In the not-so-distant past all brands were broadcasters of information. Brands sold us dreams and visions through one-dimensional advertising of how life could be. However, brands now have multiple routes to reach the consumer.
As a consequence, across the C-Suite, enterprise brands must embrace a world where they think differently about content, and where technology decisions are vital to customer engagement. It starts with the website. Get this wrong and it can be an expensive and time consuming mistake to rectify.
The rise of the Internet in the late 90s was a driver of this, and caused every brand to move to the web. For brands, this represented a fundamental change in what the brand is and how it is consumed by consumers. This led to the website often being the first interaction a brand has with a customer.
Ten years later, there has been a new shift, driven by social media, mobile, and content publishing; brands are publishers.
Now a customer’s first interaction with a brand might be a re-tweet, or possibly an infographic hosted on that brand’s publishing page. The diversity of content formats and ability to target persona groups is crucial in the shift to publisher. Just as the CIO needs to display creative vision, CMOs now need to think strategically and understand technical web build functionality.
The website is where the customer journey is centred, so the choice of web platform is crucial.
Brands need to choose a simple CMS to empower anyone in the business to publish content. This allows a greater diversity of content to be published, real time updating of stories and less reliance on one individual with the relevant expertise. We often refer to this as the ‘democratisation of content’.
A website is no longer static, and so the more people that can use the system, the better. Consumers now expect to be able to access all kinds of content through a brands website, and so if you’re able to update this more often, you’ll keep customers engaged.
In this new world of “brand is publishing,” enterprise brands need to plan for an uncertain future in a shifting world. Therefore it’s necessary to deploy flexible, future-proofed technology and processes that allow you to adapt and quickly pivot when the market dictates. Fast growth and start-up companies by their very nature are far more flexible and responsive to change and new technologies, so there are lessons we can all learn from these organisations when planning for future growth.
