A organisation’s brand is about so much more than just its logo, tagline and social media handle. It is about the experience it gives to its clients. This is the core way that its clients and customers are truly able to connect with it.
While many of the leading organisations today have invested in state-of-the-art office spaces designed to wow prospects and give the best first impression, this experience often falls short in the digital realm.
Take for example an investor meeting or an annual general meeting (AGM). In many cases, organisations might default to generic virtual platforms or online conferencing tools that clearly pale in comparison to the prestige they’ve carefully cultivated when it comes to their physical spaces and experiences.
Digital Hospitality under the microscope
Today users have higher expectations of the brands they engage with. They expect a seamless experience across all digital touchpoints. That’s Digital Hospitality. And for the brand (if done well), they are creating experiences that are on-brand, personalised, frictionless and engaging. The benefits are infinite: greater customer satisfaction, differentiation from competitors, and enhanced brand loyalty.
That is the positive, but I must be clear that many digital experiences do fall into the trap of being scattered and inconsistent. Many organisations today utilise multiple platforms and channels that don’t always integrate with each other. This means limited control over branding, analytics and, ultimately, experience.
Similarly, many organisations also operate in silos, with different departments using disparate platforms, such as one tool for webinars, another for a survey, etc. While an audience engagement platform might be seen solely as a marketing solution, it can actually add value all across the business: training, onboarding, sales demos, thought leadership content and communications. If businesses take a holistic approach to audience engagement, creating unique experiences for both internal and external audiences, they’re able to gain access to valuable insights and make better data-driven decisions.
Defining a Digital Hospitality strategy
The first step in shaping a digital strategy is to create a single online destination for all content, whether it’s live, gated or on demand. By implementing a single sign-on solution and removing the need for users to fill in a new form for every piece of content, then institutions are reducing friction at every stage of the journey to build a smoother, richer experience.
The next step is to allow audiences to explore content on their terms. By removing rigid, predefined marketing funnels, brands are putting their users at the center of the experience. The easier it is for a ‘visitor’ to access what they want, when they want, the higher the chance they could dig deeper.
Staying with the content theme, people enjoy a wide range of diverse types of content. We’ve seen how the media landscape has shifted over the years that people consume news in a multitude of ways. The same can be said in the professional world. Customer, partners, prospects, investors must be engaged with in different ways. My advice is to develop a diverse multimedia library, including videos, webinars, podcasts, courses, live streams and interactive workshops. That’s not to say it all has to be new. Content can be worked and reworked in multiple ways to engage audiences – a video can be turned into a blog, for example. Then it is possible to track user behavior across all digital touchpoints to gather rich intent data and personalise going forward.
Staying ahead of the competition
Digital Hospitality holds enormous opportunity for organisations to differentiate from their competitors and be market leaders. If you don’t invest in this area of the digital experience then there is a real risk that your competitors will run with it and use it to their advantage.
Digital Hospitality done effectively means a better brand experience for audiences and more value delivered across an entire organisation.
Discover how you can achieve improved digital client engagement and brand consistency with Reef.
