TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

Effective deployment and use of digital tools and services underpins the success of every organization today. But while the right technology can give you a competitive advantage, most organizations find it difficult to keep up with the sheer pace of technology change. Finding the appropriate level of investment in digital tools, skills, and processes is among the most pressing and challenging issues for today’s leadership teams. These challenges can be faced head-on and often overcome by conducting a thorough technology assessment.

Regular technology assessments ensure continued strategic alignment between business strategy and digital investments. When undertaken effectively, a technology assessment will:

• Improve business operations
• Enhance customer service
• Reduce time-to-market for new products and services and, most critically
• Ensure your organization’s capabilities enable future growth and mission objectives

When should you conduct a technology assessment?

Frequently reviewing your technology landscape will allow you to track progress in aligning your capabilities to the evolving needs of your operating model. And by regularly assessing technology capabilities, you’ll maintain a clear investment roadmap that aligns the stakeholders and partners who drive and benefit from those investments.

Other signs that it’s time to perform a strategic technology assessment include:

• When considering a major technology investment
• When your business is experiencing significant, above-normal growth
• When market dynamics change due to disruptive use of digital strategies by competitors

There are three steps to a typical technology assessment. Let’s talk about them:

1. Analyze Your Current Technology State

As with any decision-making process, there has to be an information gathering and analysis of data. It doesn’t have to be a cumbersome and painstaking process. If done right, the analysis can be quick and effective.

While you can try to do this step on your own, experience tells us that you’re likely to get blinded by two factors: confirmation bias and, if you’re not a CTO, lack of experience. Enlisting outside help is common for many organizations.

It’s essential that these technology assessment interviews are conducted by an experienced CTO with the deep operational experience needed to ask the right questions and use insight to separate the aspirational from the actual. An outside perspective also helps keep things objective, so confirmation bias doesn’t creep in — where the search becomes only for the information we want to find.

In these assessments, you’ll also want to review data architecture and management practice, development capabilities and technology delivery processes, compliance processes, licensing and 3rd party services portfolio, and operational playbooks and processes..

When this step of the technology assessment is complete, you’ll have a clear picture of the baseline capabilities along with a better understanding of potential gaps between what was expected versus what’s actually there in terms of people, process and technology.

2. Diagnose Your Technology Needs

With the analysis complete, it’s time to map the current-state portfolio of capabilities to strategic business and market growth objectives. This allows you to prioritize among the various technology implementation options and create a phased schedule for any investments.

From there, the next step will be to identify gaps or misalignment in capabilities, technology operating plans, service portfolios, technical architecture and platform strategies.

Once the diagnostic phase is wrapped, you should have an understanding of where the opportunities lie and where you may have potential gaps in technology capabilities.

3. Align Your Technology Plan

The alignment phase is where it all comes together. In this phase, you’ll need to develop a plan to address gaps likely to impact growth or undermine investment hypotheses, including:

• Forward-looking viability
• True ability to scale
• Compliance
• Governance
• Security
• Other identified risks

If you work with a team like Mod Op Strategic Consulting, this is the stage where you’ll get a detailed report that includes a roadmap for practical, risk-mitigated, technology capability enhancement. If you’re attempting this on your own, you’ll want to make a report so you can share it with your team and plan next steps.

Upon completion of the three technology assessment phases, you should have a 360-degree view of your technology capabilities from the perspective of:

• Hardware
• Software
• Networking
• Data
• People and processes

All with clear recommendations for mitigations and other changes needed.

Ready to Schedule Your Technology Assessment?

Over the last several years Mod Op Strategic Consulting (Mod Op Strategic Consulting) has led technology assessments for dozens of clients. With these quick and effective technology assessments, led by our CTO, we take care of each phase resulting in a comprehensive blueprint to help you align your business strategy with your digital investments.

If you’re due for a technology assessment, grab a copy of our technology assessment checklist, and reach out to our team for a free consultation call.

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

If you’ve spent any time in PR, you’ve heard an executive vice president or two reminisce about the days of writing releases on typewriters and clipping media hits by hand. Those anecdotes, better than anything else, showcase just how much the discipline has evolved over the last few decades. My point is that things are constantly changing. But one thing that has remained the same is the need to get high-quality coverage for clients. You’ve distributed releases and secured articles, but have you thought about podcasts?

