Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Author: Clea Durrell (Page 5 of 15)

Speaker Spotlight: Pawan Deshpande – You need a marketing technologist and a marketing strategist

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Pawan Deshpande, Founder and CEO of Curata. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Pawan Deshpande | Gilbane Conference speaker

Speaker Spotlight: Pawan Deshpande

Founder and CEO

Curata

 

Is there a “Marketing Technologist” role in your organization or in organizations you know of? Should there be? What should their responsibilities be?

There is no doubt that marketing technology is here to stay.  Some analyst firms have even predicted that marketing’s technology budget will one day outpace that of the IT department. (i.e., Forrester)  In order to manage the increased adoption and leverage of technology across the marketing organization, as well as integration with other functions, CMOs will need to put in place a marketing technologist role.  Two questions may come to mind when reading this recommendation:

      1. Isn’t that the role of marketing operations?; and
      2. Isn’t that the role of the IT department?

The marketing operations (MO) role first developed approximately 8-10 years ago, as covered by IDC’s CMO Advisory Service, (i.e., Rise of the Marketing Operations Function). The MO role was developed in response to the need for a process-oriented marketer who would be able to apply greater rigor to marketing’s investment management, demand generation process, performance measurement process, and overall technology. Although this role proved highly valuable in the short-term for change management, the rapid growth of marketing technology and the need for greater marketing accountability proved too much to bear for one function. More importantly, each marketing area needed to have its own level of expertise and rigor in process and technology.

Some marketing organizations attempted to increase their dependence on the IT department. However, this strategy proved detrimental since marketing technology was rarely a priority for IT teams, and IT lacks the in depth understanding of the marketing process. Better organizations tapped into the power of SaaS solutions to bypass IT, however, this still left a very disjointed marketing technology strategy. Enter the marketing technologist.

Marketing technology touches every part of marketing’s “supply chain”; from awareness building (e.g., social media, content marketing) to demand generation (e.g., lead processing, lead nurturing) to sales enablement (e.g., content management and delivery to sales and partners). Having a marketing technologist in larger organizations provides the opportunity to develop and deploy a more connected marketing strategy across the organization. This individual/team will be responsible for managing the technology associated with the different elements of marketing, as well as collaborating with the following teams: marketing-dedicated folks within IT, sales operations, and finance. (i.e., at global, regional and business unit levels). Specific examples where this role could add value include:

  • Developing a marketing technology roadmap across all functional areas (current, 1 year and 3 year plan);
  • Continuing to refine the demand management process (e.g., integration of marketing automation with sales’ pipeline process/technology); and
  • Taking on the new challenge of supporting content marketing from a technology perspective. (e.g., content creation, content curation, content lifecycle management).

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

If you ask any large company CMO about their content inventory, they will quickly tell you that they have too much content. A conversation with the same company’s digital marketing team (i.e., the team that delivers content to blogs, microsites, newsletters, web sites and social media channels) will reveal that they don’t have enough content. Herein lies the greatest challenge for delivering digital content: Putting the process and technology in place for disparate parts of an organization to collaborate on developing relevant and high quality for their audience; and getting this content to them in the right time, place, and format to drive greater engagement. Addressing this challenge will require the development of two new roles in marketing: a senior level marketing strategist to develop and deploy a content management process (e.g., VP Content Strategy) and a marketing technologist.

Catch Up with Pawan at Gilbane

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience


Wednesday, December 4:  2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m.

Find out more about this session and our other conference sessions here.

Be sure to follow Pawan @TweetsFromPawan

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Speaker Spotlight: Irina Guseva – Neither WCM nor experience management new

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed one of our frequently asked questions to speaker Irina Guseva, Principal Analyst at Real Story Group. We’ve included her answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Irina Guseva | WCM and experience management | Gilbane Conference

Speaker Spotlight: Irina Guseva

Principal Analyst

Real Story Group

 

Do you think “web content management” should be the hub of digital experience management implementations? If so, should it have a new name to match an expanded role? If not, what should be at the center?

Web content management has seen a great deal of evolution since its inception in the early-mid-1990s. Experience management is not a new discipline either, but has garnered heightened attention in the recent few years. The question here is not the chicken-egg type. The question here is having a solid strategy for managing customer experiences (online and offline) first and foremost. The next step is to support this strategy with appropriate and carefully selected technology that matches your needs: be it WCM, DAM, or Digital Marketing tools.

Catch Up with Irina at Gilbane

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience

Tuesday, December 3:  4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

and

Post-Conference Workshops

Thursday, December 5: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. 

Find out more about this session and our other conference sessions here.

