CMS or no CMS

29 April 2010

The way most Marketing, Product or Brand Managers speak about their brand  or brands can be very emotive; their brand is a “living and breathing” entity, with it’s own individual values and identity; the embodiment of a promise to the user, a commitment to deliver.

Establishing and communicating these elements within a brand identify is vital, especially in this 24/7 global age, where images and messages bombard audiences, especially with the widespread globalisation of brands.  That said, in today’s digital age, it should be easier to communicate, differentiate and promote your brand, product or service……. shouldn’t it?

In some ways, the new online world that we all live in can make brand marketing much harder. This is due to the diversity and scope of material, messages and competitor brands all fighting for their share of the audiences attention. 

Lack of continuity in design, presentation, content, style and tone can cause the overall brand to fragment, ultimately causing the brand identity to become blurred and ultimately cause the audience to question the brand itself. 

So working to ensure that your brands identity is strong and established within the digital area is vital; to anyone who wishes to develop their brand identity across all platforms, heightening recognition and recall vs. the competition.

It is a constant challenge for marketing managers to keep tight control of company branding across borders - especially online.  How do you retain control of your online content, and at the same time remain flexible enough to adapt quickly to localized needs or marketing initiatives?

Within this environment, the incorporation of the appropriate Content Management System for your brand and online presence is vital as it can ensure brand identity, value and ethos is maintained, whilst providing brand and product managers with effective publishing of collateral, preservation of content and consistency of tone, messages and imagery and ensuring control.

iQ Media’s CMS platform, iQ Core enables marketing personnel to manage their primary online presence, their website whilst maintaining 100% control of how their brand, products and services are viewed, globally.

Being able to manage and control all brand related content within one platform assists in the development of consistency of image and message, across one or more websites.

It also provides the opportunity to react far quicker to changes in external demands for information, new product launches etc, whilst offering significant economies of scale vs. maintenance costs, outsourcing of updates and amends to a pre-existing website or online presence.

So what benefit would iQ Core offer to you?

• Easy to use platform to facilitate updates and ongoing management of your web presence
• Designed to aid large corporate brands manage a multiple of different sites, communicating to variety of languages and audiences  
• Encouraging “buy in” from all areas of your business, encouragement of input into content and tone
• Reinforcement of brand values, within brand guidelines
• Free distribution of new content, quickly and effectively
• Encourage protocols to ensure sign off of all content, prior to going live
• Cost efficiencies vs. external resources
• Agility to adapt to ever changing demands of online audience

Having a clearly defined set of objectives for the website and for the viability of the CMS platform itself, will ensure that the new website will appeal to your target audience, project the values and ethos of your brand, products or services, whilst reinforcing your proposition.

iQ Core is not simply a platform or application, more a statement of intent to invest and support ongoing development of an online strategy, as part of the overall business and marketing strategy itself. 

As part of an analysis of the company’s overall business and marketing needs, iQ Core offers the opportunity to integrate with other relevant platforms, such as web analytic programmes and back office databases, to track responses and requests. 

This valuable data allows marketers to monitor, evaluate and develop targeted CRM campaigns, based upon visit history and behaviours.

Simply, iQ Core empowers the user to control content, whilst building a powerful online brand which is functional, interactive, customer focused and completely 100% on brand.

For more information on iQ Core and website design, please email solutions@iqmediagroup.co.uk or call 0845 612 7147 or click here