An intro to podcasts
Since their rise to popularity in the early 2000s, podcasts have been on the up and up. According to insights from Nielsen, the podcast audience in the United States is projected to double by 2023. This portable, on-demand option is becoming the preferred method of entertainment and catching up on current events during long commutes to and from the workplace. Although many have moved to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the data shows that smart speakers are also being widely used for listening.

Leveraging podcasts for PR
The beauty of podcasts is that they can be used in a variety of ways. PR practitioners can help secure guest spots or even create a client-branded show.

Before trying to create a podcast, consider setting up interviews on industry-leading shows. Because existing channels are likely to already have their set target audience, you can focus on the topic at hand and building awareness for your brand, not for the podcast itself. Capitalize on the already curated audience as well as the trusted host, while also getting your message out there. Here, the emphasis is credibility. Unlike a press release which might be viewed as bias, an interview or article featuring your company gives weight to your brand by having a trusted authority figure provide validation. The same concept applies with podcasts.

Creating your own podcast and building an audience can help establish your company as a thought leader in your desired industry. This takes the opportunity from earned to owned. In this case, you have all the power when it comes to creating and attracting an audience, selecting topics for each episode and discussing details specific to your company. This also puts the company, specifically the host, in a position to be a thought leader and feature other well-known thought leaders on the show.

After the interview
After securing an interview on a podcast, or even starting your own, don’t just leave it at that. Leverage it wherever possible. Share the link on your own social channels or reshare posts from the podcast’s pages and encourage followers to take a listen. This way, you’re cross-promoting and reaching a wider audience. If it makes sense, link to the podcast on your website so potential customers can feel confident in your expertise.

Lastly, use it as part of your next podcast pitch. Mentioning another podcast in a pitch and providing a link to listen helps the host understand what you’ve discussed before, your interview style and what your area of expertise is.

Yes, PR has come a long way, and is still changing, so don’t get left behind. Stay ahead of the curve. Seek out new and relevant opportunities for your company, understand where your audience is and how they can be reached, and partner with a skilled agency to ensure you’re not neglecting your target audience.

In addition to navigating these troubled waters, platforms are becoming more data-shackled, as governments are raising their brows when it comes to how and what user information is being aggregated. As a result, platforms are updating rules and regulations across the board.

Strategists are now forced to consider new approaches while continuing to develop salient plans without the luxury of obtaining the same type of data to help inform those strategies. If that’s not enough, channel demographics are shifting like never before.  Content consumption has increased exponentially, and the ways people use platforms have shifted.

While volatility is at an all-time-high, there have been positive developments like the removal of Facebook’s 20% text rule (yes, creatives can now rejoice), emergent platforms are coming out of the woodwork, and the undeniable and overwhelming desire for social media is universal.

Considering the climate, we highlighted the top trends that we’re bound to see and also leverage as we head into 2021 and beyond:

• Video and live streaming

Many brands are seeing that video continues to reign supreme in terms of engagement. With short attention spans, especially among younger demographics, it is no surprise that video outperforms most content-types. According to Cisco, 82% of all online content will be video content. In addition, live video will also continue to grow across brand pages into 2022.

In 2019 alone, internet users watched 1.1 billion hours of live video.  And while this figure was already sure to explode, the global crisis has only added more fuel to the fire, with live video becoming the prime method to communicate for many industries.

• Ephemeral content

Short-term formats like “stories” aren’t going anywhere. In fact, these formats are not only available on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, similar features have been sprouting up on other platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter, with others in the pipeline. According to Hootsuite, 64% of marketers either have already incorporated Instagram Stories into their strategies or plan to.

It’s evident that users enjoy the idea of not feeling tied to content in perpetuity, particularly in-feed content, and posts that have a shorter shelf-life are more compelling since they’re fleeting. The beauty of it all is if content is worth keeping, it can be saved or pinned, where available.

• Virtual Events

Although this method became a necessity in 2020, virtual events will continue to be more accessible and frequent to communicators and users alike.  For example, LinkedIn now enables free lead capture for events on the platform. You can either host an event on LinkedIn Live or point individuals to another virtual event platform. In addition, virtual events will provide fertile ground for more opportunities in advertising and beyond.