Be sure to follow Irina @realstorygroup

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Speaker Spotlight: Pete Sheinbaum – Not “web content management” but “digital content management”

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Pete Sheinbaum, CEO of LinkSmart. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Pete Sheinbaum | Digital Content Management | Gilbane Conference

Speaker Spotlight: Pete Sheinbaum

CEO

LinkSmart

 

 

Do you think “web content management” should be the hub of digital experience management implementations? If so, should it have a new name to match an expanded role? If not, what should be at the center?

I strongly disagree that web content management should be the hub of experience management implementations. The reason I feel strongly about this is that the “web” may or may not be the hub of the digital “user” experience.

When creating a new role, job function or area of responsibility around the digital experience, it’s important for publishers to identify and carefully map the user experience to see where its hub actually lies. It may or not be web centric.

For example, where does the hub for a digital experience for cooking live? What about the hub for exercising, travel or shopping? In each of these digital experiences, the hub is far away from the web and more so mobile (although yes, people can access the web from a mobile device, but the user experience on a mobile device should be much different than a lean-forward desktop experience).

As such, I wouldn’t give the name “web content management” to the role, but I would offer an alternate with the term “digital content management.” And the owner should be well versed in how digital content and experiences should be delivered on multiple devices, in different geo locations, at different times of day. By focusing on the digital user experience, and less on the web content experience, the center and focus of this role should be clear.

Catch Up with Pete at Gilbane

Track P: Digital Strategies for Publishing and Media

P3. Content Optimization for Publishers – Two Under-appreciated Approaches
Tuesday, December 3:  4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Find out more about this session and our other conference sessions here.

Be sure to follow Pete and LinkSmart on Twitter @sheinbaum and @linksmart

Speaker Spotlight: Frank Schneider – Multi-modal interface essential to mobile customer engagement

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Frank Schneider, VP of Customer Experience Solutions at Creative Virtual USA. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Frank Schneider | Gilbane Conference

Speaker Spotlight: Frank Schneider

VP Customer Experience Solutions

Creative Virtual USA

 

Is there a “Marketing Technologist” role in your organization or in organizations you know of? Should there be? What should their responsibilities be?

As technology becomes the backbone of every organization, it forces the cross pollination of roles, especially now between marketing and IT. With a shift towards data-based marketing and new relationships forming between marketing, sales and customer service, the advent of the “Marketing Technologist” is real. This shift is fueling the need for marketing automation, sales enablement, content management, knowledge management and even translation. Marketing Technologists have emerged as the perfect conduit between platform adoption and management, and the traditionally non-technical roles of sales, marketing and customer service.

With customer service becoming the new marketing and marketing’s ability to directly influence the sales pipeline, Chief Marketing Technologists are sprouting up as the perfect solution to balance a variety of needs including marketing and CRM software, content marketing, social and mobile, data and analytics, web and app development, ad networks and customer engagement programs. From social media monitoring to SEO analysis to translation management and ecommerce, Marketing Technologists are fast becoming the “must have” in every organization that is competing in a global economy.

Do you think “web content management” should be the hub of digital experience management implementations? If so, should it have a new name to match an expanded role? If not, what should be at the center?

Content marketing is evolving to become the center of digital strategy. Consequently, every organization should endeavor to employ the new role of Chief Content Officer or some derivative thereof. Managing the ebb and flow of content and messaging via multiple channels has created the need for a more comprehensive content strategy across departments and media. Channel management between web, social, and mobile have not only created opportunities to deliver messaging, but an urgent need to provide fresh material for public consumption.

Organizations must take cues from traditional publications hiring copy editors, writers and reviews to constantly curate fresh content that furthers the company’s mission, corresponds to the marketing goals and satisfies the needs of their audience. However, you do need someone leading the charge – a person that understands the mission of the content team, rallies the resources and takes ownership of getting it done. Furthermore, they need the tools to get it done. Now more than ever, technology will play an ever increasing role in how content is aggregated, curated, manage and delivered.

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

A proper macro level strategy for content delivery across multiple channels should be comprised of several key elements.

  1. Consistency. Whether it be call center agents looking for an answer or policy or a customer checking a web page, the right answer, right messaging, and proper branding should be pervasive and consistent, no matter the medium or device. Nuanced variable can be in play in regards to format, UI, and design, but at the end of the journey, customers need to feel that your content delivery allowed for a seamless experience.
  2.  Correct and Compliant. Along the lines of the first element, “correct” can mean many things. First, the item must incorporate content that is not just correct in regards to the answer from a company perspective, but answer precisely the question the customer has (in regards to what began the content search or inquiry). Furthermore, this correct answer must incorporate personalization factors; in other words, the answer must be particularly right for that customer or that profile of customer. Lastly, content must be compliant… from HIPPA, to SEC guidelines, to CPNI… content delivery must adhere to compliance guidelines will protecting the interests of both consumer and business.
  3. Automated and seamless. Content delivery across all channels must be deployed with a strategy towards, and enabled by technology and tools for, automated cross pollination and management of content. The idea of multi-channel strategy, that is, the ability to deliver in multiple channels (web, mobile/tablet, call center, IVR, social/community, branch), must mature from brainstorming strategy to refined omnichannel capability. An ominichannel content delivery system allows for authentic smart delivery of content, no matter the channel or modality.

