Is your online presence “engaging?”
Have you ever seen some of the first commercials that were broadcast back in the early days of TV? They were shot live, of course. And most of them looked like “talking radio spots.” It was like someone put a camera in the recording booth, with an on-camera announcer reading a script right over the air. No one seemed to understand this “exciting new medium,” so advertisers tended to use it the same way they used something they did know — radio.
Today, you can see that same sort of thing happening in the online space. Marketers and agencies are comfortable with the tactics and executions of the media we’ve been working with for decades, and figure that the same things that have always worked on TV or in print or in a brochure will also work online.
The big problem with that thinking is that the term “engagement” means something all together different in the online space. With TV, print, outdoor, or even direct mail, “engagement” means getting viewer/reader involvement in the message to build awareness and, hopefully, preference. The hope is that at some point, this engagement will lead to a sale. Online, “engagement” means giving your audience a reason and the means to react to you NOW, and that reaction is intended to build a relationship between advertiser and audience, not necessarily to make a sale.
Engagement with consumers comes in all forms. Is there an enticement on your site that makes your customers want to share their personal information with you? Do customers have a reason to visit your site over and over again? Do you craft relevant opt-in messages that your customers will look forward to seeing? Have you established customer forums where customers can share experiences with one another and co-create with you? Are you monitoring the blogosphere to find out what customers and non-customers are saying about you, and do you have a strategy in place to respond?
Or, do you “just have a web site”?
Use of the web is growing exponentially (by 2012, its advertising revenues are projected to surpass newspapers, cable TV, radio and even broadcast TV). Now is the time to understand and optimize your use of this medium.
Posted by Mickey
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