Cmo’s

personalizaTionGUIDE TO

THE

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92%believe that personalized experiences will drive value, shorten sales cycles and deepen affinity.-Forbes Publish or Perish

90%of the CMOs...believe that content is essential to drive growth-Forbes Publish or Perish

During interviews with CMOs for the Forbes Publish or Perish report*, one CMO exclaimed, “Personalization is so over.” Yet the more we talked, the more she came to agree that “personalization” is an oft overused term that has given the concept a bad rap. Indeed, many marketers have moved on from the term and instead use the phrase “contextual or individualized marketing.” This same CMO ended up opining that

instead of being over, personalization may just be getting started. In fact, 90% of the CMOs surveyed for the Forbes report believe that content is essential to drive growth, and 92% believe that personalized experiences will drive value, shorten sales cycles and deepen affinity.

So what is personalization? By definition, content personalization targets specific content to specific

people. Content strategist Kevin P. Nichols defines personalization as “contextually targeted content to a specific user.” Content personalization is a strategy that relies on visitor data to deliver relevant content based on audience interests and motivations. It ranges from a highly targeted call to action to a revolving landing page based on a variety of filters to content for an individual indexed to a rich federated profile.

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* Note: ComBlu was one of the contributors to this report.

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According to the 2015 Demand Gen Report, leads that are nurtured with personalized content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities. There is no debate that content today is a mission critical asset for B2B brands, especially those with:

• Long sales cycles

• A large amount of discovery and self-nurturing throughout the buyer’s journey

• Complex buying teams with multiple personas

Forbes recently surveyed CMOs of large B2B brands with complex enterprise content ecosystems. When asked to indicate the mission of their content initiatives, the following responses told a diverse story.

• Improving sales effectiveness (78%)

• Leveraging social, mobile and digital channels (75%)

• Developing the brand (82%)

• Selling value to the customer (73%)

This guide helps organizations that are just beginning their quest for content personalization. It offers both an overview of many of the pain points that CMOs and their teams face as they begin the process, as well as common sense tips for breaking down the process into digestible steps.

-Forbes Publish or Perish

78%Improving sales effectiveness 82%

Developingthe brand

75%Leveraging social, mobile and digital

channels

73%Selling value to the customer

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1 2 360%of CMOs report that they struggle to personalize content in real time-Adobe

individualized experienCes

Delivering highly personalized content experiences is the top goal of today’s sophisticated, content-centric marketers. This chapter defines five different types of personalization and delineates the type of information needed to execute the strategy.

Pre-Personalization

Developing a content architecture is essential for delivering personalization at scale and efficiently assembling and reusing content for multiple purposes and channels. This chapter discusses the various steps that brands need to take before they can launch a personalization strategy.

The “rush To sCale”

Increased volume of content is driving automation of the content supply chain. As a result, platform proliferation is rampant as VCs and other investors try to strike gold with the next big MarTech play. This chapter suggests a “press pause” approach before purchasing new technology.

Chapters include:

According to Adobe, 60% of CMOs report that they struggle to personalize content in real time, yet 77% believe real true personalization is critical. This eBook is a good starting point for teams to delve into the process and set a course of action. 

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individualized experienCesf i n d i n g T h e p e T u n i a i n a n o n i o n paT C h

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Sometimes searching for the right piece of information is like finding the proverbi-al petunia in an onion patch. According to McKinsey, 65% of buyers are frustrated by an inconsistent jour-ney experience. Yet according to Forrester, 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. One of the goals of personalized experiences is to truncate the discovery process and enhance the experience by delivering contextually relevant content in real time.

In interviewing sev-eral CMOs for the Forbes Publish or Perish report, one common theme

emerged: delivering personalized experi-

ences is the vision and the goal of organizations

as they gravitate to a publishing and engagement model of marketing. According to Rishi Dave, CMO of Dun & Bradstreet, the starting point is the delivery of personalized web experiences followed by one-on-one customization.

How a brand starts with personalization depends on where they are in the con-tent marketing maturity cycle. Those in earlier stages of content marketing maturity offer more generic per-sonalization by providing a tabbed navigation that allows viewers to choose a journey based upon their role or industry. Others take a segment or persona tact and deliver custom-

ized web experiences based on the person’s role or indus-

try. Organizations further along the content mar-keting maturity cycle define it as delivering bespoke content and experiences at the

“person” level.

