How Enterprises Are Meeting the Demands of Omnichannel Buyers
Blog post summary:
Buyers have gone omnichannel, and enterprises' response has been to ramp up content production to ensure they're present across digital, remote, and traditional channels.
But managing content at scale is easier said than done. The growing amount of content, content variety, and available channels are impacting enterprises' productivity and bottom line
To both deliver on omnichannel buyers' expectations – and do so in a productive way, enterprises look to digital asset management platforms that can act as more than just a central repository of content but be a true enabler to delivering omnichannel content
Metadata, integration, workflows, and automation are the four vital technological capabilities marketing leaders in enterprises look for in a digital asset management to take the crucial step towards omnichannel excellence.
Buyers have gone omnichannel and expect a personalized and rich customer experience, consistent across devices:
> 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that provides customized experiences.
> 98% of citizens in the Western world switch between 2-3 devices every day.
> 83% of B2B leaders believe that omnichannel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional sales approaches.
> Most life science companies are equipping their reps with virtual-communication tools and digital, immersive content to become hybrid sellers.
People are not necessarily becoming "digital-only".
Instead, they are going "omnichannel".
Regardless of whether the channel is in-person, remote, or digital, people want it all and are somewhat indifferent – as long as their expectations are met to get the needed information, insights, and content in the most convenient way possible.
Whether physical or digital touchpoints, on the phone, or in the store, customers expect strong experiences across these touchpoints.
Companies that succeed with this are omnichannel companies that align systems, data, and content across internal and external platforms.
In our view, content lies at the heart of the omnichannel reality that buyers demand.
To accommodate this, enterprises need to create omnichannel content, which must fulfil three criteria:
It must be personalized, consistent and rich.
Omnichannel content = Personalized + Consistent + Rich
1. Personalized content
While buyers are channel-agnostic, they are not in love with all types of content.
Generic content is a thing of the past, and content must appeal to them in a customized, but preferably, individual way
2. Consistent content
As customers increasingly jump between channels and touchpoints, content consistency is essential for organizations to consider.
3. Rich content
Rich content engages buyers beyond what the crowded world of content offers, and research shows rich, immersive content creates stronger connections to buyers across marketing and selling interactions.
But managing content is easier said than done for enterprises…
The challenges enterprises face
Unfortunately, the challenges and costs of content management are enormous for enterprises:
90% of consumer brands meet bottlenecks in their handling of digital content.
$2.5 million is the yearly cost for organizations with over 1,000 employees that cannot locate and retrieve documents. Not only that, but the subsequent need to duplicate mismanaged content costs an additional $5 million.
30% is what white-collar workers spend per workday searching for information.
67% of content-creating companies want to deliver it much more efficiently.
The reason enterprises experience these challenges are many, but five primary characterizations are contributing factors to this dire picture:
1. They are almost, per definition, global and need to communicate across cultures and languages, but with a global brand.
2. They require more integrations and customization, as they have many systems.
3. They operate with more channels because they have more routes to market, such as D2C, through partners or even a B2B business unit.
4. They are active in the M&A space and need to consolidate companies, brands and their content.
5. They have multiple brands with different content requirements, such as Unilever and P&C
It's not rare that content is stored in different places in enterprises.
Some stuff is in the cloud, on someone's hard drive, or in a file server.
Across people, departments, offices, and countries.
In the perfect world, enterprises unify all content across channels in one integrated platform that users can access seamlessly.
To remove the challenges, they experience today.
This is where digital asset management has its voice.
How to solve the problem for enterprises
Digital asset management is the single source of truth for all your content.
It is the center of the content supply chain and ensures content is created, managed, and distributed in the way that enterprises want it.
But it's no secret that the martech landscape is crazy big – when it comes to digital asset management platforms, it's no different.
Digital asset management platforms vary in maturity to a great extent.
Both in terms of platform functionality and how enterprises apply them in the organization.
To truly respond to the demands of omnichannel buyers, enterprises need to do is mature their content supply chain.
From simply centralizing its content to unifying different systems to create a fully omnichannel experience.
The below list showcases five content supply chain maturities, where maturity and strategic value increases the higher the number:
Asset centralization: Centralized storage and archiving of digital assets.
Operational optimization: Streamline workflows, metadata management, transformations, permissions, and ingestion of digital assets.
Channel distribution: Integrate with distribution channels to streamline asset distribution, such as websites, portals, and campaign platforms.
System unification: Unify and data enrich digital assets with systems that share asset-related data. Such as PIM, CRM, and ERP.
Omnichannel experience: Utilize data-enriched assets to support experience personalization, chatbots, process automation, and complex component-based experiences.
The question remains:
What should enterprises look for when searching for the ideal digital asset management platform?
What lies "under the hood":
Four capabilities that enable enterprises to thrive in the new buyer landscape
We see four essential digital asset management-specific capabilities that enterprises need to pay attention to when considering a digital asset management platform to manage the entire content lifecycle.
For enterprises to succeed, they need superior metadata management, seamless integrations with other business systems and the best workflow and automation capabilities – intractable with the rest of the martech stack.
METADATA:
Enterprises need to easily configure, build, and scale their data model without code and use of development partners.
INTEGRATIONS:
Integration capabilities for enterprises to unify the system ecosystem and empower business processes
WORKFLOWS:
Enable approval processes and ensure only approved and final assets are available for distribution
AUTOMATION:
Rule-based automation to power the content operations life cycle.
Want to learn more about what headless digital asset management can do for you?
At Digizuite, we believe our digital asset management solution is second to none in the market.
Beyond our four product capabilities, two components of our platform fully establish us as a preferred supplier for enterprises:
It is tailored for enterprises. We reduce the complexity of enterprises' exposure to exponentially increasing content volume, variety, number of channels, and constituents. We do this through our best-in-class platform's capabilities within metadata, integrations, workflows, and automation
It is easy to use. With its intuitive design and user-friendly UI, it is built to make life easier for the user – not for the developer.
Partnering with Digizuite is more than buying a digital asset management platform.
We want to make sure you succeed with your platform, and that is what our people enable.
Once you purchase a Digizuite digital asset management platform, you can access a strong ecosystem of partners that help you fully implement your platform through a geographically dispersed partner network.
Contact us today for a free, personalized assessment of where you are today. We'll be happy to share our expertise and insights to help you hit your business goals in 2022 through our enterprise-grade digital asset management platform.
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