In a poll of business-to-business sales and marketing professionals worldwide, marketing messaging company Corporate Visions found that two-thirds of organizations do not have a fully collaborative message development process. In general, sales staff are left out of messaging and content creation processes, researchers found. Only 37 percent of staff involved in creating messaging and sales tools are sales representatives, while 54 percent are marketing associates, the study found.

“By operating in distinct silos, marketing runs the risk of creating messages that will fail to effectively reach customers, and by extension, that salespeople are not comfortable delivering or will not use,” researchers wrote.

A lack of repeatability
One of the most significant problems survey respondents reported was their organization’s failure to create a scalable solution to content management. Just 3 percent of those polled said that their organization was using a repeatable process for content, messaging and sales tool creation.

Researchers concluded that most messaging tools are created by accident, opening up a risk for inconsistent or diluted messages across an organization. In order to reduce this threat, organizations should look to align their messages by adopting tools to integrate content across divisions, analysts explained.

“The results of this quarter’s survey indicate that while some organizations are taking steps to better align sales and marketing, many continue to operate in inefficient silos,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. He added that organizations “need to employ a cross-functional framework for message development where marketing and sales work together to create messaging that resonates with customers.”

Steps to align marketing and sales messages
Developing a message that involves both sales and marketing staff and works at all levels may seem like a complicated process, but organizations can take steps to make sure this type of content is being developed and delivered. In a blog post at Customer Think, Riesterer offered advice for improving messaging. Not only should members of sales and marketing teams work together to develop messages, he said, but the content created should be tailored to specific needs.

He advised looking at specific interactions along the sales process and creating tools that address each step. Organizations will find the best results by delivering targeted, scalable messages, he explained. The sales staff will be most effective when it has marketing materials that engage buyers in a precise way.

According to Evan Whitenight of marketing agency the Pedowitz Group, there are several marketing steps that can help drive revenue. Through services such as cloud software, marketing can be automated to enable repeatable, scalable programs that work across an organization. Additionally, organizations can create new content by repurposing existing company materials as short blog posts or other messaging tools.

On the Pedowitz Group’s blog, Chris Yeich, of content strategy firm Bulldog Solutions, explained organizations can take three steps to quickly implement unified, scalable content. By auditing existing content tailored to each step of the sales process, organizations can quickly repurpose it for other contexts and then distribute that content in a scalable way across all channels. Organizations can then look at how specific pieces of content generate revenue and target that content in a way that makes sense for the organization.

“Remember: content is not a ‘nice to have,’ it’s your voice as an organization and a direct link to your customers and prospects,” Yeich wrote. “Leverage the value of your content. Ask internal stakeholders to ensure that content is developed thoughtfully and that it aligns with your marketing messaging.”

The report by Econsultancy and Outbrain surveyed 1,300 digital marketing professionals and found more than 90 percent believe content marketing will become more important in the 12 months ahead. Seventy-three percent agreed with the statement “brands are becoming publishers.”

Despite this recognition of content marketing’s growing role, however, relatively few marketers have actually created a well-defined content marketing strategy. Only 13 percent of respondents at marketing agencies reported having content marketing strategies in place for their clients, while the figure was 38 percent for in-house marketers.

A growing focus
With nine in 10 marketers anticipating growth in the field, it is clear that organizations are beginning to pay attention to the value offered by content marketing.

“Content is the voice of your brand and it is therefore important to allocate the respect, investment and focus it requires,” a digital marketing manager for a luxury auto brand said in the report. “Creating great content is difficult and delivering great content consistently through established processes is complex. However this is what is required if you want to take your brand from good to great in today’s communication environment.”

A separate 2012 report from the Content Marketing Institute surveyed B2B marketers and found that 60 percent planned to increase their spending on content marketing in the year ahead and that content marketing accounted for approximately 26 percent of marketers’ budgets for 2011.

This growth in spending is also helping to define the field. In the Econsultancy study, 64 percent of in-house marketers agreed that content marketing is becoming a discipline of its own. This appears to be reflected in the Content Marketing Institute’s finding that 62 percent of B2B marketers are outsourcing their content marketing.

A path to adoption
The implementation of content marketing strategies remains low, but the high level of interest appears to be prompting some action. Econsultancy’s report found that 55 percent of in-house marketers and 58 percent of agency respondents are working on a content marketing strategy.

Many organizations may also be using some level of content marketing, even if they do not yet have a formal strategy. A more bullish set of numbers from the Content Marketing Institute showed 90 percent of marketers reported their organizations are using some sort of content marketing.

The lack of formal strategies could signal a tentative approach to adoption or stem from obstacles such as producing engaging content or having adequate resources. Forty-one percent of respondents in the Content Marketing Institute Report said their biggest challenge was creating content that would engage customers, while 20 percent reported struggling with producing enough content. In 18 percent of cases, the problem was a lack of budget, while 12 percent had encountered a lack of buy-in from executives.