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Personalized emails get a

152% higher open rate.-Kissmetrics

Brands can adopt personalization across a variety of online experiences, from email through 1:1 content experiences at the account or person level. Following are five different types of personalization. Each requires a different level of sophistication in order to deliver at scale.

The buyer’s actions and appended information determine the content of the email that is sent. Trigger data can include such things as age, industry, geo, product usage, buying record, site visit history or service interactions. According to

Kissmetrics, these personalized emails get a 152% higher open rate. They are highly contextual and offer higher value than a generic email blast. They deliver relevant content at the right time and place in the path-to-purchase.

b e h av i o r a l T r i g g e r e m a i l s :The use of individuated profiles to create a unique email for individual subscribers.

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Data about dwell time, pages visited, content viewed and page hops provides insights about interests and needs. When the same buyer visits another site, the cookie triggers content that is relevant to the information they viewed on the original site. The more information collected about the buyer, the better the targeting and the ultimate relevance of the

content. The personalization ultimately reflects both behaviors and intent and becomes specific to point on the buyer’s journey. It keeps the brand in front of buyers in a contextually relevant way and serves to remind them of the brand’s unique characteristics as buyers build their short list.

r e Ta r g e T i n g : A form of programmatic advertising that uses cookies to track buyers as they travel the Web

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The same technology that allows Amazon and Netflix to recommend additional products to an individual consumer creates a platform for content recommendations. The content recommendation engine mimics the Amazon experience when buyers are researching or looking for additional information: “People who read this article or watched this video also found these articles or videos to be useful or enjoyable.”

By showing buyers content that is relevant to their preferences, experience and point on the journey, the relationship between buyer and company can shorten discovery, or increase the company’s share of wallet. The content recommendation engine also presents additional thought leadership to buyers, which can enhance brand equity and position the brand differently with the buyer.

C o n T e n T r e C o m m e n d aT i o n e n g i n e s : The use of online behaviors and actions/preferences of previous readers to recommend additional content

“People who read this article or watched this video also found these articles or videos to be useful or enjoyable.”

-Amazon

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Landing page content is dynamically generated using visitor data such as industry, geo, search history, first time or return visitor and other factors. When the visitor data matches prede-termined parameters, unique content is exposed that matches the rules set in the system. Content becomes more

and more personalized for return visitors as on-site browsing behaviors are factored in. Personalized websites present information more closely matched to a buyer’s needs and point in the journey, and can truncate the discovery process and the need for internal search.

p e r s o n a l i z e d w e b s i T e s :The delivery of dynamic content to website visitors using content optimization systems

Content becomes more and more personalized for return visitors...

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Increased Visitor Engagement 73%

Increase Ecommerce Revenue 34%

Improve Customer Experience 54%

Increase Customer Loyalty 28%

Increase Conversion Rate 53%

Improve Brand Perception 24%

Increase Lead Generation 45%

Increase Value of Alt Program 23%

Leading Benefits Observed From Using Real-time Personalization According to Marketers, April 2015

Increase Retention 22%

Real-time personalization builds on the concept of personalized websites by adding customer information about products bought, length of relationship, etc. to the profile algorithm. In addition, it uses various

techniques to direct people to new content as they perform functions on the website. This chart from eMarketer shows the various tools used to customize content on the fly. Real-time personalization optimizes

live customer engagement and creates opportunities for collapsing the sales cycle, generating higher lifetime value and driving deeper customer affinity.

r e a l - t i m e P e r s o n a l i z at i o n : Data-driven personalization completed in less than one second

Pop Ups 53%

Inline Edits 27%

Inline Content 53%

Survey Questions 22%

Information Bars 43%

Other 6%

Callouts 41%

None 5%

Types of Pesonalization Web Messages/Content Used by Marketers Worldwide, April 2015

Source: eMarketer

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Instead of endlessly searching for blooms among the alliums, content personalization acts like FTD and delivers the content directly to the buyer. The benefits are clear: when a brand engages at the person level and anticipates his or her exact needs, it has a better chance at establishing or growing a business relationship. Obviously, the more personalized the interaction, the better the results become. Brands need to prepare for this level of personalization by first understanding both its segments and

personas, which, when used strategi-cally, serve as a precursor to real-time personalization. While segment-based approaches are better than scat-tershot or “one size fits all” tactics, brands need to view them as a first step in achieving the long-term ben-efits of 1:1 personalized experiences.

