Gone are the days when content was just meant for marketing. Today, content is what binds together the entire organization, culture, and business functions, narrating to the world a powerful story of the brand, what it stands for, the values it upholds, and the experience it offers with its offerings. As the customer journey goes digital, companies are transforming the customer experiences into content experiences. Content is no longer just a means to generate leads – increasingly, businesses are investing in thought leadership to build huge audiences educating and influencing them towards their products and services, winning their loyalty for the long-term, and supporting the post-purchase with impeccable customer service.
In this content-centric business world, you need to create and distribute your content at scale for various functions and in various formats to a wide audience across geographies, with varied messaging but within a consistent brand image. In other words, you need to create a content ecosystem comprising of different interconnected digital assets. It may be that you have scattered your digital content across different channels to distribute content to your audience. While this may prove useful to an extent, to curate and distribute content at scale, you need a content ecosystem. To explain this with an analogy, compare the content ecosystem with the solar system in which all the planets are independent and have their own gravitational pull; yet, at the same time, they reinforce each other creating one unified whole, and providing a compelling collective experience.
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Unified content distribution is a system that organizes your content into a strategic network of assets that collectively helps you build your marketing momentum and support your customer purchase journey at scale. Typically, the content is packed on a single platform or application to provide a consistent user experience, and visibility across teams and all other stakeholders. Further, the app can also be integrated with third-party apps to further expand your ecosystem, and strengthen it with new technologies and knowledge as they evolve.
Here, in this article, we look at how you build a modern unified content distribution ecosystem model for a unified marketing plan.
Centralized content management:
Today, there exists a plethora of print and digital channels through which users consume content. In order to beat the competition, companies are faced with the constant need to update content on various channels. Each department within the organization often needs new content for marketing or responding to customers. In some cases, these departments also have to work together to support a marketing campaign on multiple channels. A unified marketing plan must weave disparate content pieces on different channels into one unified whole. A centralized content management platform enables this integration. You can collate all the information, create separate content streams, and then create different permutations and combinations for targeted messaging to your end-users. A centralized content management system, therefore allows you to collate and seamlessly distribute your content.
Content streams:
Within your content ecosystem, you can create different content streams for each stage of the customer journey. Typically, there are five phases to a customer journey, awareness, research, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase. You can create different content streams for:
- Search: Use content to attract new traffic and then create awareness about your offerings.
- Lay the foundation: With this content stream, open conversations with your potential customers informing them of what you are, what you stand for, and what you offer.
- Thought leadership: Convince customers about the credibility of your brand and industry differentiation.
- Product differentiation: Education customers about your offerings and the value they will generate.
- Customer experience: Continually educate your customers on what they need to know in order to stay ahead.
Create asset mixes:
A single content type can rarely build a satisfactory customer experience. Within your content ecosystem, mix the various content streams to create multiple content types to gain wider exposure. Further, you can also optimize these asset mixes for different channels and contexts to increase accessibility.
Create cross-links:
Your content ecosystem is as strong as the links that bind it together. With strategic cross-linking, ensure that it can support thought leadership, generate leads and streamline the customer purchase journey at all major milestones. As you plan content, you can group related assets via crosslinking or embedding and ensure that a topic is linked to related sub-topics to build the complete picture.
CTAs:
No unified content marketing plan is complete without considering customer intent. Each asset type in your content ecosystem has a role to play in enabling customer decision-making. Accordingly, make sure to anticipate and plan for what CTAs would appeal to your customers as they take the next step in learning about your offerings or making a purchase.
In Conclusion:
The days of single content management systems are fast coming to an end. As the role of content evolves from marketing to enabling the entire customer journey through content, you need an ecosystem that allows you to create and give shape to a unified content distribution/ marketing plan.
Kytes, a content management and distribution platform from Hurix Digital enables an efficient and synchronized content ecosystem. A cloud-based app, Kytes, allows you to host your content on a single platform, create several distinct content streams, and then use them to mix your assets for differentiated marketing messages. You can create and distribute content in multiple formats, and open conversations with customers on different channels. Once connected, you can motivate them further by supporting their journeys with various content streams, and even mixing your digital assets to customize their experiences. You can lead them gradually through your offerings, highlighting your product USPs, convincing them about the credibility of your brand, and supporting them in their purchase journey, every step of the way. Besides, you can also embed and cross-link your content to support topics with several other sub-topics to reinforce your messaging.
You can also integrate Kytes with third-party apps to create even larger ecosystems and benefit from their synergies. You can thus manage and distribute content in multiple formats across various systems and even export data.