According to one social media editor quoted by Econsultancy, many organizations may be hesitant to devote too many resources to content marketing until it becomes a more established field.

“Maybe [the low rate of adoption] is a sign that the majority of users are simply ‘playing’ in this space or testing the waters,” the executive said.

Goals for content marketing
Organizations may still be determining the business objectives for their content marketing efforts. Econsultancy looked at the motivations behind organizations’ activity, as have several other surveys.

The top goal stated in the Econsultancy study was increased engagement, with 52 percent of respondents claiming this as a priority for content marketing efforts. Forty-two percent mentioned increasing site traffic, and 35 percent named increasing brand awareness. Other objectives cited included improved SEO, lead generation, improving brand perception and thought leadership.

For B2C marketers, improved brand perception and improved SEO were relatively more important goals, while for B2B marketers, there was more of an emphasis on lead generation, thought leadership and nurturing leads.

Another report, by BtoB Magazine, found the primary objectives of content marketing for B2B professionals were similar, with lead generation, brand awareness and thought leadership constituting the top three goals. The Content Marketing Institute’s survey of B2B marketers yielded similar results, with brand awareness topping the list of goals.

The Content Marketing Institute also looked at the most common content marketing tactics. Articles topped the list, with 79 percent adoption, followed by social media at 74 percent and blogs at 65 percent. Other tactics included white papers, webcasts and in-person events.

Organizations that are looking to keep up in the current digital marketing landscape should be aware of the trends in content marketing adoption and the reasons driving it. Brands are finding that traditional metrics such as web traffic are holding a less prominent place alongside factors such as building engagement and awareness.

New research suggests that mobile traffic as a percentage of overall web traffic is climbing at a remarkable rate, and that consumers use mobile devices differently than PCs and laptops. If organizations hope to capitalize on this trend, however, entrenched business attitudes have to change.

Exponential growth and change
Ad tech firm Kontera recently unveiled some surprising statistics regarding mobile web traffic. Not only do smartphones and tablet computers now account for 22 percent of all consumer devices providing internet access, that figure is expected to rise even further over the next few months. The report projects 27 percent of internet views will take place on mobile devices by the start of 2013.

Knowing how users are accessing information on mobile devices can be essential for organizations in planning their marketing campaigns, and the report highlighted a few interesting facts about user habits. For example, Apple’s iOS platform is significantly more popular among mothers who view healthcare information on their mobile devices, with iPhones (39 percent) and iPads (34 percent) comprising the lion’s share of devices used for this purpose.

Not only do moms reach for their Apple products when doing research or finding information, they log onto the internet through their devices later in the day than PC users. Mobile use peaks during television primetime hours, according to the report, suggesting marketers can time their messages to arrive in the evening when users are logged on.

Agencies and applications
But all the user data in the world won’t help if organizations aren’t making the move into mobile. A number of advertising agencies have shown reluctance when it comes to shifting their efforts to mobile devices, and some industries are suffering lost revenue as a result.

The most recent census taken by the Association of Online Publishers found that ad agency attitudes are the biggest factor holding up revenue growth from mobile channels. Despite this, a large majority of publishing organizations said tablets (91 percent) and smartphones (85 percent) will provide the greatest opportunities for revenue growth in the near future. According to Lee Baker, director of the AOP, publishing organizations are going to be implementing some changes in the near future to take advantage of this channel, regardless of ad agency attitudes.

Many of the changes Baker predicts the publishing industry will make can be adapted by other types of organizations. For example, when it comes to producing content, publishers intend to find a content management system (CMS) that allows them to generate content for multiple platforms simultaneously, rather than requiring organizations to manage each channel individually. Any organization that produces a large amount of content, from publishers to healthcare, from insurance groups to financial organizations, can use this same approach to get its message out to users on multiple platforms.

Implementing the right tools can help an organization harness the growing power of mobile channels, increase revenue and expand brand awareness.

Approximately half of the companies surveyed in Aberdeen’s Metric-Driven Mobile Marketing study are challenged by the commitment to adapt their web content for the mobile channel, according to a recent report from Aberdeen Group, The Business Value of Adapting Web Content for Mobile Devices.

Forrester Research recently projected that half of the U.S. population will own a smartphone by the end of 2012. Mobile is becoming such a significant channel that addressing the need for adapted web content in the consumer-focused enterprise is rapidly becoming a top marketing priority.

For companies with a business-to-business selling model, it’s fair to say that “having an app” and a mobile content initiative is of interest, but the pressure isn’t as intense, with the exception of transaction-heavy sectors, such as the travel and financial-services industries.

