As the concept of "pure play WCM" or "WCM focused on B2C" increasingly takes on the new name of "interactive marketing," it's intriguing to find out what really is on the mind of marketers these days.

A recent survey was posted to a CMO network (which for non-disclosure reasons will have to remain nameless) asking what CMO's most care about today.  The top three results were as follows:

• ROI; demonstrating and measuring marketing effectiveness.
• Brand; establishing it, preserving it, etc.
• Job Security; having typically less than two years to achieve results.

In short, the top traditional concern of marketers "brand" is now sandwiched in some order, between demonstrating that marketing has value and showing that value soon enough so as not to get fired!

It's no wonder then that the opportunity presented by online interactive marketing methods and technologies emerging under the WCM banner are suddenly so critical to success.

 

There's a new term making the rounds amongst industry analysts and trade show circuits: Interactive Marketing.  Like all of these terms, it is both simple and deceptive.   First the simple part.  Think of traditional, old school marketing and you have the classic "push" model.  A business creates a brand - everything that encapsulates their messages and image - and then pushes it on the market.  We as consumers simply sit back and listen.  In simplest terms, "interactive marketing" is marketing that no longer relies on the "push" model of communication.  Instead, the customer and business "interact" in a "two-way conversation."  This two-way interactivity is of course, powered entirely by the Web, and all that new "social computing" it has unleashed.  

If you think this is some guru-driven wishful thinking, think again.  Here's a great ad put together for Microsoft no less:

 

Now comes the tricky part.  How does a marketing organization, that for the better part of century has pushed "brand" at the center of everything, possibly become "interactive?" This isn't just a change in medium, from TV and print to online. This is a change in style, attitude, and approach.  These changes are too big to cover in one blog post, but here's the first lesson:

"Maintaining Web Sites" is no longer enough!

In the "push" model, the Web site was just a different form factor for the same methods.  In many cases, the Web site was an afterthought.  But even when front-and-center, the Web was treated with the similar "control" focus of brand:  never let it look bad.  The requirements for WCM translated thusly:  no broken links, no bad information, consistency of brand, strict approval processes, controlled version management and so on. In short, the Web site was something to be "maintained" hopefully as smoothly and easily as possible.

Not so for those in pursuit of Interactive Marketing.  The goal isn't pushing brand (though that never goes away either!) The goal is engaging customers, getting them to participate. No longer can you simply have a clean accurate site that pushes your brand.  Now, the interactivity, or rather, effectiveness of your Web presence matters far more than the efficiency of keeping it up to date.

For that, your WCM has to get beyond "automating site maintenance," and provide the tools required to engage your customers - constantly reacting to their interaction with you and optimizing the results your business obtains.

There's been a fair amount of excitement about our just released Personalization Solution lately.  Our Web usage stats are through the roof.  Customer inquiries are pouring in.  And the industry expert reviews we've received in just these first few days all add up to the traditional buzz that marketing and corporations get excited about.  But in this case, I'm not talking about that kind of excitement.. The excitement is really here, internally at Percussion.

You see, some time back in 2006, we set ourselves down a path towards a new vision for "WCM" based on how we saw the market evolving.  It's not complicated.  It's simply this: businesses want to use the Web and WCM to actually GROW their business.  Whether it's sales, memberships, leads, or good old fashioned customer loyalty and brand recognition, "top line growth through the Web" is front and center.  Our view is, it's the job of WCM to make it possible.

If this seems overly obvious, compare it to what it is NOT:  "controlling the content chaos" or "standardization" or "efficiency through infrastructure consolidation around common services."  In short, only a few years ago, businesses were essentially saying "Ok, if we have to have a Web site, let's at least not have it cost too much to maintain or worse, blow up in our face." The Web was pain, a cost center, an afterthought.  I suppose infrastructure efficiency is the kind of thinking traditional mammoth IT vendors get excited about.  But it was never something we could fully embrace.  Focused, innovative companies like Percussion fundamentally exist to enable rapid adoption for new business objectives - usually growth.  

Our goal is to make using the Web - whether new technologies or approaches - simple enough, and cost effective enough so that any company can do it.  Productivity and internal efficiency are fine business goals.   But well, at Percussion we just get jazzed about helping you GROW -  more customers, more revenue, more of whatever it is you do online.  With three Percussion 2.0 Solutions out the door, and more on the way, there's a lot be excited about.

 

 

In the midst of a briefing on our new Personalization Solution, Scott Abel (aka The Content Wrangler) summed it up nicely - "now there are no excuses!"   I've decided the same applies to Contentions.  So far, my approach has been more a lesson in how NOT to Blog - every few weeks at best, and too much to digest when it does come.  A Blog is a between-meal snack, not a formal three course dinner.

For some time, folks have commented on this. "They're more like articles" people would tell me. "Good reading, but when is the next post?"  My defense always was "hey, look at my peers!"  Most industry analysts blogs are even more infrequent - some of the major ones I subscribe to are updated less than once a month, and they have half a dozen or so contributors.  It's not like industry best practices and strategy news changes with your morning coffee.

Turns out, as with most excuses, there is (was) no excuse all along.  There's plenty going on, and there's no waiting either. Yes, we're in the midst of a massive change to our website, Percussion.com (more on that later).  Yes, we have a bunch of new capabilities I wanted to deploy first and THEN start blogging more frequently.

But enough of that.  Talk to you all again tomorrow!

. . .

No, really, I'll be here.  I mean it!

 

Bashing the "mainstream media" the last few years has become a sport of sorts. Everyone jumped in with their own predictions of doom. And the numbers are there to back it. Web bubble or no, print readership, subscribers, and circulation have all trended down since the dawn of the information age.  For much of this time, media companies were in some form of denial.  But with the resurgence of the Web often called "Web 2.0," for the first time in a long time, the outlook for the media industry isn't filled with gloom and doom.  In fact, the convergence of multi-channel communications and the explosion of "community" or "user generated content" is fueling a new found sense of opportunity that at least blunts the fear associated with such dramatic change.  

Visit your local online news site, and chances are, there's a lot more there than articles filed by reporters.  A recent study of news sites detailed the importance of rich media and other channels, such as Video, RSS, Blogs and Podcasts as the main driver of Web site traffic.  Use of video content was up 30% or more, and almost all had some form of user interaction such as comments on Blogs or stories.  The success of these new channels is not simply driven by mobile devices or other technical changes, but by a recognition that the Web as a communication medium is fundamentally interactive.  Indeed, the authors of the study had this piece of advice for news sites: "steer away from AP and generic content and instead offer unique, hyper-localized information that is difficult to find elsewhere."

Some media commentators have suggested going that one further, not just utilizing, but relying on so-called "user generated content" as a primary content generation mechanism.  It's an intriguing way of turning a negative into a positive. The high cost of generating content and holding onto visitors is transformed into a highly interactive and participatory subscriber base.

For those not in the media business, now might be a good time to stop the bashing and realize that many of these problems are headed your way as well.  While retention of paid advertising or a subscriber base might not be a universal need, every Web project today is under increasing pressure to deliver measurable return on investment from site visitors, and all under the increasingly constrained budgets for content generation and production.

Leveraging user generated content, embracing new channels and rich media, linking, syndicating and otherwise blending your own site content with community sites and other external sites have become a critical new means for meeting these challenges.  If the surge in demand for our own Community Marketing Solution is any indication, this is one trend the market is not waiting to adopt.