Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Creating Memorable + Relevant + Innovative ENGAGEMENT

Today, for brands, presence online not only means interacting with consumers and being where the consumers are, but it is to get quantitative results. Must brands leverage digital media only for ROI?

The brand utilizes, from a plethora of options - social networks, mobile applications, video marketing, viral marketing, rich media tools, direct marketing, search engine marketing, analytics among others to engage with the consumers to build lasting relationships.

Lasting relationships cannot be built based on an interaction or being present where they are. Neither can you get consumers to fulfill a transactional goal.

Picture this – a ‘wholistic experience’:

To create a wholistic experience which results in qualitative conversions, the brand should define the business objective and what results it expects from engaging with the consumer. The brand must know its attributes and pain-points. It should have an enticing narrative story. It must define the competitive edge it has over the others and what makes it unique. And, most importantly the brand must know how it is perceived by its audience. This I call ‘context’ with respect to Consumer.

The ‘consumer’ is an existing user or the segmented audience. Reaching out to them means understanding their sentiments towards the brand, their needs & expectations and their search insights, to in turn provide them with a dynamic user experience. The offline consumer’s perspective helps in understanding the brands presence beyond web.

The contextual ‘content’ that the brand uses to showcase itself on the web, including powerful copy, empathetic design, simplified IA and rich media assets form the content strategy.

Part of content creation is, arriving at an appropriate channel mix for marketing, i.e. identifying channels to seed and spread the communication. SEO and SEM strategies can be deployed at this stage making the experience relevant and cost effective.

It is the relevance of the context in which the brand reaches out to its consumers that is called
Brand Communication.

By developing content for the consumer, the brand connects emotionally and evocatively to create a
memorable experience.

Content creation is -
innovatively packaging customer sentiments.



The brand now has a platform that the consumers can trust and engage with. Working with the 3 key elements of engagement – context, consumer and content, guides the brand towards achieving Relevant, Memorable and Innovative engagement.
Creating this wholistic experience ensures definite return on investment and help brands create lasting relationships with the consumers.