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By Dave Fazekas, Associate Partner, Consumer Products & Retail
As many of our clients gear up for the holiday season and make plans for a successful 2011, the digital landscape continues to evolve and become more complex. This complexity has created new challenges for companies as they look to differentiate their brands in the marketplace.
In the past, companies used their websites to increase brand awareness, educate their customers on products and services, and, in many cases, transact business through eCommerce. A successful digital formula was to drive a high volume of acquisition through Search media techniques, keep customers in the purchase “funnel” through easy site navigation, offer a positive user experience, and then convert the transaction through fundamental eCommerce methods.
While this continues to be the standard formula for success, how customers are acquired, why they are coming to websites, and how the brand is being viewed across the digital landscape is changing.
Websites are no longer just there for education and commerce. They are a company’s best tool for building brand awareness and relationships with customers. Consumers are using new avenues to access products and information, giving retail and consumer product companies more to think about.
Between Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, increasing Mobile internet usage, and ever-changing search engine display methods, internet users are continuously inundated with messages about the products and services in which they are interested. Each of these levers has the capability of producing both positive and potentially negative information that could affect a company’s brand and performance. The challenge is to use these various touch points as tools to build a positive brand experience along the way, while keeping the negative viewpoints to a minimum.
An example of negative information would be a Blog or Facebook post that attacks a specific company or product. Search engines pick up this content and could potentially display it as part of search results. This in turn could sway a potential customer away from the brand; even though the source may not be credible. No longer is it enough to just simply plant and display search results through fundamental Search techniques. Companies should expect, as do consumers, to be interactive. They need a dedicated driver to push out content and respond to inquiries at all times. But responding is the easy part. The challenge is keeping the positive messaging and experience in the forefront of the user’s view.
Rosetta’s methodology to solve this is to build a navigational approach to integrating various messaging (social media, mobile commerce, etc.) to build positive brand awareness and drive positive “first page” search results and move anything negative to lower search result pages. Whether consumers receive content from company-fueled digital touch points or gather information by research on the web, it ensures that the right messages remain on their radar. It’s like defensive driving for a company’s brand.
While some clients are leveraging brand defense tactics to keep the positive feedback alive and accessible to users, others aren’t talking about their products at all. This holiday season, we’ve worked with two recognizable retailers to develop Facebook tabs and Microsites where consumers can share stories about their loved ones and holiday traditions. This is part of a broader image campaign that uses social media to build a positive brand experience.
And make no mistake, while the holidays are a great time to tap into the influx of online traffic, these trends will continue as the digital landscape continues to evolve. Making the connection is critical, but building a company’s brand is fluid and continuous. This means constantly building, reconstructing, and reworking the digital highway to ensure a meaningful destination for customers.