Marketing-Driven Websites: Invest in Your Online Presence
July 19, 2021
We’ve seen it too often. DMOs invest a large amount of money into developing a new website, only for that website to stagnate for years. Then, DMOs make another large investment to build a new website because their existing site isn’t meeting their needs. It’s a vicious cycle. We break that cycle with our Marketing-Driven Websites philosophy. In this process, we analyze the performance of your website and make continual, incremental enhancements to optimize its ability to achieve your marketing goals—creating next-generation destination websites.
The internet is an ever-changing place. With constant updates to different platforms, search engines, and browsers, how people find information is always evolving. More importantly, people’s interests and information consumption behaviors change as well. So, why do DMOs keep their websites rigid and fixed as the world changes around them?
To maximize the impact of their websites, destinations should embrace a Marketing-Driven Website approach.
Marketing-Driven Website Approach
During a traditional website build, developers craft a plan up front, follow it, and call the site finished when it’s launched. Madden believes your website should never be finished. We develop our websites in three stages to ensure maximum performance and KPI achievement.
Stage One: Core Website
First, we design and develop your core website. This site will be launched and available to the public quickly—delivering your new website faster to market than a traditional build. But we don’t stop there.
Stage Two: Evaluation and Enhancement
After your core website is launched, we evaluate its performance and make enhancements to optimize its KPI achievement. These enhancements can include placements of buttons, different lead generation tactics, CTA messaging, and more.
Stage Three: Innovation to Maintain Growth
Because we believe your website is never finished, this stage remains ongoing. By identifying incremental improvements for your website, such as new immersive content, itinerary builders, landing pages, destination maps, or content recommendation technology, you can keep your website fresh and aligned with your marketing objectives. This approach also saves money, as making incremental investments in your site improves your ROI and costs less money in the long run.
Marketing-Driven Website Benefits
Inspiration Over Information
Over the past few years as the industry has changed, the purpose a DMO website needs to fulfill has changed as well. Visitors no longer look to individual websites for facts and information.
In the modern landscape of search capabilities, answers are at the tip of visitors’ fingers in a quarter of a second thanks to robust, intent-based, intelligent search platforms like Google. Consumers are searching “cool things to do this weekend” and navigating directly from the search platform to Google Maps to get them there. There are reviews, hours, addresses, pictures, information—literally everything a visitor needs before they even click through to your site.
So what is your role if not to educate and inform visitors? Inspiration. That may seem like a simple concept, but we encourage our clients to really consider what consumers see on your site and what they should see on your site. So many DMOs fixate on using their websites to inform rather than inspire, and Madden’s experts are on a mission to change that.
Maximize Impact and KPI Achievement
Just like with your creative and media strategy, if you’re not achieving the desired results you make adjustments and optimize. With our Marketing-Driven Website Approach, your core website will be put to the test to evaluate site performance after launch. We recommend looking at adjustments and enhancements to different elements of your website in an ongoing manner.
As your marketing needs and goals change, site adjustments based on data-driven research will
help keep the most vital and relevant information in front of your site visitors to ensure maximum engagement. Constantly optimizing your site towards your desired results will maximize your KPI achievement.
Incremental Improvement (and Investment)
We believe that a successful website should evolve and grow with your marketing program. As a full-service agency, we view your website through a holistic lens. It’s a key cog in your integrated marketing strategy and should, like the rest of your marketing tactics, dynamically evolve to maximize visitations.
As your budget allows, we recommend investing to continually enhance your site. This approach is vital to destination marketing success. You wouldn’t “set-and-forget” any of your other marketing elements. Why would you do it with your website? By consistently improving your website over time, you continue to move your marketing program forward and save money over the long-term by eliminating the need to rebuild every few years.
Integrated Destination Marketing
As part of our full-service capabilities and destination marketing partnership, we believe it’s our job to help DMOs break the destination website mold. By embracing a new website philosophy, you save money and gain a better-performing website. Our MarTech experts are standing by to discuss integrating a Marketing-Driven approach to your website.
