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So
with all this relentless talk about Twitter accounts, Facebook
fan pages and cool new apps, I have a serious and timely question.
Do brand websites still matter?
Yes, I know -- even asking this question is a bit digitally sacrilegious.
Websites are to digital strategy as models are to fashion, but
do we really need them?
I mean, didn't things seem a tad curious during the World Cup when
brands like Adidas and Nike actively promoted their Facebook page
-- not their primary website -- at the end of their TV spots? Just
this weekend, I saw a similar cross-feed to Facebook for Kohls.
Talk about kicking the ball into a different goal.
Think about all the hoops we've jumped through to register proprietary
domain names, in every country and business type -- this perpetually
rationalized by an almost unstoppable parade of GoDaddy ads (titillation
and all). As a domain-name collector myself, it's hard not to feel
a twinge of asset deterioration.
But before you start penning the "ditch the brand website" memo,
hold your tweets for a moment. Websites are not going away -- they
might be more important than ever -- but they serve a different
and evolved purpose today, especially in this new "social" context.
Think wholesale, less retail. Think distribution, less destination.
Think serving, less selling.
At the end of the day, brands today live a decentralized, if not
fragmented, existence. The brand "home" has line-extended
itself into a network of smaller residences and rented apartments
-- or what we might call "brand stands" -- all primed
for meeting and interacting with the consumer at various stages
in the purchase, loyalty or advocacy cycle. A Facebook fan page
is a classic brand stand.
A smart website feeds and refreshes the brand stands. It anchors
the brand database, arguably the most coveted asset, and sets the
tone and standard for the brand's ethos and attitude about feedback,
expression and service. Put another way, it establishes that first
critical (often unforgettable) impression. A great website also
smartly syndicates, re-circulates and curates social content from
the brand stands.
In a seamless "just in time" distribution network, content
is refreshed from the website's wholesale supply network. There
are some variations to this, of course. YouTube, a de facto hosting
and syndication platform increasingly popular to brands, mimics
this hub-and-spoke model, but brands still control the primary
distribution network or original video content.
Websites are important because you own them. They feed into your
database, and the users they attract tend to more loyal and viral,
a big reason we should never give short shrift to direct feedback
flows. If you carefully analyze the migratory patterns of Apple
influencers, for example, you'll find that the Apple website is
one of the most critical and effective marketing tools. The same
applies to Patagonia, which effectively uses its website to nurture
what VP-Marketing Rob BonDurant described at a recent Word of Mouth
Marketing Association conference as a "tribe" of advocates.
Even beauty brands like L'Oreal, Estee Lauder and Olay are effectively
exploiting their websites as influencer, advocacy and customization
hubs. New initiatives like Kotex U have appealed to social connectors
and influencers on its website through smart sampling, online couponing
and robust Q&A involving moms, experts and peers.
Importantly, if we're truly entering a POEM (paid, owned, earned)
media mix model, brand websites are key. They anchor the owned,
reinforce the paid and incubate the earned. Moreover, if search
results are material to either your brand's reputation or purchase
cycle, websites take on an elevated level of significance, as they
consistently index at the top of search results. Worth mentioning
here that "earned media" linking to brand websites indexes
at exceptionally high rates, which for the ROI-wringers out there
easily translates into "cash" advertising value. Linking
is also a product of trust, and research studies consistently rank
websites higher than other ad or marketing vehicles on the trust
factor.
Of course, most brand websites are ill-equipped and ill-prepared
for an adaptive, sense-and-respond digital "social" age.
The site platforms are often impenetrably bureaucratic, impossibly
inflexible and all too commonly cornered by territorial IT or "digital" managers
who have little incentive or reward structure to drive innovation
or real-time iteration. Most marketers -- most of whom "iterate" dozens
of times a week in their own personal social-media pursuits --
have little patience for this.
And so we inevitably have lots of "work-arounds" -- essentially,
rapidly assembled (and mostly "social") brand stands
without a cohesive or coordinated center. Hence the overnight brand
Twitter account, or the sometimes over-priced "mini-site." In
the short term, that's good for innovation, but it starts to get
tricky, if not risky, for short- and long-term brand equity. Consumers
hate inconsistency and duplicity.
So what brands need today is a complete rethink and "refresh" of
their site strategy. Flexibility and agility should be the orders
of the day. They also need open feedback protocols and warm welcome
mats (for example, the friendly and inviting "contact us")
that drive consistency with the happy brand faces on all the external
brand stands. They need to empower visitors with easy search and
discovery, and enable tons of pass-along opportunity.
Most important, they need to be built to feed the next generation
of brand stands sitting on mobile devices and app platforms, many
of which will encompass next-generation e-commerce. Think of your
next website as the mission-critical building block from which
social media, mobile, e-commerce and other digital innovation draw.
Keep in mind the skill that will be necessary to make all this
come together. Indeed, curation, co-creation and distributed community
management are the new lynchpins of "content management."
Here's a piece of good news. You don't need to figure this out
in a vacuum. Both internal and external measurements can quickly
get you the 80/20 on what you need to do. As with search, a website
is a database of intentions, and the data flows from search queries,
video engagement and FAQ pings, and feedback can wonderfully inform
the content choices within the brand stand network, especially
the Facebook fan page and Twitter account. External conversation
is also a wonderfully underused cheat sheet.
So again, don't throw away the website. Listen, adapt and restock
the exploding network of brand stands. Think less about "web
master" and more about social "spoke caster."
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