In the past few years of my professional career, I have been quite fortunate to be able to work alongside the fantastic Digital Marketing team at Reecetech and work as part of the awesome Digital team at NHP Electrical Engineering. Throughout these stints I have also worked alongside few Digital agencies and vendors in the APAC region and also overseas. Through this experience, I have come to realize that there is still quite a big potential for any companies, especially Small Medium size organization, to leverage off their Digital Content Management System (CMS) investment. As we all are aware these days, Digital Content marketing is the channel to go to potentially attract new leads and grow your customer base organically. If you are someone involved in Product Marketing/Business Development and have been trying to use content marketing as a source to get leads but not satisfied with the results, it’s time to revisit your CMS implementation and capabilities and bring more out of it.
I have 6 basic tips that will help you further maximize the benefits of your Digital CMS.
1. Follow your digital leads
If you are getting new leads through your Digital channel, then it means that your strategy is somewhat working enough for you. Good place to start. Now it’s time to get better at qualifying and nurturing your leads. Several things you can do to get most out of your leads.
a) Keep investing in consistent quality content that adds values to your Digital channel, Newsletters and contact us as always are great to keep your visitors engaged with your company and to maintain that feedback loop.
b) The sales funnel is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. You should know about the journey of your visitor in the sales funnel. Where is he/she at the current stage? Becoming aware, the visitors know your products/services. Developing an interest in your products/services through reading some of the above contents, then creating further desire through further research with your offline channel (sales/branch/customer service), before finally taking an action to buy your products/services.
c) Get as much information and insights as you can get about your online visitor. See if you can find out how did they end up in your Leads database in the first place? And what have you/your organization done with this information? Don’t just grow your lead database, make sure these leads are cleansed, qualified and followed up accordingly. Close the loop.
d) Do you have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system? If not, then consider one. If you want to start getting better at managing your leads/customers data, then CRM might be the answer you are looking for. It helps all parts of your organizations (and systems) to view and store this crucial piece information in one single repository.
2. Explore email marketing automation
Surely you’re thinking of doing this? Most companies will have some sort of ‘email marketing’ campaign. Some, if not most, are still done manually, internally or externally. Some of these tasks might include: Creating content and digital assets, managing different versions, getting approvals, keeping branding guidelines in-tact, ensuring mobile-compatibility, and reporting on the results (success) of this campaign on a regular basis. At first, this is still manageable, but as you scale up, you will need to ‘work smarter, not harder’. This is the time to bring in “automated” email marketing. It makes a lot of things more efficient and life a bit better.
Unlike the newsletters where you send the same content to all the leads, automated marketing can introduce the concept of personalized content. You can target the specified leads and can send them personalized content on different criteria such as their stage on their sales funnel (point 1 above), product-groups based, geographical location or mobile device they are using. This personalized content should not only talk about your products/service, but more around their problems in context. Give different tips and tricks or you can share different fun facts that keep them engaged.
3. Leverage your data analytics
Use data analytics to get better insights about your potential leads and website visitors. Another no brainer. There are way too many tools and marketing technology platform out there that does this, free or paid subscription service, the choice is yours. There is no excuse anymore for you not to do this. Google Analytics is a simple example from where you can start learning the basics about what analytics is all about, it provides you with all the basic information you need about your website traffic.
a) Assuming you have done all the above, the next step of the evolution will be, “Which data/metrics are important for you? Play around and fine tune the different graphical dashboards and reporting tools to get most out of the data. Remember again to personalize. Different stakeholders have different needs. They look data at different angles; require different delivery channel (email/print), and different frequency.
b) Once you start monitoring all the different KPIs and Metrics above, over time this will help you in identifying how effective you are in achieving your goals & objectives. For example: conversions, i.e. How many leads from the inquiry stage end up purchasing your products/services?
c) While we are on this topic, if you have note done this already, consider fine-tuning your content to ensure it is according to the latest Google SEO (Search Engine Optimization) algorithm.
4. Beware the omni-channel experience
Omni-channel is a bit of a buzz word that has been around for some time but still rings true for many organizations transforming digitally.
a) You want to ensure your brand identity across both print/offline and digital channels are consistent. Various departmental or geographical-based operational silos within your organization can potentially cause contradicting messages/brand positioning that your customers will perceive.
b) In terms of ‘content’, make sure that they are further optimized for various digital devices and screens. A user browsing on their mobile or smart devices might require a slightly cut-down version of your content. Also think how can you tie in the link between your print/offline channel to your digital channel and ensure you are able to harness this useful information for fine-tuning your future marketing campaign.
Example: How do you empower your front-line sales/marketing team working off-site face-to-face with a potential lead, by providing them upfront the content/keywords/products/services the lead has consumed in the digital channel?
5. Review your resource
“Implementation” is one thing, but “scaling up” is a whole different ball game. Maximizing your investment in your CMS requires you to also think about how you want to approach resourcing your team, ensuring it can grow organically with the requirements of the Business.
a) Assess where you are and be honest. If you have the right people with the right skills, then that’s great. But if you see potential gaps in the skills then maybe it’s time to invest in improving your team competencies in this Digital space.
b) Another alternative is that maybe it is better to leave something for others. Ensure you focus all your efforts and attentions early in your core business and outsource the right things to external parties. Of course this needs to be carefully thought through and should form part of your overall long-term strategy and plan.
c) Easier said than done, consider cross-functional collaboration with other departments within your organization. You never know but help might just be around the corner. The exciting thing about Digital CMS platform, or any Digital platform for argument’s sake, is that it sometimes spans across departments/regions and has the potential to shake up traditional silos and offer further scope for future organizational improvements.
Example: Traditionally, a centralized marketing/communications team is responsible for corporate content, however in the ‘new world’, each product/service-based team could arguably be responsible for their own content area to be able to better personalize these contents to their audience/customer base.
6. Pay attention to other external channels
Social media monitoring goes without saying. This last point is more about external content out there. Most organizations focus intensively on their own Digital presence, however have you ever wondered how your brands are presented outside of your own channel? Take into account your customers, vendors, external media, review and comparison websites. There might not be a lot of control on your hands but think of how best you can influence this through forms of cross-organizational collaboration. Arguably this goes beyond the topic of CMS, but there are enormous potentials to learn from others’ Digital presence.
Last but not least are your competitors. How does their newsletter/digital campaign look like? How are you ranked in Google search key words compared to them? On what platform/technology are their CMS? What they do well, what they don’t; what can you learn and improve on your own CMS implementation.
Bottom line, any technology implementation requires a ‘change mindset’. Any technology (including CMS) is only as good as the people and processes surround it. Challenge yourself (and your organization) and expand your comfort zone. Mistakes will be made but as long as you learn from them and keep on improving yourself (and your organization), it’s all well worth it.