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State of the state: Customer experience (CX) channels and touchpoints are rapidly evolving and multiplying, which means the content that’s delivered across those channels and touchpoints needs to evolve and expand as well. If content teams don’t keep pace with delivery-channel changes, the customer journey starts to crack—and cracks can quickly turn into fractures that negatively impact the customer relationship. Nearly half (49%) of the Forrester survey respondents said that content challenges make it harder to create cohesive customer journeys.

Customer expectations for more relevant, valuable and personalized experiences will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. To be ready to deliver one-to-one dialogue at scale, organizations require content solutions that feature multiple capabilities, for example: seamless content insights, creation, editing, management and dissemination.

'Ensure your content technology is solving, not creating, content problems' - Forrester study (2022)

How to address it: First—and this should be obvious—don’t ignore the changes occurring within delivery channels. You can’t continue executing the same strategy year over year with the speed at which guidelines and best practices are changing. Not embracing and adapting to change will always be a losing strategy. Instead, drill down on your customers’ expectations; research and (literally) ask them what’s relevant and valuable to them today, then create personalized experiences that align with their needs. A CMS solution that delivers a range of capabilities—everything from creation and editing to management, dissemination and insights—will help you deliver and even go above and beyond their expectations.

State of the state: Too many solutions today promise quality content creation and delivery capabilities as well as streamlined, stress-free workflows. In reality, once the system is implemented and doesn’t do as promised, adoption of the tool falters, and the team starts experiencing roadblocks and other issues that slow them down considerably. When these challenges go ignored, everyone suffers, including the business itself. Nearly 47% of Forrester survey respondents had concerns over wasted (and increasingly scarce) funding devoted to inefficient content processes that, in turn, delay new marketing experiences from coming to market—in other words, these inefficiencies directly hit the bottom line.

Brands too often rush into CMS implementations without carefully considering which family of tools will best support their people, workflows and goals.

"Ensure Your Content Technology Is Solving, Not Creating, Content Problems" - Forrester study (2022)

How to address it: Once content inefficiencies start to slow down time to market, brands quickly realize the power of the CMS. Many are starting to make a switch in the solution they use, knowing that an optimized CMS platform is not just desired today but critical to the success of the business. With optimized content tools, 40% of survey respondents believe they’d see better alignment of content creation, dissemination and measurement workflows; 45% would gain the ability to scale digital content across digital properties or product lines; and 38% would see reduced time required to bring new digital experiences to market. Don’t let your system slow you down—not when there are solutions available today that help you keep pace.

State of the state: With data privacy regulations always changing, third-party cookie guidelines evolving and the explosion of delivery channels (to name a few things), it can feel overwhelming, even anxiety-inducing, to try to keep up with everything. It’s a sure thing that companies’ content programs will only continue to expand, and they’ll have to continuously mature their skills and services to keep up with industry changes. Importantly, the technology businesses use to create and deliver content is the vehicle for everything else, so if businesses don’t make changes to the systems they’re using to help them manage it all, they’ll miss things—even start to fall behind their competitors.

Since organizations’ content needs typically exceed the capabilities of any single vendor, fewer than 1 in 5 respondents currently use a single content management platform.

'Ensure your content technology is solving, not creating, content problems' - Forrester study (2022)

How to address it: Content leaders need solutions that offer meaningful integrations and alignment across their increasingly diverse technology stack. There are also solution partners out there who are true partners—teams designed to help solve complex content requirements with technology built to do so. It’s important to lean on them. Half (49%) of Forrester survey respondents are starting to realize this, believing that optimized CMS tools will lead to a better future and can help expand their growing digital content requirements. The other half will realize this soon enough, too.

Today’s content challenges are persistent. They require constant attention and effort to overcome them—but again, you don’t need to go it alone. The Brightspot team is full of developers and content experts who are passionate about solving content issues with solutions that last. We’re here to help. Contact us to discuss your content pain points and solutions ahead today.

Forrester Analyst Study

Forrester Study: Ensure your content technology is solving, not creating, content problems

Get your copy of the Forrester research referenced in this article. Backed by study data from over 400 professionals in marketing, product, IT and digital roels, it will help you learn how to avoid the content management marketing hype by matching your technology choice to your specific context.