Another important point to keep in mind is the impact that personalization has on governance and compliance. When employing a personalization strategy, brands need to review their

governance and privacy policies to assure they are not violating terms of use or ignoring a person’s stated preferences. As more data is shared or scraped from third-party channels, the value exchange needs to be significant or buyers may be disturbed by the amount of information the brand has collected. A fine line exists between seeming like Big Brother and offering relevant content that delights, instead of bothers, users.

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Pre-Personalizationis a Thing

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The value of personalized experiences is dependent upon the quality of the strategy that informs the underlying content architecture driving these content moments. While most platform companies tell a good story about the automation of the “plumbing” of contextual content, they tend to downplay the hard manual labor that goes into getting ready to automate. This “pre-personalization” phase generally involves:

• Identifying all roles in the purchase decision

• Gathering deep persona knowledge including how each role makes decisions, where and how they gather information and who they trust for insights and ratification

• Conducting multiple purchase journeys based on common buyer use cases

• Developing or updating key brand messages or selling themes

• Applying a topic modeling framework to uncover emerging subjects and areas of interest for various buyers, industries or sectors

• Using multiple inputs to create a federated profile at the person level to inform individual content needs

• Developing an enterprise content roadmap

• Creating a taxonomy that allows content delivery at multiple points in the buying journey

• Attaching metadata to individ-ual content objects

• Mapping current content publishing processes to bring efficiencies to the system

• Determining the best organizational structure and skill sets required for optimized publishing models.

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Highly sophisticated personalization requires content to be structured so brands can deliver content in multiple ways across multiple channels and devices. In addition, brands need to become more so-phisticated about federated profiling, which facilitates the delivery of truly individualized experiences based on multiple inputs that inform which content is exposed along the journey.

Structuring content is the bedrock of

both automation and personalization; it enables finding the right pieces of content for the audience and for a specific purpose. This goes well beyond tagging existing documents to facilitate their exposure on predetermined pages or assets. It requires stripping away the document formatting in order to add metadata tags that allow the organization of digital information in nearly limitless ways. The key is to organize using

tags that are meaningful to both customers and the company. Creating this structure is essential and fundamental to the delivery of customized experiences.

Ann Rockley coined the phrase “intelligent content” to describe this structural architecture. She defines it as “content that’s structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable.”

The key is to organize using tags that are meaningful to both customers and the company.

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Structuring content is becoming an urgent business requirement as the sprint to “content at scale” ac-celerates. Without the structure of a federated architecture, content cannot be delivered efficiently for internal teams or across the engagement life cycle for specific buyers or customers. Great background exists about how to organize and manage content for delivery in different formats for multiple devices. One is “The Elements of Intelligent Content” which is an approachable primer for the Five W’s of intelligent content.

This diagram about how dynamic content works provides a roadmap for creating the taxonomy for personalized experiences.

CUSTOMER

USERINTERFACE

USERMETADATA

BUSINESSRULES

METADATAMATCHING

CONTENT

ASSEMBLY

h o w d y n a m i C C o n T e n T h a p p e n s

BASED ON GRAPHIC BY: ANN ROCKley

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The starting point is understanding the user. This begins with creating of role-based personas that give insight into the buying process and content needs at different point of the path-to-purchase. Persona information is overlaid with segment insights to gain a richer view. Ultimately, informa-tion is appended to the individual that guides content choices and assembly.

Once the user information is under-stood, meta tags are created across several categories, including such things as:• Role• Language• Segment or market• Product• Version (if applicable)• Point on journey• Geo location

Tagging content with metadata enables the assembly of information for the specific person looking for insights. However, without a rich, dynamic profile of the person seeking information, the ability to assemble content on the fly becomes impossible.

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The next consideration is the definition of business rules that will be applied when exposing content. Generally, two types of approaches exist: rules- or algo-rithm-based. Most organizations starting with personalization tend to adopt the rules-based approach, which involves setting up discrete audience segments in the system and writing rules for when and how to show them content. For example, if product version is 3.0,

content is matched to that product version. Or if the user’s IP address is Seattle, content is shown specific to that location.