Tackling Content-formatting Challenges

The need to deliver targeted mobile content and enable mobile content management is motivating the enterprise to commit resources to it, yet many are grappling with the complexity of formatting content for the numerous user interfaces represented within the plethora of mobile devices and operating systems in play.

The “positive impact of mobile web content optimization” on customer engagement” is a focus of the recent Aberdeen report, which included key factors in the success of mobile website creation in terms of both customer engagement and top-line revenue results.

Key Stats from Aberdeen’s Study

Companies that optimize their mobile web content:

• Outperform by 80% those that don’t in year-over-year web traffic increase
• Say that marketing contributes 56% more to company revenue than in those companies that don’t (23% vs. 15%)
• Are 15% more likely to increase customer satisfaction year-over-year when personalization of content is improved.

An earlier Aberdeen report, Opposites Attract: The Mobile Channel Unites Marketing and IT, found that 35% of funds for mobile marketing programs come from IT services budgets.

Three Essential Business Processes for Mobile Content Adaptation

Three business processes are central to the goal of adapting web content for mobile devices. Those three are:

1. IT and Marketing Collaboration:Aberdeen’s best-in-class companies from the Metric-Driven Mobile Marketing study described a collaborative relationship between IT and marketing in mobile content management and development. The technical assistance in formatting for the wide range of mobile interfaces is of special value to digital-marketing teams in these projects.
2. Marketing Content Redesign: What makes mobile devices so compelling to consumers presents a considerable challenge for marketers: how to create a consistent user experience for image, video, and brand elements within the formatting requirements of the various platforms. Companies committed to doing this well are redesigning their marketing content to render well on targeted devices.
3. Marketing Content Personalization and Customization: It’s tough to have a positive user experience when multi-directional scrolling and “pinch-zooming” are required. But there’s more to optimizing mobile content than proper formatting. Best-in-class survey respondents toldAberdeen that they customize mobile content based on distinct customer profiles for greater engagement and delivery of targeted marketing messages based on behavioral data collected.

The Bottom Line

Best-in-class consumer-oriented corporations are taking mobile content adaptation and mobile content management seriously, working hard at meeting user-experience expectations on a variety of devices, customizing certain content, and working collaboratively across IT and marketing departments. The end result can be a greater marketing contribution to top-line revenue and overall financial health.

Digital-marketing teams marketing to consumers are well-advised to create a content plan and adopt or increase their use of web content management systems that allow for swift content rollout and excellent scalability. The right web content management system will enable a highly productive relationship in content publishing between IT and marketing departments.

How are you beginning–or perfecting–your mobile content projects? How are you handling mobile content management? We’d love to hear about your best practices or quandaries in the Comments section below.

Given the mission-critical role of e-business today, most traditional web content management (WCM) systems are actively failing in the enterprise setting. Inside small and medium-sized corporations, many WCM products have gained traction and are doing a reasonably good job. Not so in the enterprise, where it’s common for digital-marketing exectives to wait six months to a year to get a new web or mobile project live. In a recent private conversation, one newly hired e-business executive at a Fortune 1000 insurance company talked about her dilemma:

“We do 80% of our new business from our websites. It’s tens of millions in revenue per day. It’s a core, business-critical function.  As things stand, we can make content changes to the existing sites pretty rapidly but we can only make a change to layout or function on the website in major releases every 12 weeks. 

“That’s only four times a year! So nobody here even thinks about any type of experimentation or innovation. There is no mobile strategy. No content targeting or optimization. We’re just trying to get keep our existing web projects up-to-date.  Everything is just too hard. 

“And the problem is that the legacy WCM system is all part of a monolithic e-business architecture. Any change is seen as unacceptably high-risk. We’re simply trapped in a slow-moving environment.”

No Experimentation. No Targeting. No Innovation.

The inability to move rapidly or to innovate is an unacceptable failure of digital marketing in the modern enterprise. Even marginal acceleration of the speed of product launches or conversion rates can mean millions of dollars of added revenue.

So how can this be happening in the enterprise? The culprit is hidden in plain sight: It’s the prevailing WCM approach. That methodology was designed 15 years ago, and while it’s still viable within small and medium corporations, it’s functioning as an active roadblock to productivity inside the enterprise.

Few CEOs think their websites or mobile projects are active, innovative, vibrant and well-executed. At best, corporate websites are safe, clean representations of the brand. But few websites allow companies to actively drive leads through multiple customized sites and campaigns. There are a few notable exceptions, such as Skype and Amazon, but the vast majority of companies are struggling to execute on all the campaigns that they envision and that they need in order to stay competitive.

How WCM Gridlock Takes Hold

How do savvy enterprise professionals become handcuffed to WCM that doesn’t work? By seeing how well the first projects on those traditional WCM systems go when they’re initially installed. That’s because at projects one to three, the enterprise looks like a small or medium-sized corporation. The prototype looks perfect and the company makes the decision to replace the broken architecture with a new version of the same broken architecture.

