Two brains are better than one.
Embracing the machine brain of technology as a partner with the human brains of content marketers lets you do things for your audience and brand that you could only imagine or considered too resource-intensive just a few years ago.
These examples of what’s possible with tech-human collaborations today and in the future — and what marketers should do about them — come from the experts who spoke at the recent ContentTECH Summit. You can still register (free) to go more in-depth and watch their sessions on demand.
Establish a single source of truth
“Your brand is your personality and your story. It’s how you stand out in that crowded marketplace,” says Ariana Keil, senior growth marketer at Canto.
But too often, that story gets jumbled across a customer’s journey. The prospect sees one personality on the brand’s social media and another in the deck a salesperson sent to them. That problem compounds itself each of the seven times a customer typically sees your messaging before taking the desired action.
“Your brand identity, your personality, your message has to be cohesive. It has to be consistent enough over those seven touch points so that the seed of your brand keeps getting watered,” Ariana says.
It’s a mistake that can cost your brand’s bottom line, Ariana says. Brand consistency across all platforms can increase ROI by 23%, according to a Lucidpress survey.
To ensure consistency, every company should have a brand management strategy, Ariana says.
A brand management strategy is a comprehensive plan to create, maintain, and enhance brand identity over time. It details the tactics, processes, workflows, and technology that make it happen. It also includes checkpoints to ensure you’re maintaining that consistency.
To create a brand management strategy, you must:
- Establish brand guidelines.
- Build the right tech stack.
- Develop content workflows to maintain consistency as you scale and grow.
And you have to pull it all together into a centralized single source of truth. For enterprise organizations, that usually requires a digital asset management system (DAM).
As the content hub of your tech stack, a DAM should integrate with your project management, content creation, distribution, and analytics tools. It should also offer easy and accurate search features, otherwise employees will resort to their own devices to create and publish branded assets.
But integrating a DAM into your brand management strategy is not enough. Ariana advises treating the strategy as a dynamic concept. Measure how the brand narrative is being received through social media engagement, website traffic, conversion rates, etc. Then, take that knowledge, revise, and retool.
“Everything does change, and change is OK as long as your messaging consistently evolves along with your brand.”
Treat AI as the solution, not the challenge
Marketers have faced no greater change in recent years than the advent — and rapid adoption — of easily accessible generative artificial intelligence.
“[Without] a pragmatic or thoughtful approach to AI, organizations risk being overloaded with random point solutions,” says Ali Hart, senior product marketing manager at Optimizely.
If each team develops its own AI tech stack, they’re rebuilding silos you worked hard to tear down. Brand governance and compliance takes a hit. The AI tools may create biased or inaccurate content published by different teams, and it all can lead to the deterioration of brand and digital experiences.
But if you create a systematic approach to AI across the organization, AI tools can work with your human team members for the greater good. With this strategy, you can improve empathetic personalization.
Ali says you can customize marketing messages and experiences based on the individual’s preferences, behaviors, and needs. That personalization, though, should respect customers’ privacy and boundaries.
Read More at Content Marketing Institute