The algorithm approach is more granular. Instead of focusing on the persona or segment, the algorithm applies multiple data points about a person to match the right content and expose it dynamically. For example, if Nicole clicks on 25 articles about cloud computing,

let’s show her a white paper about cloud organizational readiness or use cases for private, hybrid and public clouds.

Finally, the process needs to determine when content changes based on both the business rules and the meta tags. These models include such things as type of document, content element (paragraph vs. fully compiled document), topics and online behaviors.

Two types of taxonomy approaches exist:

rules- oralgorithm-based.

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Once this architecture is in place, content can be dynamically assembled and exposed contextually to meet the individual needs or wants of the user.

Many organizations serve up information based on a few data points, but are clueless about other things that are driving a person’s journey. It’s like stocking a grocery store with just cheese and milk because that’s what the person bought one day. If the store owner knew the same person was also searching online for vitamins, researching the best price on diapers and talking about a kick-ass BBQ

sauce on social sites, they could offer a richer assortment of merchandise and could tailor offers to increase sales and loyalty.

Building the perfect profile is not yet fully realized. For example, pulling data points from multiple platforms into a single view is being done with varying degrees of sophistication. The underlying need is platform synergy on the backend that enables the mining and connecting of multi-transactional and engagement data, regardless of

where this data originated. Several platform companies, such as Kapost and Marketo, are working to solve the federated profile puzzle. At minimum, information should be pulled in from website, email, blog, browsing history and social channels. Nirvana would be the ability to detect patterns in a person’s profile, needs and actions gleaned from all of these data points and then match content to those patterns. The ultimate goal is to progressively hone the content and experience as more data about on-site and online behaviors are captured and turned into real-time content delivery.

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Pre-personalization requires cross-functional collaboration to build a foundation for contextual experiences. Organizations need to adopt a continuous improvement approach that employs a variety of tools and techniques to hone the taxonomy and uncover emerging topics matched to the interests and

needs of buyers. This is not a “one and done” activity. New data will inform changes in the approach. The trick is to create the right balance between too many tags, which could make the process unmanageable, and too few, which would render a meaningless experience.

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C h a p T e r 3

The rush To sCale

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Content has become more than a marketing asset—how well it performs in its multiple roles and how well it serves as the brand’s proxy in the buyer’s discovery process impacts top-line business growth. The fundamental challenge is the sheer volume of content required to fuel personalization. Content per-sonalization drives content volume, sometimes exponentially. Mark Yolton, then VP of Digital at Cisco, said, “Personalized experiences improve performance, but create

huge upstream chal-lenges. Introducing

just three personas increased content volume 30x

and created pressure to update the website every four hours, instead of every week.”

When an enterprise offers multiple product lines across multiple business units, the content need grows exponentially. It’s no wonder that scaling content operations is a top priority of today’s CMOs. The scaling issue goes beyond

mass content production. In fact, brands are already producing mas-sive amounts of the stuff. Forrester predicts that enterprise content volume is growing at a rate of 200% annually. Enterprises are now functioning as brand publishers, producing a high volume of content that is sourced from multiple internal and external resources. The Forbes research found that the number of content sources often tops a hundred. It’s not so much a scaling issue as an automation puzzle.

Forrester predicts that enterprise content volume is growing at a rate of 200% annually.

... but content volume growsexponentially.

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To tame the content shrew, CMOs want to automate as much of the process as possible. The result? Platform proliferation and the default thinking that scaling content operations is a matter of deploying the right platform and tools.

Content platforms fall into many categories, each with a defined role,

and ultimately, the promise to ease myriad content pain points. A recent report on the marketing technology landscape from Scott Brinker, co-founder and CTO of Ion Interactive and author of the Chief Marketing Technologist blog, catalogued the stack of technology solutions built for the marketing department. A landscape that was

crowded with more than 100 solutions in 2011 had grown to include 3,847 solutions in 2016. Forrester’s Laura Ramos predicts that by 2017, marketing will spend more than IT on technology, and by 2017, marketers will have no trouble finding a plethora of technology tools to manage and automate every area of marketing.

