Designing Strategy: Realign Your Mission and Values With Your Digital Presence

Realign Your Mission and Values With Your Digital Presence

Designing Strategy

Introduction

Introduction | 3

The fact that Tanya Shaw is a fictional person makes the point even more perfectly.

In late August 2012, Shaw, ostensibly a young woman from Columbus, Ohio, “bravely” dined for the first time at a Thai cafe without having done any research on the restaurant’s food or service. She didn’t search for reviews of the restaurant via Google or query her friends about it on Facebook. She just happened upon the place and walked right in. “Well, I haven’t pored over the menu on the restaurant’s website, read the first 20 Yelp ratings, or scanned any online reviews from blogs or newspapers, but here we go,” Shaw was quoted as saying. “I’m flying totally blind here.”

Shaw was the subject of a “news” article on the satirical website The Onion. Not a real person. But an authentic and believable representation of almost everyone today – especially those under a certain not-so-young age.

Introduction | 4

Why was this an example of “funny-because-it’s-true”? Because very few Americans today would actually take this risk. People are increasingly unwilling to patronize a business unless it has a legitimate online presence. If a restaurant has negative reviews on Yelp and Chowhound, what does that say about it? Worse yet, what if it has zero reviews? We have become a society in which one’s physical storefront is no more important than one’s virtual representation – probably less important, in fact.

That reality is even more true for professional services businesses. If your business is interior design but your website looks like it was created in 1998, that won’t bode well for bringing in new customers. If you do A/C installation and repair, but a potential customer can’t easily contact you for an appointment through your site, that potential customer is likely to go elsewhere.

Introduction | 5

The need to thoughtfully present oneself online is even more acute for those without brick-and-mortar businesses. Campaigns, causes, non-profits, movements, celebrities, ideas — all of these desire for their fans and followers to take action, but often have little more than their digital presence with which to make an impact.

But the idea behind “Designing Strategy” isn’t simply about building a slick-looking website with all the latest bells, whistles, and social media plug-ins. Instead, it’s about asking oneself all of the questions that need to be answered when building an online presence, and using those answers to form an outreach, engagement, or marketing game plan. Also, “Designing Strategy” means aligning your most public, personal and important touchpoint with target audiences and customers – your website – with the mission, values, and competitive advantages your organization offers. Instead of writing up a business plan or a strategy memo – tools that suffer a half-life of fifteen whole minutes – build or redesign your organization’s website first and use the designing process to determine, hone, or realign your organization’s strategy.

Introduction | 6

Based on many years of working with a wide range of clients, it is our firm belief that every organization ought to routinely envision its own target customer – its own fictional Tanya Shaw – and design a strategy to find, win over, and serve that customer. In this digital age, it’s satire to think customers will simply walk through your door. But, as we offer, effective digital communications are not only an imperative but an opportunity to fully (re)imagine and develop a winning strategy.

Our Definition of Customer - We view customers as anyone an organization serves. You may call them a targeted audience, a segment, a supporter, a constituency, what have you. In our context it’s anyone who you want to serve, who wants what you have, or cares about your success. We believe customer is a good word to use for all of these because it implies a relationship based on service - the organization to the customer.

We want you to succeed and we know digital is the way

We want you to succeed and we know digital is the way | 8

We want your organization to grow or become more efficient or more profitable or more responsive and sensitive to customers needs. We believe organizations, whether big or small or in-between, should recognize frequent and routine reflection is an essential element to success. Regularly evaluating one’s path, progress, metrics, and mission is critical. And we believe that is true of all organizations. However, the problem at hand is how most organizations approach that task. The big ones hire high-dollar consultants. The medium-sized ones often hold annual retreats, brainstorming sessions, or employee rallies. Small organizations try to eke out a few hours every quarter to take stock of where they are, usually ceding those hours, instead, to the running and managing of their own core operations.

We want you to succeed and we know digital is the way | 9

Our view, based on countless hours consulting for organizations, is that the traditional way of measuring success, re-benchmarking, and re-focusing a organizational mission is, well, expensive. It’s also slow, out-dated, and inefficient.

The purpose herein is to describe a simple, affordable, and effective way of focusing your business model (whatever type of organization you are) and keying in to areas for improvement.

In short, we describe why you should scrap the traditional business/strategy plan approach, and instead design and build a digital platform.

What the EFF is a digital platform? - Well, let’s consult Wikipedia. It is “an audience-centric platform across different media and various business functions.” Think about what that means in a digital world - it’s you, it’s your organization. IT’S EVERYTHING. These days, “digital platform” is just another way of saying “your identity.”

