us.

• Twitter

  Jenny would maintain a twitter channel for the core weeks of the campaign to both push the message, but also to highlight elements of the audience that were also pushing the campaign. This would allow real time engagement with the audience.

• Microsite competition

  Since the core proposition was on the role of the product Jenny would be used in a 12 week competition of how and where she was using the product. Those members of the audience that correctly identified the locations / scenarios would then win a suitable prize. Each step of the 12 questions would use imagery that would reaffirm the inspirational message.

• Offline Marketing

  The existing offline marketing efforts that were concentrating on this segment of the audience would be used to help create initial buzz and campaign awareness.

  This is only one small idea in a digital strategy brainstorm; hopefully it highlights how each of the different channels available can work in unison to deliver a campaign. Should this go ahead however this would be the first step down the line for this particular audience as Jenny and the brand in question would have to re-evaluate message and re-engage through subsequent campaigns.

Next steps

How our audiences use the web is changing; as brands and those helping brands we need to address these changes to give the most we can to our clients. What I hope I have made clear though is that this current evolution is about more than just having a website and waiting.

This blog post was written by Richard Conyard

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