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Forbes released a detailed study in November 2015 that analyzes the role-based strengths of each category and reviews many platforms in each category. Stephen Diorio, the study’s author and founder of the Brand Publishing Institute, interviewed dozens of platform vendors to understand their current capabilities, planned roadmaps and how they

view their platform as part of the full content ecosystem.

In interviewing CMOs for the Forbes report, a few pain points emerged. One of the biggest is the recognition that the CMO is overwhelmed by the amount of technology choices and is confused by the claims of many vendors that their platform can “do

it all.” These CMOs already have lots of nodes in the marketing tech stack and before investing in more, want to figure out how to optimize what the organization already owns.

Here are five things to consider before gravitating to the bright shiny object:

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Before you even think about your technology solution, you need to first nail this part of the equation.

• Understand the topics and needs of the full buying center for specific products, solutions and discovery journeys

• Define and develop an organiza-tional competency for managing and optimizing marketing content effectiveness

• Architect your content so it can be planned, sourced, organized, targeted, distributed and reused across many programs, sales channels and devices

Many of the more mature platform players offer a strategy team to help new customers. They recognize that their platform will only perform as well as the strategic framework it supports. Their work, however, focuses on optimizing their own platform and the integration of its partners into the ecosystem. While this is valuable and necessary, few really step back and create an overarching

strategy that understands the needs and behaviors of multiple buyers at multiple points of the decision jour-ney. The templates that they provide are often too simplistic and do not consider interdependencies in the content modeling process.

1f i n d a C o n T e n T s T r aT e g y pa r T n e r w i T h n o h o r s e i n T h e r a C e

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Working with an objective third-party helps ensure that the counsel provided is more far-reaching and is not viewed through the narrow lens of a specific platform or set of partnerships.

The strategy part of the process takes time and often gets truncated in the rush to get a tool or platform that can automate or solve all pain points. But not all pain points can be solved with a platform, nor should they be. A recent Forrester study, From Priming the Pump to Engaging Buyers, points out that it takes time to scale. Designing

the right processes, implementing organizational change and achieving alignment need to happen first. Yet the gold rush is on as companies gravitate to the newest, shiniest platform in hopes of finding a “one

size fits all” solution to operationalizing content

effectiveness.

Many organizations are doing a good job at part of what needs to be done. Function or lines of

business are attack-ing the problem in

the hopes of jumpstart-ing the content optimization

process. Many of these efforts fail to thrive because they never connect the dots between these separate

initiatives to uncover synergies or systemic issues and problems. They fix the car engine while traveling down the highway, but never get the car to the garage for a full diagnostic. Without hitting the brakes, the parts may continue to function but the engine ultimately will fail. While most folks don’t need a brand new vehicle, they certainly need all pistons firing in sync.

Once the strategic roadmap is complete, the CMO and the marketing team have a site map for content operations that aligns with the business mission. The map provides a key for what tools make the most sense for automating and personalizing content experiences.

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2Talking to people who know the landscape is an important next step in understanding the offerings and knowing what pieces work best for specific roles in the ecosystem. The Brand Publishing Institute, for example, offers a workshop based on the structure of the Forbes Publish or Perish report, which scored platforms in 12 distinct

magic quadrants. The scoring methodology rated the ability of each platform to provide functionality in each of 10 competencies required for a Content Center of Excellence. It also catalogued the ability of each platform to provide cross-discipline capabilities either through a native offering or a highly integrated partnership.

s C h e d u l e a w o r k s h o p T h aT m o w s d o w n T h e w e e d s a n d T i d i e s u p T h e l a n d s C a p e

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The best workshop facilitators will take time to understand your specific business objectives, aligned content mission and where your organization sits along the content maturity cycle. Conversation at the workshop should focus on executing the overarching content strategy and dissecting what

the organization needs to do to have a high functioning

publishing competency. This spans everything

from skills and organizational assessment to governance and supporting infrastructure.