Catch Up with Frank at Gilbane

Track T: Re-imagining the Future: Technology and the Postdigital Experience

T1: Are You Leveraging All the Mobile Technologies Required for Competitive Mobile Engagement?
“Come As You Are: Multi-Modal Interface is Essential to Mobile Customer Engagement”
Tuesday, December, 3: 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

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Speaker Spotlight: John Felahi – Making content findable

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker John Felahi, Chief Strategy Officer at Content Analyst Company, LLC. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

John_Felahi-horiz

Speaker Spotlight: John Felahi

Chief Strategy Officer

Content Analyst Company, LLC

 

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

One of the biggest challenges to delivering content to the web is making it as findable as possible to potential interested viewers.  While traditional, manual tagging and keyword search methods may have gotten us this far, and may be good enough for some use cases, they’re still not without limitations. The good news is, there are far more advanced, sophisticated – and automated – technologies available to remedy the numerous limitations of manual tagging content and keyword-based search. The limitations of manual tagging and keyword-based include:

  • Term creep – New terms constantly emerge, requiring taxonomies to be constantly updated.
  • Polysemy – Take Apple, for example. Is your user searching for the company, the Beatles’ record label, or the fruit?
  • Acronyms – Texting has introduced an entirely new language of acronyms (LOL, TTYL, WDYT).  Manually tagging content requires the editor to consider possible acronyms the users will be searching for.
  • Abbreviations – Tagging content with long, scientific terms, geographies, etc. require editors to factor these in along with the long terms they represent.
  • Misspellings – Thanks to spellcheck and autocorrect, technology has become much more forgiving for those who never made it past the first round eliminations in their sixth grade spelling bee. Content search, unfortunately, needs to be equally accommodating, if you want your users to find your content – which means tagging it with common misspellings.
  • Language – The web has certainly made the world a much smaller place, but that doesn’t mean everyone speaks English.  Making content findable in any language means it has to also be tagged in multiple languages.

On to the good news – there’s technology that’s been used for years in eDiscovery and the US Intelligence Community to overcome these very challenges, but for different reasons. Because the bad guys aren’t tagging their content to make it more findable, the intel community needs a better way to find what they’re looking for. And in eDiscovery, finding relevant content can make a multi-million dollar difference to the outcome of a particular litigation or other regulatory matter. That’s why tens of thousands of legal reviewers and countless analysts in the intel community use a technology known as concept-aware advanced analytics.

How concept-aware advanced analytics differs from manual tagging and keyword search

As its name implies, concept-aware understands the underlying concepts within the content. As such, it can tag content automatically.  On the viewer’s side, content can be found by simply saying, “find more like this.” Categories are defined by taking examples that represent the concepts of a category. The system “learns” what that category is all about, and can then identify conceptually similar content and apply the same category. The process is the same on the search side. The user points to a piece of content and says, “find more like this.” Or as the content publisher, you present the viewer with conceptually similar content, i.e., “you may also be interested in these articles.”

While concept-aware advanced analytics doesn’t necessarily replace manual tagging and keyword search – which work very well in certain situations – the technology clearly overcomes many of the limitations of traditional tagging and search methods.

Catch Up with John at Gilbane

Track E: Content, Collaboration, and the Employee Experience

E7: Strategic Imperatives for Enterprise Search to Succeed
Wednesday, December, 4: 2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m.

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Gilbane Complimentary Technology Showcase Pass

Gilbane technology showcase ticket

 

Can’t make all three days of the Gilbane Conference?  We’ve got plenty going on in the technology showcase too. Take advantage of our complimentary showcase pass today.

 

Your Showcase Pass Includes Access to:

  • Six Keynote Presentations
  • All Product Labs
  • Technology Showcase Area
  • Sponsor Networking Reception

Register for your free pass now

Opening Keynotes – December 3: 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Moderator:
Frank Gilbane, CEO, Bluebill Advisors Inc and Founder & Chair, Gilbane Conferences

Speakers:
Gerry Moran, Head of Social Media, North America, SAP
How to Make Yourself a Content Stop on the New Buyer Journey
Meghan Walsh, Senior Director, eCommerce Platform System Management, Marriott International
Rethinking Content Delivery: Moving beyond a Traditional Web Content Management Approach
Scott Brinker, Founder & CTO, ion interactive, inc. and Author, Chief Marketing Technologist Blog
What is a Marketing Technologist?

