Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer74% of the buying decision is made in advance of the first sales call, 50% before an email address is captured. So why wait until marketing automation or CRM to tailor the digital experience?
Digital Marketing is an ecosystem– one that’s consistently expanding to include new categories of marketing technology. The marketing technology landscape of 2015 is varied and dynamic. A look at the more than 2,000 logos in Scott Brinker’s MarTech Supergraphic gives us an idea of just how many solutions work together to make digital marketers successful in creating digital experiences that resonate with audiences.
Even in this gigantic mosaic of martech logos, the Web Content Management System (WCMS) is a bedrock. As Scott Brinker himself points out, “All roads lead to the website (and hence the CMS).” Of all the marketing technology on Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape, “CMS is arguably the only required category in the entire landscape.” And the more channels emerge for customer engagement, the more crucial content becomes to securing business goals online.
The Evolving CMS
As content becomes increasingly crucial to online business, the CMS must evolve without losing sight of itself. The web content management system must adapt to customer demands, while still remaining “best of breed.” Rather than simply “managing” and publishing content, the CMS must become an intelligent tool, offering actionable insights on content performance across contexts, personas and devices.
Major themes for thinking about the evolving digital marketing landscape:
● Content Marketing- The days of “push” advertising are over. Create relationships with potential and existing customers by providing informative, relevant and engaging content that addresses the higher need behind their purchase. Watch this excellent video from Forrester analyst Ryan Skinner on why content marketing matters.
● Content Performance- Data Driven Content Marketing metrics. Actionable insights on the performance of pieces of content, rather than pages. Content Performance metrics provide insight on which content provides value and which doesn’t perform, enabling you to continuously refine your content marketing strategy.
● Progressive Profiling- Continuous learning about visitors based on contextual data and real-time behavior enables you to create customer personas, and custom tailor their digital experience based on these insights
Content powers the entire customer journey
Lead to Revenue Management
Digital marketers– particularly in the B2B space– will be familiar with the concept of Lead to Revenue Management, often depicted with a funnel. As a lead matures, it goes from
Lead to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) to an Opportunity to a Deal
As a lead matures, it is cared for by Marketing, Sales and Account Management/Customer Service, respectively. For more on Lead to Revenue Management, follow the blog of Forrester Analyst and L2RM Expert Lori Wizdo.
The role of content in the customer journey goes way beyond the early stages: content is central to supporting business processes at all stages, from marketing to sales to customer retention. It can also be key to moving a customer through the customer journey, from one stage to another.
Content is crucial to supporting online business processes– that’s why marketing technology integrations like
● CMS and Marketing Automation
●CMS and Customer Retention Management Software (CRM)
●CMS and Social Sentiment Analysis and Helpdesk or Customer Service Software
are so important.
A CMS can turn visitors into leads
Visitor to Lead Management
Relevant experiences don’t have to start with Marketing Automation. 74% of the buying decision is made in advance of the first sales call, 50% before an email address is captured. So why wait until marketing automation or CRM to tailor the digital experience?
Understanding Content Performance helps you personalize the digital experience even at the anonymous visitor. Measuring and understanding which content is being consumed in real time, in combination with contextual data, helps you resonate with your visitor before the email address is captured, earlier in the funnel– before marketing automation plays a role.
CMS and Visitor to Lead Management
How does a CMS help with Visitor to Lead Management? A content management system with powerful targeting and personalization combined with strong content performance analytics can start tailoring the digital experience for even unknown, anonymous, first time visitors.
With content performance, Hippo CMS helps you understand which content performs, which doesnt for which audiences and personas, helps continuously refine content strategy–so, before Lead to Revenue Management comes into play, you can turn visitors into leads.
Visitor to Lead Management Metrics
Your content’s performance is key to turning visitors into leads. These metrics go beyond standard analytics, “which base their measurements on final html renderings of pages rather than the substance from which they are generated: the content itself.”
Content performance metrics use metadata that corresponds to the customer journey to understand content topics, forms, and editors which resonate with audiences at the various decision making stages. This enables to CMS to optimize and personalize the content delivered to each individual visitor– and turning that visitor into a lead.
This is how Content Performance brings the feedback loop into the CMS market. Content Performance gives the marketeer insights like:
●Persona trends and persona discovery
●Content gaps per persona in the content lifecycle
●Editorial effectiveness (show which editor or design is creating the best assets for which personas)
By adding business goals to assets, marketers have access to metrics including:
●Brand awareness
●Engagement
●Customer acquisition
●Conversion
The Next Step in Marketing Accountability
When Lori Wizdo coined Lead to Revenue Management, she set a precedent for using marketing automation to make marketing data driven and accountable. By measuring content performance, Visitor to Lead Management further professionalises the marketing discipline, by making content marketing accountable and data driven as well.
This blog was originally published on Hippo’s blog
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