Our Experience

Our Experience | 11

At IDMLOCO, our business is – to put it in the terms that our parents can understand – building websites. And we’ve built a lot of them – for companies national and local, for political campaigns, for causes, for individuals, and more. We even once built a website for a rental service for race cars (one of our passions).

Our Experience | 12

But when we say we do “websites,” of course we mean much more than that. We’re not just graphic designers, HTML coders and Wordpress experts. There may be other companies out there that approach the job that way. We don’t. We get that your digital presence is your public face - and that includes not just your website, but your email blasts, online advertising and social media profiles. It’s your storefront, your front office, your organization. It should project to the world everything you want to say about your organization and everything potential customers need to hear to believe and support you. So, in that frame of reference, we don’t just build websites, we develop a full digital strategy and, perhaps more importantly, we more often than not consult on core business, outreach and marketing strategy.

Figure 1: IDMLOCO’s Integrated Digital Strategy Framework

TV

1

2

3SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

ACTIVIST EMAIL

SMSSMS

QR CODE

PHONE/MOBILE WEBSITE

WEB LANDINGPAGE

WEB LANDINGPAGE

SOCIAL APP MOBILE WEB

RADIO EMAIL

CONTACT

ENGAGE

ACTIVATE

SOCIAL ADS

SUPPORTER ACTIONS

MOBILE ADSWEB &

VIDEO ADS

ACTIVISTDATABASE

SHAREDONATE PETITION

Our Experience | 13

Why do we say that? Because almost every time we are asked to design a website for a company or provide other digital solutions, we’re called in as utility workers. Like plumbers or cable repair people – to provide a narrowly defined service. However, almost every time, we find ourselves assuming dual roles: both the digital designer and the business strategy consultant. That’s because in working to develop an online presence, we see a need to ask organizations questions such as “who is your target audience?” and “what are your competitors doing that you’re not?” Those are queries that help us understand an organization, wrap our minds around its goals, and design an appropriate online public face. They are questions that force an organization to focus its goals, strategies, and identity.

For the vast majority of organizations, it becomes clear to us that it’s the first time those questions have been asked.

Stripping away all the MBA jargon, have you asked yourself these kinds of questions lately? • Whatismybusiness here to accomplish?

• Whoaremycustomers?• Whyaretheymy customers? • HowcanIbetterserve my customers?

• HowwillIattractnew customers?• Whataremy competitors doing?• Whatismybusiness known for?• WhatdoIwantpeople to know my business for?

Our Experience | 14

Imagine that: an organization – whether it has been operating for a decade or is brand new – that has never surveyed its competitors, asked itself to put a mission statement down on paper, or charted a path to greater success. We’ve worked with hundreds of them.

From our experience, this deficiency is universal, across the board, whether an organization is a locally focused business with just a handful of employees or a statewide political campaign commanding millions of dollars of expenditures over just a few months.

If you have concise written answer to these questions that are 100% relevant to your current situation, you’re way ahead of the curve. In our experience, most organizations don’t, which is why it’s so hard to develop great website content during a redesign.

Our Experience | 15

Therefore, let us restate it that way: In our experience, we’ve consulted for organizations, big and small; we’ve consulted for political campaigns, causes, celebrities, and more; we’ve helped companies focus their strategies – once even for that race car rental service.

And in doing so, we’ve noticed a trend. A problematic one.

Most organizations have a difficult time articulating who they are. They can’t deliver an elevator pitch. They haven’t outlined an identity. They have no mission statement, no 6-month or 1-year plan.

Our Experience | 16

So, that’s when it hit us. We ought to start talking about designing a website as much more than HTML and Flash and Wordpress. The process of creating a website causes one to examine all aspects of one’s business. The process forces the website-owner to consider and hone its reason for being and its path forward. Thereby, the firm developing the website, if it has the experience to do so, serves as more of a business consultant than a utility worker providing a product. We ought to start talking about designing strategies rather than just designing websites.

For IDMLOCO, that works, because our background merges years of political campaign consulting services for some of the largest, most complex campaigns in history and even more years of prior management consulting experience with some of the world’s largest organizations. It’s been said that a management consultant simply looks at the client’s watch to tell her what time it is. While it is true that an outside set of eyes can bring a new perspective, it is also true that an accurate perspective requires rigorous analysis combined with strategic techniques.