Then in projects five to 10, the environment becomes complex and things slow down.  And by the time project 100 rolls around, everything has fallen apart. Forty people are running around trying to compensate for an architecture that simply doesn’t work at this level. The model that functions so well for two or three websites simply doesn’t scale.

Challenges Unique to Enterprise WCM

Web content management implementations in the enterprise should help the organization meet its most critical business challenges.Enterprise customers need WCM to help them manage:

• Many websites – Compare the typical three or four in the mid-market to what’s often hundreds in the enterprise
• Many languages
• Many contributors
• Diverse and complex regulatory requirements that vary by global market
• Many more (and more complex) existing technologies
• Multiple digital channels
• Many content consumers all over the globe.

 Critical Requirements for Enterprise WCM

Due to the significant differences in scale outlined above, enterprise WCM implementations have different requirements from smaller corporate WCM implementations:

1. Many-to-Many WCM Production Model:  It should be possible for many websites and/or mobile projects to be produced and released simultaneously by different creative and development shops without risking website uptime or integrity. Organizations with hundreds of websites simply cannot work one project at a time due to the necessity of a release cycle.
2. Creative Team Inclusion: The enterprise needs an option for new web projects to be implemented by third-party organizations–specifically creative organizations.  A bottleneck of expert developers working on fragile code for each and every change or project is the outcome of the current enterprise WCM approach. An architecture that allows third-party developers to develop new websites and mobile projects without any risk to security or site uptime is a requirement.
3. Separation of Style from Transactions: Website layout and look-and-feel should be independent of any e-commerce or transactional functions. This separation is required in order for third-party developers to be able to work on websites and is required to make #2 above a possibility.
4. Speed of Look-and-Feel Modification: Marketing/digital-business teams must be able to change website look-and-feel easily, and release it to the live environment within a day or two.
5. Regional and Divisional Empowerment: Regional or marketing/digital-business teams must be able test and target content easily—and then adjust layout and look-and-feel based on results. Dozens of tests a month should be possible. And regions and divisions must be able to do this on their own without any central bottleneck.
6. Rapid, Reliable Global Content Distribution: Content must be distributed rapidly and with high reliability around the globe. The existing approach of a single WCM setup dynamically delivering all of the content and functionality works fine for the midsized corporation, but fails badly in the global enterprise.
7. Built-in Regulatory Compliance: When new projects are launched, regulatory compliance must be built into the system to prevent errors or omissions.
8. Easy Adoption by Non-experts: The WCM system user interface should not be an expert system. It has to enable a first-time user to contribute content right then and there.
9. Integrated Mobile and Social Content Publishing: Mobile and social-media content creation (and digital signage) should be simple output options and not require new systems, content owners, etc.

It’s All About the Global Business

The bottom line for enterprise WCM is that it needs to help the business compete globally. Done well, WCM can help a company widen top-line revenue streams and swiftly roll out new projects and initiatives around the globe.

WCM is not broken for smaller corporations. We know this because many of those companies get websites live quickly and successfully. Options abound. The mid-sized corporation has more complex challenges, but is able to succeed even when changing out the content management system with every redesign, because teams and projects are contained.

But until the enterprise begins evaluating WCM technologies that can take their digital marketing and global initiatives to market quickly while addressing global scaling, security, and interoperability requirements, enterprise WCM will continue to fail.

Author Michael Kriz

As a localization project manager, you’re the captain of the ship — you’re the one who’s ultimately responsible for the crew and for everything that happens from port to port. The cargo is heavy and the turnarounds are tight. Will you deliver on time? On budget? Will the linguistic quality of your translations be up to snuff? Will management be satisfied with the final product?

One way you can take the pressure off is to prepare well. Pre-project is a good time to research best practices and brush up on your localization project management skills. I asked my team for their best practices and tips on what helps them stay on course and overcome challenges in their website localization projects. Here’s a list of ten best practices that they came up with:

1. Select a translation agency well-versed in website translation

Website content can be much more marketing-driven than your typical software or documentation translation. The translators, linguists, quality assurance (QA) professionals and engineers you team up with should ideally have experience in this specific type of translation work.

2. Discuss with your internal team how multilingual content will be managed

If you have a content management system or CMS for your English content, there are a few questions to consider:

• Can it handle localized material?
• Is it able to export and re-import content in a translation-friendly format and efficient manner?

3. Review the broader pieces of web localization

SEO, or search engine optimization, is crucial to a website’s survival in any language so you’ll want to tie it to your website localization effort from the get-go. If you’re considering other marketing initiatives such as ads, landing pages, email campaigns or PPC (pay per click), you’ll want to coordinate all of them for consistency. In terms of your content, there are a few other questions to address:

• How does each section of the website relate to international markets? There will likely be global, regional and local content. Each of these will have different localization requirements.
• Will content need reworking for the local markets? Some images, themes, or articles may need to be swapped or adapted to local norms.
• Fit your website localization effort into a complete globalization plan.