• Influencer Marketing

Influencers aren’t going anywhere. If anything, they have evolved with the times. Brands realize that it’s more cost-effective to utilize micro and nano influencers and still receive high return on investment. Although most influencers are found and used on social, brands are now leveraging content generated by influencers on websites, online stores, newsletters and other channels.

• Social Commerce

With almost half the world’s population now using social media, it’s expected that the next step would focus on online shopping. According to Envato, 71% of consumers turn to social media for shopping inspiration, with 55% of online shoppers now making the majority of their purchases through social media channels.

With research showing that customers are more likely to buy when presented with a streamlined shopping experience, social media platforms will continue to develop more e-commerce tools to promote social selling.

• Branded Content

While user-generated content is still considered a valuable tactic, high-quality branded content is predicted to soar in 2021. Although most branded content would typically be created for promotions, it’s now more significant to create a unique experience for consumers.

With the quality and quantity of marketing content on the rise, strategists are exploring how to gamify online experiences to keep users engaged.

• Personalized Marketing

Customers will continue to demand more from brands, favoring companies that offer better experiences at multiple touchpoints. For example, online and SMS messaging between customers and brands will grow.

Businesses and marketers are leveraging this trend in the delivery of social media ads as platforms now offer advanced targeting and customization options. This method has reached such new heights that, now, platforms are able to understand the type of products a person likes. With that data, they can serve ads for similar products from various brands.

• Authenticity and Accountability

Authenticity and accountability are two buzzwords marketers have been leaning on heavily in 2020.Now, consumers expect more from brands. They want openness, inclusivity and honesty.  They want their brands to take a stand, and they invest in companies that mirror their values. Eighty-six percent of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding the brands they like and support.

All in all, it’s more noteworthy to tell consumers an honest story instead of advertising to them, which creates more trust and appreciation for their company.

Moral of the Story

It’s clear that social media will continue to be unpredictable. More individuals realize the impact social media brings to the table, and platforms are responding to that in a big way.

Platforms will continue to update and attempt to squash the competition. Platforms must be nimble to keep up with users, so marketers will always need to be ahead of the game and be ready to roll.

The number-one advantage of using your website as the centerpiece of your communications is that it’s not bound by the constraints of the printed page or TV time or radio airspace, so why should you be? Your website is not a book that you put on a shelf when you “finish” it. In fact, your website should never be “finished.” For any number of reasons, your site should always evolve and grow (or maybe even shrink.)

Obviously, when you launch new products or product lines, you’ll want to add those to your site, but there are other, perhaps less obvious, occasions to change your website. For instance, when you launch a new advertising and/or PR campaign, you should include creative from that campaign on your site. The home page should look and feel like it’s part of the campaign, and you may even build a landing page or landing section of your site to which you’d drive traffic from campaign outreach. And, if you have a blog on your site, you should update that regularly with articles your visitors will find interesting or entertaining. Our SEO team wrote a piece about that last year, and the advice is still relevant today.

Those are sort of watershed moments that mark specific points in time when you’d change your web presence, but there are other reasons still, and they are meaningful ones that can impact your company’s revenue.

In a best-case scenario, at the outset of any web project, I’d challenge the client to look in every nook and cranny of their marketing communications budget and scrape up a relatively small portion for what I’d loosely call “website R&D.” These dollars would be applied to exploratory work, performed on an ongoing basis, after the site goes live. And I’d further challenge that client to give my team the autonomy to experiment, to use our expertise to see how we can continually optimize the website, to see what improves traffic flow to important content, to see what converts users, to see what drives sales higher. Sometimes, a small change, like making a button green instead of blue, can have a measurable impact on the web experience you deliver. When it works, we’d let it ride for a while and then experiment some more.

It’s simple really. When something worked, you’d enjoy the gains. When something didn’t, we’d revert back to the original until we decided to test something new again. That’s true optimization, and we’d track it all, updating and/or reverting in real-time. The risk really is marginal since we’d monitor all activity, but the rewards can be enormous when you increase clicks here and there.

