Get Your Digital House in Order
According to a CNN Business report on Procter & Gamble, consumer needs and buying behaviors are changing. It’s safe to say all consumer habits, needs and desires are changing. 
Remember when the emphasis was on “experience” and not things? The boat, pool and hot tub industries are booming in many areas of the country. I would anticipate that the TV, audio and computer electronics industries will also see an uptick. Needless to say, we need to stay close to our stakeholders.
What we do know now is that the shift to online everything is “accelerating.” It’s time to get the digital house in order.
Here are a few ideas:
- In a recession, people tend to lean into the brands they trust. Strengthen your branding.
- Sell value and trust.
- E-everything. Make everything available online, but don’t sacrifice user experience.
- Tighten up your online giving and electronic pay user experiences.
- Build credibility on your site. You must exude trust and confidence in every article, video and graphic.
- Rewrite your site to take advantage of Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness). It must be incorporated into your site. This is the result of a Google Update called “Medic” released in late 2018.
- Research your users and how they rate your site.
- Don’t rely on the “just” effect, as in, “Oh, just put a contact us section at the end.” The key is engagement and time on site. Build a site that people want to dig deeper into with relevant information and ideas.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.