Participants should include a cross-functional

group of first-line managers who need to work as a team

to efficiently and effectively opti-mize and scale content operations. Suggested participants include:

• Dedicated marketing leaders of specified BUs

• Marketing, social and digital marketing management

• Marketing tech specialists

• Customer experience specialists

• Distribution and sales leadership

• The owners of core digital, social and mobile selling systems – including CRM, and targeting analytics

• Compliance

• Sales operations and sales enablement program management

• Business analysts

• Corporate communications and PR

• Creative services

The goal is to get people who may be working diligently, but potentially at cross-purposes, to co-create a future state that leads to content experiences that deeply engage and support current customers and facilitate the buying decisions of prospects. Workshop deliverables should include a shared vision of where your organization needs to head, with detailed action plans for what to do and in what order.

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An arcane spring ritual involves children dancing around a maypole. Each child grabs a ribbon and encircles the pole until the ribbon wraps around it. If the marketing tech stack serves as the maypole, then each ribbon represents a distinct buyer’s journey. Wrapping the journey around the tech stack allows the marketer to see its technology needs more contextually and helps the team to visualize what is required to deliver content strategically and ultimately to scale. It illustrates why it’s so important to first understand the journey (or multiple journeys) and what is required to distribute content experiences in a relevant way along the journey. It also helps to eliminate or turn off unnecessary functionality.

3T u r n T h e m a r k e T i n g s Ta C k i n T o a m ay p o l e

THIRD-PARTY SITES

SOCIAL

SEO, SEM, DISPLAY

SITE / COMMERCIAL

CMS

DAM

ANALYTICS

MARKETINGAUTOMATION

CRM

U N AWA R E• W E B S I T E• S E A R C H• D I R E C T• W O R D O F M O U T H

C O N S I D E R AT I O N& P R E F E R E N C E• N E W S L E T T E R• C O N TA C T I N F O• E A R N E D M E D I A• W E B S I T E• T H O U G H T L E A D E R S H I P• M E E T I N G S & P R E S E N TAT I O N S• V O C• S A L E S T E A M

P O S T S A L E• V O C• T M• N E W S L E T T E R S• C U S TO M E R I N T E R A C T I O N S• T H O U G H T L E A D E R S H I P• S E A R C H• C U S TO M E R S E R V I C E

AWA R E• W E B S I T E• S E A R C H• I N F LU E N C E R S• T H O U G H T L E A D E R S H I P• S O C I A L M E D I A

P U R C H A S E• D E TA I L E D R E Q U I R M E N T S• A C C O U N T M A N A G E M E N T• TO O L S• A S S E T S O N B O A R D I N G• S A L E S T E A M

Inspired by Hawkeye graphic

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The various pieces of the marketing tech stack need to be optimized within the context of the customer journey. Many organizations view the different elements from the perspective of features and func-tions, and what back-end integration needs to happen to orchestrate their assimilation.

Ultimately, the organization needs a highly intelligent, near-total automation of the entire content creation and distribution system. Any such model designed to deliver targeted, contextual messages must understand where each customer is in their journey and how messages influence the result. B2B models

add complexity to this equation. The goal is to create an open architecture that supports dynamic message delivery, and allows the easy plug-in of new components that support new content types, social channels or consolidated profiling.

Many organizations view the different elements from the perspective of features and functions.

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Optimizing what you already own before adding more components or complexity increases performance and allows better resource alloca-tion. One of the biggest problems cited by CMOs in the Forbes study was eliminating the redundancy and carrying cost of too many plat-forms. Yet the quest for platform nirvana remains. Once you really understand the technology you already have and what else might be needed to effectively manage content and efficiently automate it along your defined journeys, meet

with vendors and get their insights. This is when vendor strategy teams can add real value. Share your vision and roadmap and have them map your needs against their platform, including tightly integrated partners. It’s highly possible that some of your existing platforms have added new functionality, have functionality you’ve never turned on, made acquisitions to provide broader coverage across the tech stack or developed new, strategic partnerships.

Before doing this, have the tech team create a scorecard to guide the conversation and platform review. You should approach this as if you were doing a new platform review, and look at your existing tech through a new lens. If the vendor suggests migrating to a newer version, make sure you know what is involved and how the migration could impact overall experience and performance. Most importantly, how will it impact the back-end integration with other nodes of your tech stack?

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Once you have a clear view of what else existing technology can do, identify the gaps. The important thing is to get the most from what you have without getting bogged down in a legacy system that will never do what you need. It’s a bal-ancing act, especially with hundreds of new entrants ever year into the category. Each is trying to make the

case as to why you should jettison what you have and buy new.