4. Fit your website localization effort into a complete globalization plan

It can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture with deadlines keeping you up at night. Take some time to understand the high-level objectives of this effort before localization begins:

• Will the translated content support a software or web product that’s being marketed internationally? If so, has it been localized and for consistency’s sake, should some of these translated terms be used for the website?
• If the product will remain in English, how will you handle product references, key terminology or images for the website? Will these remain in English or require translation?

5. Agree on testing steps ahead of time

Often overlooked and undervalued, testing is an essential phase in a quality-oriented translation process. Working out the logistics will make for a smoother ride:

• Determine who will stage the content for testing. Some prep is required and advance notice will enable the tester to be on cue.
• Make sure the appropriate sample data and third-party applications will be made available to testers.

6. Approve the test script

Remember that localization/linguistic testing of websites focuses on the language, not the functionality, of the site.

7. Create a staging environment dedicated to localization

You’ll want a stable environment that’s not being used simultaneously for ongoing development work.

8.  Determine the best time to test

This should ideally be after all your content is translated and there’s a break in the update cycle.

9. Discuss ongoing maintenance

You can never plan too far ahead. Creating a maintenance schedule will keep you on task and minimize inefficiencies. Ask the following questions:

• How often will the site be updated in English?
• How will the localized site maintenance map to that English cycle?

If the translation maintenance cycle will be frequent, it would be a good idea to automate the handoffs from your CMS to your translation team. This will greatly reduce the busy-work of managing translation.

10. Establish a review and approval process

Coordinating with your reviewers is important so that you make the most of their time. Decide at what point in the process they should look at the translated content and how they should approach ongoing updates.

Click here for a white paper with more information on preparing for website localization.

With more than 20 years in the translation and localization industry, author Michael Kriz draws on experiences founding and managing localization endeavors — from his first foray into the industry creating a small translation company in Paris to working with leading global entities. Michael is the founding president of translation agency Acclaro, which has grown since its founding in 2002 into a global enterprise with offices on four continents. Michael and his team share news and tips on translation, localization, language, global business and culture at their blog.

CRM/WCM integration is of increasingly practical value to the enterprise. A few use cases include:

• Targeting Content: An integration would allow you to use CRM data to drive more personalized web and mobile content experiences. For example, knowing that a prospect has been to your site and works within a specific industry makes it possible to serve industry-specific content options on his or her next visit.
• Closed-loop Marketing: Pushing website visitor data—such as form data–back to SalesForce for lead nurturing and detailed reporting can be of immediate use to sales and marketing teams.
• Greater Business-process Efficiency:  Capturing new conversions and lead data and populating the CRM system to begin order processing could shorten process times.

Some WCM Systems Make CRM Integration Easy, Many Don’t

One factor slowing the process of getting such integrations done is the technical challenge of integrating CRM and many WCM systems. As Beth Stackpole noted in a recent TechTarget article, “Most Web content management software platforms lack preconfigured integration capabilities and have a less than robust set of application programming interfaces, according to industry analysts and consultants.”

Key Evaluation Points

However, some of the latest generation of WCM platforms do provide either plug-and-play integrations with SalesForce and other CRM systems or the APIs that make such integrations easier to accomplish. As with any enterprise software evaluation, it’s a best practice to dig into the details of how each vendor accomplishes WCM/CRM integrations and how easily. Additionally, it makes good sense to ask WCM vendors for case studies or reference accounts for such integrations.

Related Reading:  Enable an Integration between SharePoint and WCM

Microsoft SharePoint is a simple fact of life in the enterprise. For document collaboration and publishing and for managing the document lifecycle, SharePoint is an effective solution for many large organizations. However, the advent of MOSS, which welded Content Management Server with SharePoint Services, hasn’t hastened the adoption of SharePoint as a web content management (WCM) system.

Inward- vs. Outward-facing Content

Most WCM practitioners know the reason for this is that SharePoint was designed to be–and is best suited to be–a solution for the lifecycle management of inward-facing content. Content that’s meant to spread the word about your organization and its products or services is another animal altogether and calls for different management tools.

In their best implementations, web content management (WCM) systems must empower content publishers like marketing departments to rapidly publish and iterate persuasive content for global use. This requires giving publishers a certain degree of freedom that can be difficult to balance with workflow and security required for enterprise document management.

Use-case Examples

The specific needs of the enterprise for Sharepoint-to-WCM-system connectivity vary by industry and business objectives. No doubt there’s at least one for every enterprise SharePoint group.

