Best Practices for Empowering Business Users to Create Digital Experiences
by Leigh Hamer | Last Updated: Mar 22, 2023
When executed well, a digital strategy engages customers throughout their customer journey and engenders brand loyalty (i.e. repeat purchases). When referred to as a ‘brand strategy,’ we all know it takes people to plan, implement, and launch these initiatives.
So how is your brand empowering business users to create digital experiences that build brand loyalty? Before we dive into answering this question, let’s take a beat to fully define the question. ‘Empower’ may have achieved the overused-buzzword status in software, but it wraps up three key attributes every person desires: authority, confidence, and control.
To be empowered is to have the authority to make decisions; the confidence to act decisively; and the ability to exert control in implementing decisions. To set up business users for success, organizations must create a culture of empowerment.
Four Best Practices for Empowering Business Users
Digital marketing campaigns always include digital experiences, which encompass landing pages, microsites, secure portals, forms, and websites. There are four best practices every organization should adhere to when coordinating the implementation, launch, and management of these various digital properties:
1.Authority
Designate a single leader of the (likely) cross-functional team responsible for creating and launching digital experiences. Unless your employees are adept at managing within a matrix organization, a single leader is key to success. This will provide the project team with a clear project leader; a single point of escalation for all project-related decisions.
Without a single leader, a cross-functional project team will fail. Individual team members are likely to run with their own ideas, yielding inconsistent results. A single project leader can ensure there is collaboration and efficiency in executing assigned tasks.
2. Access to Information
Ahead of each project, it is critical that the business identify where necessary information is housed - such as product pricing, images, and approved content - and ensure the project leader has timely access to that information.
Whether your project team is tasked with transforming printed product guides into digital experiences or executing on a D2C strategy, they will need access to a variety of data sources.
Every well-planned digital experience should engage customers at various points of their customer journey. Your project team will need to know about the target audience and the touchpoints that are available at each stage of the customer journey. They will need images, videos, and text to assemble a branded experience. By giving a project team access to a digital asset management (DAM) system, they can work faster.
A project team may also need product data, such as product images, pricing, descriptions, and product comparison charts. If your project team can access the organization’s product information management (PIM) system, they can confidently build product-specific digital experiences that are always up to date with the latest product data.
3. Timeline
Business leaders should clearly communicate milestones and critical dates, such as product launches, so the project leader has the confidence to make key decisions. A detailed timeline shared with the entire team means an iterative - or Agile - approach to launching digital experiences can be achieved.
Digital experiences are an aggressive marketer’s dream. Marketing leaders can launch a digital experience with the minimal information available, such as teasing a new product line. With this minimal information, they can start a conversation and build market interest. Then, as the brand team develops more content and a product launch date approaches, the marketing team can update the digital experience with more robust content. Turning what was essentially a product ad landing page into an engaging ecommerce microsite.
If a project leader has a clear timeline they can be positioned to confidently deploy information at key moments, generating the right buzz and excitement among a brand’s target audience.
4. Metrics of Success
How will the business and business leaders define if a single digital experience, or grouping of digital experiences within a marketing campaign were successful? Documented metrics of success should provide the project leader with a clear direction on what is expected of every digital experience. Metrics of success are intended to guide a project leader’s decisions and give them confidence in making critical choices.
Commonly, metrics of success include conversion metrics, such as booking a meeting, making a purchase, or completing a sign-up form. When documenting metrics of success, follow the SMART method. Metrics should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Every digital experience, from those designed to disrupt the aisle to collect zero-party data, metrics of success will guide how they are structured, promoted, and optimized.
An empowered business user is an effective team leader, who can successfully manage a project to achieve the desired results.