Content marketing, particularly around products, is now key to creating personalised customer experiences, and marketers need to invest in the right technology to manage it.
For many marketers, content is at the core of the brand experience they help shape for the organisation they work for. Relevant, meaningful and impactful content can go a long way to fostering loyalty, encouraging word-of-mouth recommendations and cementing the relationship between that customer and a favoured brand.
The flip-side is also true. If brands fail to deliver the type and style of content that will truly resonate with their audience, then there is a risk that those customers will look elsewhere. Recent research from Nuxeo revealed that more than half of consumers (54%) say they would switch to a competitor if the digital customer experience did not measure up.
This digital experience includes: the right product info (21% said this was their biggest shopping challenge); personalised content (28% said this would encourage them to buy again); and good product photography (50% would buy elsewhere if this was lacking).
More than ever, retailers and brands must deliver relevant personalised content to their customers. What can brands do to ensure they deliver the right digital experience to consumers?
Content marketing and delivering CX
Content is an essential element of marketing and the customer experience, even more so in the digital era. Whether it’s a consumer searching for a pair of trainers endorsed by a favourite singer, or a vinyl lover finding a replacement part for their record player and getting instructions on how to fix it, content is at the heart of these experiences.
When a brand can deliver an exceptional experience, it helps build and develop customer loyalty. Content needs to be accurate, relevant, timely, intelligent and engaging, so it can be a challenge for brands to deliver such an experience across a range of different platforms.
Retailers and brands must do all they can to maximise the value they get from content, and a big part of this is managing it in the most effective way.
If a brand struggles to bring new product innovations to market quickly, or to respond in a timely way to new trends, they risk losing valued customers to rivals. Yet too often this is the reality for suppliers: the inability to quickly and efficiently generate and distribute relevant product information, and enticing visual experiences which help to contextualise or personalise content for target customers, means they are not ready for consumers as their latest desires and demands are forming.
The importance of content
The Nuxeo research revealed that 41% of consumers said they engaged at least once a week with a brand or retailer’s mobile app; 42% via a retailer’s website and 28% via a brand’s web site. Around a quarter of respondents aged under 44 said they engaged with a retailer or brand’s mobile app daily.
Social media is of course a popular way for consumers to engage with a brand’s content. Almost a quarter (24%) of respondents said they engage with a favoured brand’s content via Facebook every day, with 15% doing so via Instagram and 10% via Twitter. Just 5% of consumers overall engaged with retailers and brands via TikTok every day, but in the youngest age category, this rose to 14%.
Relevance, personalisation and value of content clearly matter to consumers. More than four in 10 of the research respondents said they have recommended a retailer because of the quality of the content they share, rising to almost six in 10 of 16- to 24-year-olds. Meanwhile, 29% of respondents said personalised content from a retailer makes them feel more valued, and 28% were more likely to buy again.
The emergence of product asset management
Retailers and brands must do all they can to maximise the value they get from content, and a big part of this is managing it in the most effective way. Digital asset management (DAM) has long been an important technology in terms of marketing, but in recent years has become invaluable when looking at the larger product lifecycle, and has evolved into ‘product asset management’ (PAM). PAM is a strategy to leverage enterprise digital asset management technology across the product lifecycle.
By providing a common platform for critical product information (both assets and data) at key points in the product lifecycle (design, packaging, campaign development, etc), retailers and brands can better utilise digital assets and data to bring new products to market more quickly.
With consumer demands growing around digital experience, PAM becomes an even more important strategy moving forward. It takes content beyond the marketing department, connecting it to data and other assets across the entire organisation. This connection means that PAM informs the digital experience across different business functions and at multiple touchpoints, making it easier to be more consistent in message and tone.
Content is such an important part of the customer experience in the digital age and brands cannot afford a half-hearted approach. It needs to be a central component of overall business strategy, and that requires investment in the right tools and systems to manage content effectively.
Source: https://www.marketingweek.com/smart-content-management-key-retailer-brand-marketing/