Our Experience | 17

Many organizations might consider it radical to throw away the business plan or strategy memo, do away with mission statements, and get rid of the prospectus and the marketing brochures (you know they’re outdated anyway) and instead put efforts into building and refreshing a website. But let us explain why this idea isn’t so extreme.

The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence

The Best In The Business Ensure Their Mission And

Values Are Aligned With Their Digital Presence

We all know Google.

It began as a search engine with the goal to organize all the world’s information. Its corporate ethos from day one was organized around a unique, but simple, guiding principle: “Don’t be evil.”

The company’s main mission is to organize the world’s information in ways that are helpful to people. If you need directions from your home to the nearest health care clinic or want to find a recipe for an all-organic lemon meringue pie, Google is there for you.

That’s one of the reasons its website is famously stripped down. Type that URL into your web browser and you’ll see a mostly-white screen with just the word “Google” and a search bar. The company made a deliberate decision to focus on its core reason-for-being — search — and resist the urge to clutter its precious online real estate with anything that would dilute its persona and, more importantly, risk its users’ trust. There is not a single thing on the site that conveys “we’re trying to sell you something” or “we’re trying to make a political point.”



That is, until September 2012.

When Google released its tablet computer, the Nexus 7, to compete with the iPad, a modest announcement appeared on the page under the search bar. An image of a small portion of the device was accompanied by the words “The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.”

In the grand scheme of things, this was not dramatic. However, the Internet erupted.



Online media immediately began sniping. Bloggers questioned whether Google had completely abandoned its long-standing “don’t be evil” tenet. In articles and opinions, attention was drawn to the recent departure of an important executive with the company who had previously had jurisdiction over the homepage. Negative comments about the Nexus 7 device ensued.

Why did that happen?



Google is a company that exists only online. Its website projects the persona of a company that is here to help – a friendly, well-meaning company. On a daily basis, it exhibits a deliberate choice to eschew sales and proselytizing. If, on one day every six months or a year, it takes a different approach, it represents a stark choice to exhibit a different ethos, or to buck or highlight its ethos. An apt corollary would be a pizza joint that, on one day, decided to instead serve only udon noodle bowls. Or, an auto repair shop with a long tradition of honest service and below-market-rate hourly rates that, in an instant, tripled its estimates and began unnecessarily up-selling customers. Or an independent punk rock group that espouses a do-it-yourself ethic filing a lawsuit to sue music-lovers who downloaded their songs without paying for them.



The Google example is perhaps more sharply defined than most, but the lesson for all organizations remains: stray from your mission, your business model, and there are consequences. Not only does a well-thought-out website help to focus on that business model, but it also serves to remind you of it, daily. Just like looking in the mirror as you brush your teeth and ready yourself for each day, a company’s website and its every digital interface – from its Twitter feed to its mobile app – outwardly face the public every minute and make an impression. How you present your organization, communicate its value, what you say and do matters. A lot.



Just think - Google’s actions online stepped out of alignment with its mission and values as its customers understood them for a very short time and paid a heavy price - in terms of earned media, brand loyalty and sales. What price is your organization paying EVERY DAY by maintaining a digital presence that might be outdated, difficult to use, or even ugly - but definitely out of alignment with your stated mission and values?

Think about it:• Whatdoesabusinessplanorstrategymemodo that a well-thought-out website doesn’t?• Moreimportantly,whatmoredoesawebsite do that a static business plan or strategy memo could never?

Stop Wasting Time and Get On With It!

Stop Wasting Time and Get On With It! | 26

You’ve heard the saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Oscar Wilde wrote that, or maybe it was Will Rogers – it was definitely in an American shampoo commercial in the 1980s that warned of dandruff.

In any case, in our digital world, that saying is no longer necessarily true. In fact, there are countless avenues and manners of making multiple impressions at any given moment. (However, that also means there’s the possibility of making a number of poor impressions.) That’s why we advocate for strategies that also live and breathe and can adapt. In doing so, we’re also advocating for organizations to view their digital team as broader business strategists.

Stop Wasting Time and Get On With It! | 27

Because the traditional methods of determining an organization’s path are too abstract and disconnected from the realities of managing an organization. It’s like learning math in school, but without the context of a real world application. With digital platform design, you start with the application – all the work is done in pursuit of a real objective that provides immediate value when achieved. How much more enjoyable would math class have been if every problem assigned got you one step closer to building a stronger bridge, or a more efficient engine? Having a real, tangible asset that does something to attract new customers and grow your business at the end of the planning process puts you in a different mindset – it’s no longer busy work. It’s fun. It’s approachable. And it makes sense.

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