Marketing

74% of the buying decision is made in advance of the first sales call, 50% before an email address is captured. So why wait until marketing automation or CRM to tailor the digital experience?

It seems like companies have an insatiable desire for information. In the era of big data there’s never enough, and organizations are constantly on the lookout not only for new types of information, but new sources from which to glean it. Of course, big data isn’t a crystal ball (though it’s sometimes hyped up to be), but it’s a great means of learning a number of different things, including personal preferences. The more we interact with different brands, and voice our opinions on social channels, the more we reveal who we are, our habits and overall behavior. That’s why marketers are so keen to adopt big data strategies. The more they know about us, they more they’ll know how to reach us.

Metrics are becoming increasingly important for content marketing. Simply measuring visitors or users, and displaying the results in colored graphics is no longer sufficient. A CMS solves this by going to the source: the content.

Content Performance Metrics

You've probably been measuring users or page visitors on on your site or mobile app for a long time. Thanks to free systems like Google Analytics or open source analytics software like Piwik, you have a (more or less) accurate picture of the pages that your visitors or users have visited. 

Content marketing is everywhere. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a marketer who isn’t seeing the impact of content marketing on their discipline.

Content Marketing is Growing. Fast.

Whether they’re B2B businesses, B2C businesses or even government agencies and nonprofits, enterprise sized organizations are going digital, and finding their online publishing needs looking increasingly like the needs of digital publishers.  

Technology is getting faster and smarter. Computers are now able to recognize and learn patterns, and make decisions in real-time. Their improved analytic and decision-making abilities allow them to outperform humans in areas such as medical diagnoses, legal recognition and customized marketing campaigns.

I was recently asked by the Argus Leader, a local newspaper in Sioux Falls, to give my two cents on the controversial South Dakota #DontJerkandDrive campaign. Since then the article has been syndicated out to USA Today and other publications. It seems that I caught the attention of a reporter when I labeled the campaign as "brilliant" on Twitter.

We are a now generation. We don’t like waiting for anything, whether it’s our microwave dinner to finish, the red light to change, or our YouTube videos to buffer. Not surprisingly, this impatience translates easily from our personal lives right into our professional lives. What’s true at home is just as common in the office. For example, with smartphones and cloud computing, we expect to be able to communicate with anyone and access information from anywhere. Technology has increased our collaborative abilities, leading to quicker turnaround times, shorter deadlines and heightened expectations.

The world of e-commerce is tough, and it’s only going to get tougher as more and more companies shift away from traditional brick and mortar stores and go with online enterprises. Because of the increase in competition and products offered, it’s more important than ever that companies get their marketing strategies right. And in a world filled with so much noise from email, social media, apps and the like, that too is getting more and more difficult. Not only is it harder than ever to get a customer's attention, but it’s also harder than ever to keep them coming back to your site/store. With big data technology and programs like Hadoop Hive, however, it’s becoming much easier.

The implementation of big data has proven to increase a company’s ROI by as much as ten to 20 percent depending on the metrics used. Productivity can also increase by five percent and lead to six percent higher profits than other competitors. Enterprises not using big data in their operations are missing out on the benefits that come from increased data gathering and analytics.

Why marketing teams have not become data-driven

Last week, Sitecore announced Sitecore 8, the next version of its Sitecore Experience Platform. Over the past few years, Sitecore and almost every other CMS provider has focused on providing marketers and other users with as many analytic tools as possible. In their campaign for this new version, Sitecore has stated a belief that when it comes to raw numbers, enough is enough. It's time to return the focus back onto the art of marketing.