Innovate in 2009

I’ve just come back from a week in San Francisco attending Adtech in San Francisco and meeting with companies in the bay area and in Los Angeles. Given the economic climate has hit hard over there compared to the generalised softening in the Australian market there are things we can learn as a web development company from the observations I learnt in the US. There is no doubt that companies that can innovate will come out at the end of this economic crisis strong and with greater market share than they already have.

It’s no longer just about the website
Sure the website is extremely important as the ultimate destination and the location you articulate your message, but it’s not the only place you engage with your audience anymore. Think about where your audience is these days. Is it on Facebook? Is it on the iPhone? Is it via Email? Can you engage a customer and capture them with a one page landing page ?
Knowing your audience intimately is important and knowing what they do is just as important.

Testing and Change
What worked to drive leads and business last year and the years previously may no longer be working. Don’t be afraid to change what you’ve done in the past in order to grow.
Some people say that 2009 is the year of performance, I disagree. 2009 should be the year of testing new things, innovating and changing the way your drive inbound business. Initial areas to think about innovating include email marketing, search engine marketing, social media, display advertising, viral campaigns and even affiliate marketing.
If you don’t have intelligence about the target market – develop it, research it and understand your clients buying cycles and how they make purchasing decisions. What touch points do they need?

Performance or Optimization?

It continues to surprise me that businesses don’t have any mechanisms to track their performance online. There are plenty of commercial tools for measuring web traffic and conversions and we always recommend Google Analytics. So first off, before assessing your situation, make sure you have the necessary reporting on hand to be able make the right decisions. It takes the guess work out of it all.
Something that we are hearing from advertising agencies is that clients have already planned their entire year out. But delve a little deeper with account directors and they say that although they are fully planned, if something isn’t working then they won’t be afraid to firstly optimize it and failing that pull it and move budgets and efforts to somewhere else. With this in mind, you should adapt this same thinking to you business. Don’t be afraid to pull the plug on activities that are not working.

Don’t just build it. Market it as well
Gone are the days of simply building it and they will come. There is more competition than ever before and capturing your target audience is essential. Make sure when you are thinking about building a new website or new microsite that you allocate a marketing budget to it. Also consider that PR is important as well. Social marketing may also take a role in getting the message across.
It’s essential that as you are building a web property, you are also developing a marketing strategy to send it to market.

We’re here to help
If you’re finding it difficult getting your head around all the jargon and developing a complete digital strategy, then don’t hesitate to contact us. Wiliam can either work very hands on providing an end to end solution or simply developing a strategy which your team executes.