The other major reason to think of your site as a work in progress is driven by Google. Google search results, more than ever, are driven by the quality of the user experience as determined by Google. A number of variables go into Google’s assessment from page load times to the mobile experience, but a substantial component has to do with the content your site provides, i.e. how useful your site is to its audience. Much about Google’s ranking process is a mystery, but Google’s take on content is crystal clear. My colleagues in SEO will scoff at this as an oversimplification, and they’ll be right, but it’s still a good rule of thumb:

Websites that add useful content regularly typically rank higher than those that don’t. Websites that deliver content in many different forms – text, imagery, videos, etc. – perform better in Google search results than those that don’t.

In the end, the broad answer to the content question is very simple:

Always be making it.

Always be making it good.

Always be making it in different forms.

So there you have it…any number of reasons why you should never be finished with your website. My job here is done.

Or is it?

MIAMI – September 29, 2020 – Mod Op, a marketing communications agency with offices across the U.S. and an office in Latin America, has been named the winner for the 2020 American Marketing Association (AMA) Dallas-Fort Worth Marketer of the Year Awards in the categories of energy marketing and business to business social media for its work with clients based out of the agency’s Dallas office.

“We are honored to receive these prestigious awards for the great results of two innovative marketing campaigns,” said Eric J. Bertrand, CEO, Mod Op. “It is a true testament to our agency’s breadth of capabilities, and our team’s commitment to creative excellence and success for our clients.”

Mod Op’s work launching ExxonMobil’s first-ever Power Play Awards to recognize women and the men who support them in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry won the agency best overall strategy, design and implementation of a marketing program within the energy sector. The agency launched this global awards program in four months, including multiple promotional campaigns and creative materials to raise awareness for the awards, nomination developments and judge recruitment. The awards ceremony was hosted during an industry event in September 2019, during which Mod Op assisted with supplemental public relations and social media.

In the category of business to business social media, Mod Op won for the agency’s work with Stream Data Centers, where Mod Op streamlined the company’s organic and paid social media efforts. The agency’s social media efforts for the client have resulted in a significant increase in impressions, engagements and follower counts on Stream’s Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. It also worked to produce quality leads by focusing on key decision makers within Stream’s key target prospects.

The AMA is one of the largest and most trusted marketing associations working to educate, support and enhance the performance of its members and marketing professionals around the world. The Marketer of the Year Awards are designed to recognize excellence in marketing and innovation in various categories. Award winners were announced during the 2020 AMA DFW Marketer of the Year Virtual Event on Sept. 23, 2020.

The tangible results from these clients showcase Mod Op’s range of services. To learn how Mod Op can help you, visit https://www.modop.com/.

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About Mod Op 

Mod Op is a full-service marketing communications agency focused on using the right methods to help our clients capitalize on their opportunities. Mod Op services for both B2C and B2B markets include brand strategy, advertising, digital marketing and public relations. In addition, through the agency’s technology group, Mod Op offers web and app UX/UI, development and maintenance. With offices in New York, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Portland and Panama City, Panama, Mod Op pairs data and innovation with expertise to best serve clients across the U.S. and Latin America. For additional information, please visit Mod Op’s website.

Media Contact: 

Elizabeth Byrd
PR & Social Media Manager
[email protected]

More recently, we’ve seen a big uptick in virtual events as show organizers pivot from in-person engagements. For organizers, attendees and speakers, there are a number of advantages and disadvantages to consider.

Let’s start with some of the disadvantages. At the top of the list – in-person connections and organic interactions can’t be replicated in a virtual environment. They are extremely important and, for many, the most valuable part of attending conferences. Also, the fact that you’re not congregating in a new location with others changes how you might learn and share knowledge. Frankly, it’s just more difficult to immerse yourself in the experience when you’re stuck in your own home or office staring at a computer screen for hours on-end watching talking heads. The energy of in-person events doesn’t translate to the virtual world. Finally, virtual conferences can be plagued by the same technology challenges that we all face working from home every day. Except with conferences, those connection issues can come from across the spectrum, attendees, speakers or the conference itself, and the number of people impacted can be much greater than in your average Tuesday team meeting.  These issues are frustrating and could hurt attendance and the reputation of the event if they persist.

Despite these challenges, there are a number of positives to virtual events.  Maybe most importantly is the broader accessibility of content and knowledge for more people.  By saving the cost of travel and the commitment of being out of the office for an extended period of time, companies can send more people to virtual events to accelerate learning with more staff members. Companies can save more budget and get a more educated workforce.  Because virtual conferences scale better than in-person counterparts, accommodating more attendees is relatively easy.