• Mortgage Company Title-agent Profiles: One very large mortgage company is planning to connect SharePoint to its WCM environment in order to bring its title agents from their old CMS into the new. Having a single interface between SharePoint and the WCM system would enable the concurrent update of both content repositories, while enabling workflow to occur in the WCM environment.
• Credit Union Product Catalog: A California credit union keeps its product catalog and the attendant workflow in SharePoint. The integration they seek would bring in the approved data to their WCM system but allow the approval process to remain within SharePoint, leaving a marker in SharePoint when data was brought in to the WCM directories.
• Financial Consulting Firm Collaborative Portal: One of the world’s largest financial consulting firms is setting up a SharePoint/WCM relationship in order to enable joint rendering of content from their marketing websites and their extranet for client collaboration.

Make SharePoint Connection a Factor in WCMS Evaluation

When choosing a WCM solution, then, it makes sense to add easy connection to and from SharePoint to your checklist of factors for evaluation. Specifically, a good enterprise WCM solution should make it simple and straightforward to:

• Browse SharePoint assets from the content management system (CMS) as if they were any other set of assets in the WCM repository
• Upload and publish those assets from SharePoint on web pages
• Browse the intranet and see any uploaded files or links to those files from SharePoint in the web pages being viewed, with one-click access to the file itself
• “Push” the file to another repository or file system location, such as the CMS, which can then control and manage links.

There are significant differences between billing and ownership models when dealing with traditional software solutions versus those delivered as a service. Just for a start, one implication for your contracts is that the concepts of code escrow, liability, and indemnity bonds in their traditional applications simply don’t apply to Software-as-a-Service.

Here’s a quick guide to key differences between standard software contracts and those from vendors offering cloud applications or Software-as-a-Service.

Payment Terms

Many companies signing up for SaaS software such as WCMS solutions expect to be able to subscribe on a month-to-month basis. The business model to support this billing option is rare, if not nonexistent, as SaaS technology providers absorb substantial start-up costs. This is one of the main reasons that nearly all SaaS vendors require an annual subscription commitment.

May enterprise customers understandably want to lock in a single rate, but service providers often reserve the right to make incremental cost adjustments to cover rising costs, such as the development costs associated with further development of the tool set, for example. It’s also true that, in many cases, the SaaS vendor will experience a net loss the first quarter of your subscription period in the form of account set-up and customer acquisition costs.

Work for Hire

Most likely your organization has come to expect to own the proceeds of any professional services for which you contract, such as a custom implementation of a CMS or WCM system. Because Software as a Service isn’t constructed as a pure set of independently functioning code, it’s simply not possible to work in terms of work for hire or your organization’s ownership of the end result of professional services, so this will be a difference in your SaaS software contracts.

Warranty Issues

It’s common for corporate customers to expect software—whether packaged or SaaS or otherwise—to perform all of their intended uses. However, it is in the nature of web content management software that the provider can’t know in advance all of your intended uses, so it’s likely that some time will need to be spent negotiating which representations and warranties (promises) will be delivered by the service provider.

Customer Warranties

A SaaS provider is likely to need more representations and warranties from its customers than other software companies would, because the work is done together through an active relationship involving the shared use of a tool. For one example, the SaaS vendor will need assurances that your “customer data” will not violate the rights of others and that your use of the software will not violate any applicable laws.

Limits of Liability

This is generally a surprise to enterprise attorneys, but it’s an inescapable reality that—even more than with traditional software sales and licensing models–a SaaS vendor would be unable to provide the service it offers if exposed to potentially unlimited legal liability. It can seem difficult to accept what are fairly standard limits of liability for SaaS vendors—such as the exclusion of “consequential” types of damages, such as customer data loss—but these are both standard practice and necessary for the viability of business models for SaaS software development companies. A SaaS vendor can provide the tool, but it can’t guarantee the preservation of data; that is the customer’s responsibility (backup, etc.).

Bear in mind that SaaS web content management systems and technologies are separate from your organization’s data, and the vendor’s services are not meant to safeguard your data. Your organization and its information technology (IT) staff are still fully in control of and ultimately responsible for your data and the security of your customers’ and consumers’ private information.

For example, stock “scam” companies make use of content management systems just like any other online business. If subject to unlimited legal liability on the data produced by the customer, the risk to the provider of WCMS technology would be unacceptable. It’s in the nature of the SaaS business that there are tradeoffs between the lower risk to your organization of try-before-you-buy licensing and the fact that your organization alone is liable for data security, redundancy, and regulatory compliance issues.

It’s standard practice to cap the liability of a WCM vendor company at the price of one year of subscription service. In fact, it’s essential that this is done in order to protect the vendor who intends to partner with you in every appropriate way and to ensure that the technology your organization adopts can continue to evolve and be supported.

