Marketers Need to Adopt a Galilean View of the Online Universe

Many marketers operate under the assumption that their company’s website is at the center of the online universe. All they need is more site visitors filling out their lead forms or discovering their products and they’ll be successful online. But they’re wrong.

Like the Ptolemaic model of the universe that incorrectly assumed that the Earth was at the center of the universe, companies are fixated on an old way of thinking, focusing too much of their online strategy on their websites. Marketing guru Andrew Davis says that marketers need to adopt a Galilean view of the Web. Galileo correctly realized that the planets did not revolve around the Earth, but rather around the sun.

The Galilean model of the Web reflects how consumers actually experience content online, by revolving around the content platforms they use most, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and email. In this model, a brand’s website is essentially Pluto, says Davis. Brands cannot expect consumers to go to the edge of the online universe to find them. They need to meet consumers where they are and distribute their content on platforms consumers use every day.

Delivering content across galaxies of third party platforms is not easy — doing so at scale and measuring the results is even more difficult.

The modern content marketing tech stack needs components that reflect the Galilean view of the universe. A user-friendly, flexible CMS is the starting point for content generation and management. There are quite a few tools that integrate with content management systems to make multi-platform content distribution more scalable (like SocialFlow  and RebelMouse) and optimize the impact of each component (such as Keywee). And content analytics programs can help close the feedback loop on branded content campaigns to understand what resonates with different audience segments.

The more marketers think about their customer’s online universe when they create and distribute content, the more successful they will be, says Davis. The key is finding the right tools and building a powerful tech stack that supports a Galilean content strategy.

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