One of our clients, ExxonMobil, recently sponsored and attended a virtual conference, and they found that they got better engagement in some virtual networking sessions than they had at some past in-person events. We at Mod Op helped them develop and manage those sessions. We observed people in breakout rooms making better connections with more meaningful discussions because there were fewer distractions than at a live event. It seems counterintuitive, but the group feedback validated our observations.

Another advantage to virtual conferences is that organizers can easily make their content available on-demand after the show. By doing so, event organizers provide interested parties the opportunity to consume the content when it best fits their calendar. And events can extend the use of their content and generate an additional revenue stream in the process!

Regarding content, we’ve noticed some events offer attendees the option to consume audio-only material. This is particularly appealing in a work-from-home scenario in which someone may not be able to sit and watch hours of video but may be free to listen while multitasking with their other work. In our preparation for the event ExxonMobil attended, we focused a great deal of attention on avoiding technical issues that might derail a live, virtual event. For instance, we helped ExxonMobil pre-produce their speaking engagement and panel discussions, so we were better able to control the outcome, ensuring the production value of the content, and, in those cases, the audiences had no idea whether they were watching something live or recorded. We just know they went on without a hitch or glitch.

In-person events will be back, hopefully sooner rather than later. But, once they’re deemed safe, don’t expect them to replace virtual conferences entirely again. We have discovered too many advantages to abandon virtual events entirely. There is likely a place for both formats or maybe even a third format that aims to capture the advantages of both. If you’d like to talk about virtual conferences, feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Fun

We’re all children at heart, and these opportunities let our team tap into their collective joy. We stay on top of current trends, as well as the interests and authentic language that will truly engage younger audiences. For more than 10 years, we’ve helped Nickelodeon develop marketing experiences in support of their numerous IPs, live events and co-branded partnerships. We’ve created a wide variety of content and digital destinations that range from custom online games, content-driven microsites, sweepstakes and short-form video content for social and broadcast spots. The key for success is finding ways not only to get kids engaged and interacting with what we create but to make sure they have fun as they play with friends and even their parents.

A great example of this is our work on a co-branded partnership between the film Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cicis, a buffet restaurant chain in 32 states. We created a mobile-optimized game that challenged users to rise to the occasion and team up with the Turtles to recover stolen pizza toppings from an ensemble of evil villains. In re-imagining the classic Whac-A-Mole game, we concepted, designed, animated and developed a unique game for both single players and two-player teams so families and friends could play together. The experience was full of fun animations, sound effects, surprise micro-interactions and visual payoffs that enriched the gameplay and kept our audience engaged.

Humor

In order to make engrossing content, humor is always key. Throughout our work with LEGO Games, including LEGO Dimensions, LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Worlds, we have worked to bring humor to the forefront of the rich world of LEGO IP. A great example was our “Meet That Hero” social video series for LEGO Dimensions video game. The challenge was to introduce legacy IPs from the 1980s, including “The A-Team,” “The Goonies,” “Knight Rider,” “Gremlins,” and “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial,” to a whole new generation.

Our strategy was to use iconic LEGO Dimensions’ characters that kids already love to tell the unique stories behind each IP. From LEGO Batman giving the cave from “The Goonies” a B+ rating (since he’s an expert on caves) to Lumpy Space Princess from “Adventure Time” relishing the fact that she gets to hang with the A-Team and make her friend Melissa “so jelly,” these pops of age-appropriate humor resonated with audiences of all ages – becoming a viral success with millions of views and high levels of engagement.

Vibrant Visuals

When creating digital online experiences for younger audiences, we use bright colors and incorporate playful illustrated elements. Less text, with simple, straight-forward language, is always better. We always strive to surprise and delight with things as simple as rollover micro-interactions and larger movements like full-page transitions.

COPPA

As parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, we recognize and embrace the need to regulate how brands communicate with younger audiences. It’s simple – we want children to be protected online. We champion the importance and need for COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) regulations and use COPPA as a clear and defining guide for our team. COPPA provides guiding principles and parameters that help define the sandbox our creatives can play in.