If the vendor promises that crucial functionality is on their roadmap, pin them down. Ask at what phase of development this phantom func-tionality is in, and has it yet been field tested. Vendors don’t want to lose a sale or licensing renewals, so

often will present a rosier picture about what’s on the horizon than may actually be the case. View with skepticism statements such as, “Our roadmap isn’t set yet, so if you have a big priority we’ll put it in front of the line”. This is not how develop-ment roadmaps are created.

The important thing is to get the most from what you have without get ting bogged down in a legacy system that will never do what you need.

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T h e r u s h T o s C a l e

Once you know how to optimize the platforms and tools you already own, you can start backfilling the gaps. There are a lot of options to consider, but you need to do it strategically. Remember your blue-print? Use it as a guide for reviewing new tools. Here are a few things to consider when thinking about cool, new functionality:

• Is it a tool or a platform?

• Can you live with “out of the box” or is there a lot of customization in your future?

• What does it need to integrate with?

• Will it support your strategy roadmap now and into the future?

• Can it fulfill more than one set of requirements?

• How difficult is adoption?

• Is the company well-funded and capable of issuing new versions or enhancements to keep the tool relevant and up-to-date? How often?

• Is the seller a vendor or a partner? Either is fine, depending on how much assistance you need.

• When dealing with multiple solutions, who “owns” the integration?

Establishing filters upfront helps eliminate the bright shiny object syndrome. While it’s always fun to get a new toy, the luster quickly wears off if you find yourself assembling it with a set of directions that make no sense.

5w h e n T h e b r i g h T s h i n y o b j e C T m a k e s s e n s e

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T h e r u s h T o s C a l e

Scaling not only takes time, it requires an overarching strategy and vison, and an infrastructure that is right-sized for the task. One of the most difficult parts of scaling is having the right organization with the right skill sets and tools to operate in a publishing environment. The technology for scaling is readily available. What’s missing is the mind-set that as an organization you need

to change how you go to market. It’s never a “one and done” deal. Cultural due diligence, the continu-ous upgrading of skills, adoption of best practices and being obsessed with customers developing POV will always trump technology. That being said, modernizing the tech stack for today’s publishing organization is a must. No one platform will do it all, so you need to get the cats and

dogs to live together peacefully and cooperatively. Success requires the guidance and steady hand of a leader with both a marketing and a publishing orientation who oversees all content initiatives across multiple platforms and formats to drive sales, engagement, retention and positive customer experience.

s u m m a r y

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C o n C l u s i o n

Building a publishing competency is critical for the successful execution of contextual marketing programs. In many organizations, content is still produced in piecemeal fashion to support individual programs, channels and functional silos. Fifty percent of those surveyed for the Forbes study do not have a content owner, or content roadmap to guide planning, creation and content production.

Connie Weaver, EVP and CMO of TIAA-CREF, observed, “The pressure to differentiate the brand, use more channels, and manage complexity is growing fast; doing business the same way will not work. Current processes will not scale.”

Managing content is an organizational challenge, not a technology solution. First come processes and skills to drive content excellence.

According to Jeff Spicer, VP of Content Strategy for VMware, “Technology alone will not make an impact with-out change management—practices, processes, skills and strategic and operational planning need to be embedded in standard marketing and relationship practices.” Transitioning to a brand publishing mindset requires transformation across many nodes of the content supply chain.

Governance is another critical factor to consider when launching a con-textual marketing program.

When using customers’ personal information to target them with new content, it is important to not cross an ethical line. Colin Eagen, UX Manager at ICF Interactive, raises the essential question: Is your content truly at the intersection of user and business goals, or is it just business goals? If the brand offers true value, its targeting efforts will be perceived as such and will not cross over into creepy territory.

C o n T e x T u a l m a r k e T i n g i s h e r e T o s Tay

Doing business the same way will not work.

Current processes will not scale.-Connie Weaver

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This chart highlights a few of the areas that need to be reimagined as brands gear up for personalized experiences at scale.