Uptime/Service Level Agreement (SLA) Issues

Ten years ago, software was thought to be mostly bug-free and was most definitely available to your organization 100% of the time. So the concepts of a service level agreement (SLA) and uptime may be entirely new to you and your legal team. Even when a SaaS vendor offers greater than 99% uptime, it could seem on the surface as if you’re being asked to sign up for something that may not be available when you need it.

With a perpetual software license, you’re licensing one version of a software product for which your IT group becomes responsible. You may already be relying on your IT group to meet internal SLAs for mission-critical business applications. With SaaS web content management or other applications, your provider will upgrade their SLAs at no additional costs. Some will also provide refunds or discounts for any failures to meet levels in the agreements, something your IT staff is unlikely to ever provide.

One advantage of SaaS software is that, if it’s architected properly, your organization can expect to receive automatic and more frequent updates than are possible with traditional software, and these updates will be included in your subscription cost. This will eliminate what can often be days-long downtime periods for upgrades.

For More Information

This article has briefly touched on some of the main differences in business model, philosophy, and standard contractual practices between standard software and that offered via SaaS. For more information, see:

• Forrester: Key Areas to Consider in SaaS Contract Negotiation
• Gartner: Safe SaaS: Contractual Protections for a Lasting Vendor Relationship

Questions? Comments? Have some experience negotiating a SaaS SLA? Start or join a conversation below for the edification of your colleagues and peers.

Tuesday’s three-hour workshop for web content management and marketing professionals lived up to the promise. From watching Scott Liewehr hop enthusiastically up the aisle to illustrate how perceptive engagement moves prospects through Robert Rose’s seven-stage buying cycle, to hearing Robert respond to a full list of WEM/CEM acronyms with, “It’s all B.S.,” it was clear the gloves were off and it was time to think differently about consistent customer engagement and why an organization should care enough to do it right.

There’s a lot of interaction involved in a three-hour workshop, so here are the key messages and some how-to examples to kick-start your strategy.

If You Only Take Away One Thing From This Report…

Let it be this: Most businesses today are still suffering from the effects of a major disconnect between what they want to say in their marketing and what their prospects and customers want to hear—and how and where they want to hear it. Getting to know who they are and what they need, then creating useful, targeted content that guides them through their own buying cycles (not just your internal sales cycle) will reap significant rewards for your organization.

That’s the basis of content marketing, which relies heavily on persuasive content targeted at the needs and interests of diferent customer or consumer profiles. And as Scott said very directly, “Persuasive content must first be perceptive.” So listening, gathering information on who your visitors and prospects are and how they engage, then building experiences to match their expectations is fundamental to marketing success today.

Another key takeaway from Scott Liewehr: Yes, technology can help you with customer engagement across web, mobile, and other channels. There are some great tools on the market to support your efforts. But process is the largest part of engagement done right, and it has to come before technology.

SEO is Answers, Not Engagement

It’s still true that search engine optimization (SEO) is important to your digital branding and marketing success. But work on it should come after the creation of compelling and targeted content, Robert says. SEO will help a customer find you, but it won’t help a customer move from interest through conversion and ultimately to advocacy.

What works is “a high velocity of good, sharable content.” You can worry about the title character count and metatags later, when you “fine-tune the race car.”

Why Does Content Marketing Work?

If your content is good, it will both engage and be shared and spread by your customers. But good, engaging content that enables interaction with the customer requires transparency and immediate communication, and most companies are not yet good at this.

Content Marketing Requires Innovation, Which Involves Risk

It’s critical when you’re gearing your team up for innovation to make it OK to fail, Robert said. In content marketing, where justifying the cost of innovation can be so tough to do, it makes sense to do a series of small, iterative experiments. Some will work. Some won’t. And you’ll learn some absolutely vital things along the way that will make your bigger projects work well.

Ask your team, where are we not doing well enough? Where are our results poorest? That’s the place to start creating an innovative content-marketing experiment to find out what works best for the profiles or types of prospects or consumers you’re targeting.

Real World: When inbound marketing and web content management (WCM) consultant Scott Templeman, a workshop attendee, began working with young-adult-fiction author Laura Kreitzer, she was experiencing a tremendous problem with pirating of her e-book. The two brainstormed a content-marketing experiment, making the first book in her series available as a free download on Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s websites, which increased the sales of the succeeding books in the series tremendously. This shows the power of meaningful content as a motivator for buying decisions and customer loyalty.

Building a Business Case for Content Marketing

There’s no question about it: Done right, content marketing is innovative, and getting budget for innovation can be a hard sell. That’s why Robert advocates starting with a series of small, adaptive experiments and adopting the philosophy that it’s OK to fail as a team. Get budget for a small experiment and “fail small” until you hit the right idea, then leverage that for a bigger win.