When developing experiences for kids, one of our biggest challenges and a main consideration within our creative processes is how we take something simple like a sweepstakes or sign-up micro-site and make it more fun and memorable, all while working within the COPPA guidelines. We work with our clients to limit the need for any information collected and if there is a need to collect into to ensure the parent’s contact email instead of the child’s, for instance. To further incentivize engagement and brand affinity, there are various techniques and enhancements we’ve applied throughout the years to create something more unique. Some of the most successful include incorporating mini-games, downloadable bonuses after submission, unlocking exclusive content, earning additional entries based on interactions and including Easter egg animations that appear as users navigate the experience.

At Mod Op, we enjoy creating a wide variety of work for industries ranging from luxury hospitality to B2B technology, but the kids’ content is something we all look forward to as an outlet for pure, unbridled creativity and a chance to feel like kids again.

At Mod Op, developing and producing thoughtful work for clients that impacts their business objectives is our key to success.  While we often receive great feedback from clients, it is nice to be recognized by an organization like the American Marketing Association for exceptional work.

Mod Op won for energy marketing, and business-to-business social media and is a finalist for business-to-business branding for its work with clients based out of the agency’s Dallas office. The AMA is one of the largest and most trusted marketing associations working to educate, support and enhance the performance of its members and marketing professionals around the world. The Marketer of the Year Awards are designed to recognize excellence in marketing and innovation in various categories.

Great work requires great clients, and we’ve got the best who put their trust in us to deliver for them every day. Our team is exceptional at understanding each client’s business, objectives, customers, products/services, market and challenges. As an integrated marketing communications agency, we take that knowledge and develop plans that leverage the right tools to deliver successful programs.

Mod Op’s work launching ExxonMobil’s first-ever Power Play Awards to promote women in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry secured the best overall strategy, design and implementation of a marketing program within the energy sector. The agency launched this awards program in four months, including multiple promotional campaigns and creative materials to raise awareness for the awards, nomination developments and judge recruitment. The awards ceremony was hosted during an industry event in September 2019, during which Mod Op assisted with supplemental public relations and social media needs.

In the category of business-to-business social media, Mod Op won  based on the agency’s work with Stream Data Centers to streamline the company’s organic and paid social media efforts. Mod Op’s social media efforts for the client have resulted in a significant increase in impressions, engagements and follower counts on Stream’s Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and have improved the quality and value of these metrics by focusing on Stream’s key target companies and high-level executives within those companies.

In the business-to-business branding award category, Mod Op’s work renaming PetroCloud to Twenty20 Solutions and updating the company’s overall brand strategy to reflect broader market appeal and clarity of services, scored for the agency. Mod Op’s work has helped the company determine and develop a new brand that not only represents where the company stands today but will also carry it into the future and encompass any new growth. The rebranding included a new name, logo and website overhaul, as well as a conjunctive public relations and digital advertising program to generate awareness of the new brand that continued throughout the year.

The real-world business results from these three clients showcase Mod Op’s focus on client objectives. Learn more about how Mod Op can help you.

Malls were in turmoil before the pandemic began, and many of their tenants won’t survive. But we humans crave a commons. We are, at root, social animals. Which is one of the reasons why the second- and third-order health effects of the quarantine have been so terrible.

It’s also why the return to commons-type environments — once we’re given the “all-clear” — is likely to be robust. We exist differently in crowds. We just do. Like fish. Like birds. We flock together.

But unlike fish and birds, we have constructed our public square. And we constructed it, like it or not, around commerce.

So when we fully re-emerge into a ‘public’ setting, that setting, in most communities around the world, will involve commerce. Our lives are built around it. Which is not to say that the e-commerce trends won’t continue. They absolutely will. The convenience factor is just too profound. While intelligent people can debate the “efficiencies” of e-commerce in terms of total environmental-cost-per-product (where does the emission math net out in terms of bringing each individual product to the consumer vs. bringing the consumer to the product), there is no question that the level of effort required to obtain anything with a tap, as opposed to driving to a store, is incomparable.

But final purchase is just one component of the brand-consumer relationship (albeit a highly important one). There’s still affinity, engagement, persuasion and connection – all of which need to happen before you get to conversion. Get my attention. Tell me a story. Let me see who else responds to that story. Is that a community I want to be a part of?

In these spheres of the lifecycle, “real” life holds certain advantages over the virtual. After all, people still trust and follow each other more IRL than in digital forums.

