Unless this is your first visit to the Austin AMA website you almost certainly have noticed some changes. Today marks a complete refresh of our principal marketing asset! 

Even if you’ve never personally had a hand in overhauling a website, as a marketer you surely have witnessed the process. It’s a lot of work:

• It forces you to think about why you even have a website. Is it to attract new audience members? To serve your existing audience? And if the latter, serve them in what way[s]? Is your relationship transactional? Are you here to inform? To bring people together? To exist as a resource? 

• It also demands a new look at who that audience actually is. Who is your website talking to? What are they looking for? What questions are they asking online, the answers to which could and should be on your site? What do they need? And how can you meet those needs? 

• And then of course, there are all the issues of user experience, design, voice, navigation strategy. How does your audience prefer to consume information? Is yours an audience that wants a lot of detail? Are they put off or distracted by particular design approaches? Do they expect you to treat them with formality, or do they prefer a looser communication style?

We of course had to wrestle with all of these questions and issues as we revisited our own site. The result of our deliberations is on your screen. And I think we’re confident that it talks to the needs of marketers in Austin in 2020. 

Today most of us are grappling with a savage business environment and a time of unpredictable change. Many of us are suddenly idle, either because of contraction or market sludginess. We are looking for answers. And we feel alone. 

Austin AMA – and our new website – has a message for you: Welcome home. 

We exist to bring marketers together. To get answers to their questions, to see how others are dealing with today’s business challenges, to make themselves more marketable, perhaps to start down the path of getting back to work. 

Most importantly, Austin AMA is a vaccine against feeling alone. Interacting with marketers from all over Austin’s diverse economy, sharing, commiserating, hanging out with people who get it. 

The popular meme right now is we’re all in this together. Frankly, that doesn’t provide me with much comfort. What I like about Austin AMA, and what I invite you to experience if you haven’t already, is that here you aren’t alone. 

Our new site is simple and clean, but dramatic. It sets high design standards, which you’d expect from a bunch of marketers. We wanted all of our constituencies – newcomers, members, volunteers, sponsors – to have easy access to what they need. We’ve got all kinds of content meant to provide orientation, but expect much larger helpings of thought leadership going forward as well.

Ascend Marketing, an Austin AMA sponsor, was instrumental in the conception, design and execution of this new site. Ascend is a regionally and nationally prominent, full-service marketing agency with particular strengths in digital marketing. Ascend’s Kyle Herbst was our go-to guy at every step of the way. 

Austin AMA’s Jen Miller, the chapter’s president-elect, had the hardest job of all: she got this project off the ground. And Elly Call, a volunteer member of my Communications Committee, typed or influenced every word on every page of the new site. 

Let me know what you think about the new austinama.org. What else could this site be doing for you? You can reach me directly at don@austinama.org. And thanks…