He also notes that real innovation is an open process, and that requires networking across the usual divisions and groups. “The I.T. guys will have good ideas for content marketing, too.”

First, to begin the internal sales process for content marketing projects, evangelize the idea of content marketing to decision-makers by doing an internal workshop showing some case studies from companies in your industry and brainstorming some potential projects.

Then, to get that first chunk of budget for a “skunkworks” project, Robert suggests the creation of an actual innovation business plan, which would include:

• The Challenge
• Outcomes
• Risk
• Targets (Who) – the total addressable market (TAM) and their profiles
• Actions
• Budget
• Deliverables

And the big, red, “Oh, No!” button. (Editor’s Note: I cleaned up the name of the button in order to keep this site’s G rating.)

Building the WHO

To communicate effectively in an age in which consumer/customer trust is down and “the peer review is always right,” Scott says a digital marketer—in fact, a brand—must:

• Be open
• Be a good listener
• Be prepared
• Be knowledgeable
• Be consistent
• Deliver value.

In other words (Scott’s): “Listen. Be relevant. Engage.”

The stages of engagement in digital content marketing

There’s more to engagement than a click to purchase, which anyone involved in customer retention and upsell initiatives understands. Scott said:

Engagement occurs when a consumer interacts with a brand, and elects to invest in it physically, financially, or emotionally.

The tipping point comes in gaining a consumer’s attention and trust through a process of engagement. As Scott outlines it, the engagement journey moves a prospect from Awareness through Conversion, then Loyalty, and finally, the ultimate stage: Advocacy.

Define Key Personas and Build a Segmentation Plan

Personas are about more than demographics. Personas actually tell you who your key buyer types are as people. So defining personas means identifying your key types of buyers, who they are and what pushes their buttons. Following a few key players on Twitter and learning what they like through their comments and retweets is one way to get to know them, but engaging with your own customers is always the best place to start.

A segmentation plan (covered at length in Robert’s book, “Managing Content Marketing”) will help you plan content for each of your key buyer personas.

Map Content to Both Your Sales Cycle and Your Buyer’s Buying Cycle

If you stop and think, it’s fairly obvious that these two cycles are broken out differently, but if you don’t deliver compelling content that your buyers need at the different stages through which they pass before signing up for your product or service, you’re not going to convert as many buyers. Period.

Robert presented a spreadsheet that shows how you can delineate and work with both of these important cycles:

Planning Content by Buying Cycle

The main point to bear in mind as you plan content is that if you don’t know where your buyers are in their buying cycles, you can’t deliver the right content.

Building the WHERE: Context is Critical

Using a map of the world as an example, Robert talked about how our perspectives on “facts” or situations can vary greatly, depending on our contexts (such as culture, economic rank, geography, language, age, and more). Those of us in North America who are over the age of 30 grew up with maps of the world that made the United States appear nearly as large as or larger than the African continent. However, when shown a map that represents the actual proportions of each of the continents in relationship to each other, it becomes clear that several of our larger nations, including the former U.S.S.R. and the United States, can all fit easily within the space represented by Africa.

This illustrates the importance of context for content, which deals with how we uniquely respond to a situation. Context for your key personas is a critical element in delivering persuasive, compelling, engaging content to the right people right where they “live.”

Creating a Very Simple Content Channel Plan

To help map out your content definition, creation, and delivery plans, create a chart showing your:

• Situational Analysis: What you should change or stop doing altogether
• Channel Objectives:  The purpose, personality, and velocity of your content
• Content/Conversion Plan: Mapping out what will be developed, how, when, and where
• Metrics: How will you measure success or return on investment (ROI)?
• Personas: Your key buyers or consumers by channel
• Editorial Calendar: This should be driven and fed by multiple initiatives wihtin your organization.

Before Approaching Technology, Get the Process Right 

It’s important to figure out how to manage content centrally as an asset, Robert and Scott both noted. But even more important than that is the creation and support of a content strategy process for the organization. Once that’s in place and you’ve got both process and a plan, then you can make swift work of finding technology that can support your targeting and cross-platform delivery efforts.

In Closing

This is by no means a complete review of the excellent workshop I attended. The intent is to give you a kickstart and some inspiration for beginning to leverage content marketing in your organization – content marketing that can make a difference to your topline revenue and overall marketing success.

Cynthia Siemens is the Editor-in-Chief of ContentManagement.com. She has worked in software and technology companies since 1986, beginning as an application developer and trainer, then developing a focus on writing and editing about technology for business. She has worked for and with such companies as Hitachi Data Systems, Citrix, Symantec, Cisco, Adobe, CA, BroadVision, Knowledge Adventure, MetaCreations, LivePix, Oracle, Sun, Logitech, Uniloc USA, Magnify360, and Sony Digital Entertainment.