That tendency will compound in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. When it’s safe to be in a crowd, people will flock to each other more than ever – ready for brands to engage them. Looking to each other for cues on where they belong.

All of which presents tremendous opportunity for smart brands to forge new pathways into their consumer relationship. Physical ‘brand centers’ and experiences will flourish. There will be ample, prime real estate available. And with purchases shifting online, these ‘brand centers’ will be free from managing the logistics of inventory – which means they can put even more emphasis on building great, memorable, positive experience centers. They can focus on the story they want to tell. Immerse their consumers into their brand tale.

This trend also isn’t new. Branded pop-ups. Bank-cafes. Insta-ready-sets. Retailers have been incorporating experiences in an effort to fight off the incursions of online shopping for years now. But what wasn’t clear was the purpose. Sure, you could go to an art showing set up in a clothing boutique. Or go see a performance in a shoe store. But it wasn’t clear why you would.

Now we’ve all had a clear vision of life outside the commons. Of commerce being purely relegated to click-and-deliver. And it works. It works beautifully. But something is lacking. It’s us, as a collective, being out, being together. In the world we’ve built, brand spaces are where that communion happens. Give us something to focus on – immerse us in a story – and we will come. Because the real reason to go out is us. All of us. Experiencing things together. And that, as it happens, is enough.

The way each brand approaches this industry change should be driven by what they’re trying to accomplish as a business. Having said that, here are some things to think about:

• Take a hard look at your company’s website and the experience it offers to visitors. It’s most likely your most important marketing tool, and now is a great time to invest in it. In the absence of face-to-face meetings and events, your site has become even more important as customers and prospects look to educate themselves on options available to them. If your site doesn’t deliver the right information and experience, your chances of success diminish. Pay attention to user journeys and conversion – your site can be as effective at converting sales as you are, if you design it to be.
• Research search trends and volume. Your customers and partners are searching for what they care about – like raising their hands in a seminar. Make sure your site is relevant to those interests.
• Increase your attention to and investment in social properties. More customers are spending more time on social media, and this represents an opportunity for brands. Invest in meaningful content that creates better engagement with the market. Resist the urge to make every post directly promotional. The best engagement comes from offering something of value to those visiting your properties.
• We’ve all been on a thousand video conference calls while working from home. I’ve found them remarkably reliable and useful in staying connected with our clients and coworkers. Some of our clients have expanded their use of these tools beyond one-to-one and one-to-few meetings to use them for both content creation and networking events. From hosting and recording industry discussions that can be used as content to coordinating virtual happy hours and networking events with customers and prospects, brands are finding new ways to connect using new tools.
• Participation in and sponsorship of industry webinars is a great investment of time and resources, given the right topic and audience. As customers look for ways to stay educated and connected to the industry, publishers and brands are leveraging webinars to fill the void. We’re seeing more participation and engagement in webinars that, again, provide useful, informative content that’s important to viewers.
• During this time, digital marketing has become much more accessible to more companies. In a recent blog article my colleague, Shannon Sullivan, shared the news that the current environment has dropped digital advertising costs by up to 35%. This means brands can get much more exposure at lower media costs. If your brand has underutilized digital media, now is the right time. There are more ways to effectively reach audiences with digital programs than ever before, and the prices are right.

In many ways, the current situation levels the playing field for brands. Big budgets lead to big exposure at tradeshows – big booths, big staff, big sponsorships. Competition for attention is fierce and is typically dominated by the biggest industry players. In lieu of that, all brands are looking for smarter ways to best reach their audiences. Video conferencing technologies are affordable and effective in direct communications with customers and prospects. Without access to outside sources and high production resources, the market’s expectations for video content is much lower as brands try to cobble together production. It’s rapidly becoming less about how big your budget is and more about how well you can connect to the market with compelling content, creating a reality not dominated by dollars but one that places a priority the right content. In many ways, it is back to the basics of understanding what’s important to your market, developing content, not as a commercial for your company, but that focuses on providing value to customers and prospects and then finding the most effective programs to get that content in front of the right audiences.

It’s entirely possible, and maybe even probable, that large, in-person industry events will be impacted for years to come, not only because of the current pandemic, but as companies adjust to a challenging economic environment. It’s imperative that we all adapt to reach our objectives.

We can help. If you’d like to learn more or just talk about your options, please reach out to me at [email protected].