High-value Content – and a Good Cms – Make the Real Marketing Difference
A quick look at many corporate Web sites finds a surprising amount of low-importance content occupying precious space – and consequently, customer time. The good stuff is supposed to be in there somewhere, but it’s just very hard to find. It should be a no-brainer then, to understand why monetizing content on Web sites seems so difficult; but online marketing dollars are being spent in bigger amounts than ever before, and the complaints about lack of ROI are getting louder.
It’s a bit hard to think that so much of the data and content we create is ineffectual, and just a waste of time. But we do need to keep it around for those rare times when someone wants it. So here’s what we’re up against:
It seems clear that what we need is great content and the right tools (a Content Management System or CMS) to input, manage and publish that content.
The Core: Content – or is it Customers?
There’s not much to say about the importance of quality content that hasn’t already been said. Repetitive, inaccurate, poorly written or out-of-date content can clearly cause long-term damage to the way your organization is perceived in the marketplace as well has how you rank in search engines.
Let’s shift the focus here to the content creators – how do you get the most from them? The key here seems to be synchrony: content creators must work together with marketing teams and higher-level management to ensure that the content generated is based on business imperatives and strategic goals. But is that enough? According to content management guru Gerry McGovern, “The Web changes the very roots of the relationship between the customer and the organization. The customer, not the organization, is dominant on the Web. Thus you must put the customer’s needs at the absolute center of everything you do if you want to be successful.”
Seen in this light, the issue is not just high-value content, but high-value, customer-focused content. In fact, you could possibly say that only customer-focused content is high-value content. This is much harder than it looks. Relating to content, technology and the Web site is much easier – they are tangible things that we can work with, tweak, and re-design at will. Understanding customer needs is a different story altogether.
It’s like a company saying “We have a great new product that will really impress you with its huge array of features. It’s got these bells and those whistles and is amazing value for money as well! It’s been called the best in its category by X analyst and Y research organization. Click here to Buy!” And then they wait for the sales revenue to come pouring in – but it’s only a trickle. Astonished, they go back to the drawing board, assuming there’s something terribly wrong with the product. Another blank; the product seems as good as it can be. So what’s wrong then? If the company had a way to analyze customer behavior on its site, it might then realize that what most customers want to hear is how products solve their problems, not just bristle with every possible gizmo. The content creators and marketers go into another huddle and then come up with “We have this great new product. It helps you address A and B problems while saving money. We’ll even give you a free trial to prove it…” Sure enough, there are more leads and more conversions.
The Right Tools
Once messaging, style, form and objectives are clear, it then becomes just as important to have the right tools to rationalize the process end-to-end. Without an effective way to input, manage and publish content to your site, there’s really no reason to create the content in the first place. So, apart from an understanding of ‘business imperatives’ and ‘strategic goals’, your content creators need:
Ergo, they need a good Content Management System (CMS).
The Good CMS and Better Online Marketing
Without getting into too much detail, it’s clear that a good CMS must address each of those above needs comprehensively. In your search for the right solution for your needs (not just the most technologically advanced or feature-rich), you’re sure to come up against the choice of going with a traditional installed system, an open-source program, or a hosted (Software-as-a-Service or SaaS) model. This is a separate story in itself, and you can find more information on choosing the right CMS in our whitepaper – “Which CMS is Right for Me?” – downloadable from the CrownPeak Infocenter.
Getting to the marketing aspect, there are several things the CMS can help you with:
?? Brand Consistency: Single-sourcing and central control ensures that customer-facing content is consistent and appealing, no matter the number of collaborators
?? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM): 51% of people click on the first result on a search page. Good content has to be found! The CMS can enforce W3C compliant code, create ‘crawlable’ site maps, eliminate broken links, reduce code clutter, create effective title tags and Metadata tags, and avoid content duplication. Even with paid placements, content hygiene will ensure your site ranks higher.
ROI
With an optimized Web presence, you are likely to see much more traffic – to all your online touch points. The combination of high-value (customer-centric, lest we forget) content and an effective CMS means a larger number of quality leads can be generated, which typically means more conversions and more revenue. Also, tracking these leads and responding in appropriate ways can now become much simpler; your marketers have the tools to manage the entire process, providing need-specific information to customers at the right time.
The icing on the cake would be a CMS that allows you do all of this without having to manage the technology itself. This is where the SaaS model comes into its own: you have the freedom to focus on core competencies – and conversions – while the vendor manages, maintains, and upgrades the CMS.