THE EVOLUTION TO A PUBLISHING DISCIPLINE

Targeting front of funnel

Content creation silos

Targeting large audiences

Single use “channel-specific” content

Manually search for the right content

Custom creation of content assets

Brand Standards and Messaging Guidelines

Ad hoc, unstable, and labor-intensive processes

Short-term project and campaign-based scheduling

Top-down corporate marketing control

Targeting deeper into customer journey

Cross-functional publishing process

Personalizing content to the individual

Reusable and format table for many channels

Proactive “next best” content recommendations

Dynamic assembly of content elements into assets

Content architecture and sourcing standards

Systems to automate tasks and facilitate collaboration

Long-term roadmap and editorial calendar

Technology-enabled federated governance models

From To

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1

2 43 5Content personalization is a high-

level initiative. Getting content right and delivering it at the person level is a core growth strategy. According to Matt Shiffman, Managing Director and Head of Global Marketing at Legg Mason, “Strategic content helps sales ramp to quota faster, speeds time to revenue and makes sure that demand finds us.”

The type of personalization that an organization adopts is dependent on its place on the content matu-rity cycle. Without the appropriate segment, persona or user insights, content targeting is impossible.

Personalization readiness is a precursor to automation. Content needs to be semantically rich and categorized so it can be automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable.

Technology plays an important role in delivering content at scale, but technology alone is not the solution. Purchasing a platform and skipping the hard part of building a strategic framework for each persona, segment or “person” will not deliver optimal experiences.

A culture of content is essential. According to Lisa Arthur, then CMO of Terradata, “The technology ex-ists to scale and support individual-ized marketing; what is needed is a cultural shift from an advertising to a publishing mindset.” Success only comes with the right organization that can manufacture enough of the right content that makes targeting useful and delivers expected ROI.

Just reorganizing and adding skills is not enough. The culture needs to support a content-centric marketing approach. Nothing short of a move-ment will allow the scaling of highly personalized experiences.

h e r e a r e f i v e k e y Ta k e a way s f r o m T h i s e b o o k

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a b o u T T h e a u T h o r

a b o u T C o m b l u

Kathy Baughman is president and co-

founder of ComBlu, a firm specializing in

content strategy, influencer marketing

and thought leadership programs. Kathy’s

forte is content strategy, social engagement

and social business strategy.

Kathy is a frequent speaker at industry

conferences, with appearances at SXSW,

Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies

Conference, the Department of

Defense Social Media Conference, and

the Word of Mouth Marketing Association

(WOMMA) Summit. Kathy is also a gifted

panel moderator. She conducts webinars

on a variety of topics and leads workshops

for organizations seeking to better grasp

content strategy. Kathy is a board member

of WOMMA and serves on its executive

Committee. She is an adjunct professor

for Georgetown University, and a past

board member of the Council of Public

Relations Firms.

Kathy has authored four eBooks,

“Content Supply Chain”,

“The Alchemy of Content” and

“Taming the Content Vortex” and writes

ComBlu’s annual research report, The

State of Online Branded Communities.

She has also authored two reports for

Lithium on community vibrancy and the

state of social report.

Kathy is a founder of the Brand

Publishing Institute (BPI) and serves as

a member of

its faculty. She

contributed to

the recent Forbes

report: Publish or

Perish and assisted

with the creation of

BPI’s recent eBook,

Ten Steps to Building a Brand

Publishing Center

of Excellence.

• Mapping and streamlining processes across functions and business units

• Determining the right personalization approach for the company’s content marketing maturity

• Providing insights for topics and content assets for specific segments and personas

• Building integrated content roadmaps

• Identifying the skills and training required to staff content operations

• Reviewing the tech stack to assure automation success and creates governance for both centralized and self-publishing models

ComBlu is an enterprise content strategy firm. We help organizations create a global view of content operations. ComBlu’s services include:

ComBlu also provides influencer marketing programs and thought leadership initiatives for B2B brands.

To learn more, contact:Kevin Lynchklynch@comblu.com312-423-4916

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C o n Ta C T

C a l l u s T o :

k e v i n ly n C hk ly n c h @ c o m b l u . c o m

k aT h y b a u g h m a nk b a u g h m a n @ c o m b l u . c o m

1 2 3 4Learn about the Ten Competencies for Building a Brand Publishing Function

Do a deep dive into Pre-personalization

Tap our network of content experts

Schedule a Pre-person-alization workshopInsert Contact Info:

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