Author: Clea Durrell (Page 5 of 15)

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.

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

C10: Content Strategies: Customer Experience, Competition, Content Marketing and Curation
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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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.

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

C3: Stump the Web Content Management Consultant!
Tuesday, December 3:  4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

and

Post-Conference Workshops

Workshop A. Insider’s Guide to Selecting Web Content & Experience Management (WCM) Technology
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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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.

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

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.

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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