Opening Keynotes – December 3: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Moderator:
Frank Gilbane, CEO, Bluebill Advisors Inc and Founder & Chair, Gilbane Conferences

Speakers:
Jake Sorofman, Research Director, Marketing Leaders Research Team, Gartner
Move Over Big Data – Here Comes Big Content
Stephen Powers, Vice President and Research Director, Forrester Research
The Context Conundrum?
Tony Byrne, Founder, Real Story Group
ShakesPoint: What the Bard Could Teach Us About SharePoint – And The Digital World

Product Labs

The Product Labs are open to conference attendees and visitors to the technology showcase free of charge, and are moderated and presented by conference sponsors. While the presentations are meant to be educational, they are typically focused on product technologies or customer case studies. They provide a good opportunity to learn more about specific products or vendors. See the schedule here.

Exhibitors

The Technology Showcase provides attendees with a central meeting place and the ability to speak one-on-one with industry-leading exhibitors while learning more about their products and services. See the exhibitors here.

Showcase Hours:

Tuesday, December 3          10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Networking Reception         5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Wednesday, December 4    10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

You can also still register for the full conference:

Register today and save $100. Plus, get a free Google Nexus 7 with your ConferencePlus pass

 

PLATINUM SPONSOR             GOLD SPONSORS Alfresco Software Crafter Software
Adobe e-Spirit Inc. HP Autonomy SDL Sitecore

Speaker Spotlight: Pamela Kostur – Do you have a content control problem?

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Pamela Kostur, Partner at Parallax Communications. We’ve included her answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Pamela Kostur | Gilbane conference | best strategy

Speaker Spotlight: Pamela Kostur

Partner

Parallax Communications

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

For me, it’s always content first. Content should serve its audiences, yet too often, organizations put themselves first, basing their messaging on what they want to tell customers instead of on what customers want to know. So, regardless of the delivery mechanism—web, blog, video, webinar, tweet—I always start with the following questions:

  • What are you trying to say? To whom?
  • Why? What do you want them to know? What do you want them to do?
  • What content and delivery method will best serve audiences’ needs, based on your answers to these questions?

The biggest challenge I see in many of the organizations I work with is definitely content control. Many organizations don’t think beyond individual departments. So, Marketing may “own” one component of the content, but Customer Support owns another version that is different, and possibly inconsistent. I’ve even found inconsistent product descriptions throughout companies’ websites, saying different things about the same products, and providing inconsistent types of information about similar products.

Further adding to the content control problem is that many organizations don’t know what content they have, so instead of modifying/retiring existing content, they add new content to the mix, introducing more inconsistencies. A content strategy should consider all iterations of content, for all outputs, for all users, and bring them together into a unified message that serves the audience and promotes brand consistency.

Catch Up with Pamela at Gilbane

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience

C10. Content Strategies: Customer Experience, Competition, Content Marketing and Curation
Wednesday, December, 4: 2:00 p.m. – 3:20 p.m.

Follow Pamela on Twitter – @Pamela_Kostur.

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Speaker Spotlight: Scott Brinker – Technology is marketing’s interface to the world

In another installment of Speaker Spotlight, we posed a couple of our frequently asked questions to speaker Scott Brinker, Founder & CTO, ion interactive, inc., and author of the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog. We’ve included his answers here. Be sure to see additional Speaker Spotlights from our upcoming conference.

Technology is marketing's interface - Scott Brinker | Gilbane Conference 2013

Speaker Spotlight: Scott Brinker

Founder & CTO

ion interactive, inc.

Is there a “Marketing Technologist” role in your organization or in organizations you know of? Should there be? What should their responsibilities be?

Marketing has been sucked into a digital world.

In this world, the majority of interactions that marketing has with its audience happen through channels that are mediated by software. Software has become the eyes and ears by which marketers observe people in their market — through tools for analytics, attribution, and social media listening. Software has become the hands and mouth by which marketers touch and talk with their prospects and customers — through web content and experiences, mobile apps, and social media outposts.

Let’s face it: technology is now marketing’s interface to the world.

Marketing technology is no longer an option but a necessity for brands that want to market in a digital world and engage with a digital consumer anytime anywhere & every time everywhere.

To thrive in this environment, organizations absolutely need “marketing technologists” who understand how to select, configure, operate, and extend these marketing technologies that provide that interface. They need people who blend technical talents with marketing insights and ideas to produce compelling experiences throughout the buyer’s journey.

The titles don’t matter. Some call these folks creative technologists, or marketing IT, or growth hackers. What matters is that the organization is finding and nurturing this next generation of marketing talent. They’re integrating them with the broader marketing organizations. They’re giving them a seat at the table in defining marketing strategy and the operational roadmap to execute it.

Catch Up with Scott at Gilbane

Opening Keynotes
Tuesday, December, 3: 8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience

C1. Q&A with Real Live Marketing Technologists
Tuesday, December, 3: 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Follow Scott on Twitter – @chiefmartec.

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