Marketing is constantly evolving.
And to succeed, Jill Roberson says, you have to evolve with it.
Jill calls this “agile content creation”—and it includes going outside your comfort zone.
Discover the lessons Jill has learned about agile content creation in this video clip from her B2B Forum 2023 presentation, or read the transcript below.
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When we put data in the driver’s seat of our evolution, we can now fuel… agile content creation, right?
That’s one of the easiest ways that we can continue to evolve.
This idea that everybody’s different? Personalization can be a challenge. But when you have data, it makes it a lot easier.
Because the biggest thing when it comes to personalization—I hear it all the time—is, “well, we just don’t know where to start.”
But if you have data, you have a starting point!
You know that this audience prefers one thing and that audience prefers another.
You don’t have to be tailoring one-to-one out of the gate. That takes time, that takes maturity, but you can get there with evolution.
But when you have data, you can now have agile content creation. You can learn what’s working. You can listen to that and then use that to fuel content creation, so you’re working smarter, not harder, for content.
There’s so much content out there. I think there’s a stat, 4.6 billion pieces of content are put out online daily…
But then 56% of content goes unseen!
So why are we wasting our time creating content that’s ultimately not getting to our end users?
We don’t have to do that anymore. If we have an evolution process and a framework that’s allowing us to address particular needs, measure the impact, and really listen, then we can fuel this agile content creation and allow ourselves to continue to evolve and grow and be better marketers.
And so this all sounds great, but really…
What does this mean?
What can you do with this now?
And so just to really kind of summarize the takeaways, I think the first thing is to just not be complacent when it comes to transformation.
It’s important to start discussions today! Start discussions really soon about breaking your roadmap into smaller pieces, right?
Organizations often have a three-to-five-year vision about where they want to go, and that’s great, but…
We should be celebrating milestones every six months!
We made this change. We saw this impact.
We want to have measurable milestones on our evolution roadmap so that we’re able to celebrate and we’re able to learn from those and adjust the roadmap accordingly.
Just because you say, “we’re going here,” doesn’t mean you need to only go there.
That endpoint might change because it’s really not about us. It’s about what we’re delivering for our consumers.
The second takeaway is to identify your champions and really build your core evolution team to help drive those projects along.
We talked about having that customer-centric mindset.
We want everyone to be on board with this evolution and it’s going to take time. But the earlier you start the conversations today and you identify the people that are going to support you in this process, the better off you’re going to be.
The third takeaway is to really focus on centralizing your data. I think in the last couple, I would say in the last year or so, the only other thing I’ve heard more about than AI is CDPs: customer data platforms.
Everybody wants one. Everyone’s buying one. But to be honest, people aren’t actually adopting them, right?
They’re saying that they have it. They’re checking the box.
I think Pam was talking about checking the box.
We love to do that as marketers, but that’s not enough. We need to focus our time and energy on centralizing the data, figuring out what systems we need to use to do that, and maximize that use. That’s the only way that we’re going to continue to learn.
We need to keep pulse on how our brand is performing, how it’s resonating with our consumers, how we’re performing across different channels.
Are those channels working for us?
And if we have data in multiple places, we’re not getting the whole story and everyone’s interpreting all of that data differently.
We need to be speaking the same language when it comes to data, when it comes to reporting.
And so having centralized data is going to allow you to more easily power personalization, focus on deeper segmentation, get that agile content methodology going…
So that we’re constantly responding and we’re able to see when something’s not working and make that pivot very quickly.
And then lastly, it’s to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
I know for myself, I like to have a process. I like to have a checklist. But it’s just not possible anymore.
I think there’s a quote out there:
“The pace of change has never been this fast, but it’s never going to be this slow again.”
That’s what we’re facing as marketers.
And we have to get uncomfortable.
We have to be able to step back from our processes, from our work, and say, “is this the right thing? I know we haven’t done it this way before, but maybe we should try.”
And so digital evolution means being uncomfortable, and that’s a good thing for us, right?
AI is such a disruptor because we are still figuring out what to do with it, right?
It’s forcing us to think about new ways to use technology to use these things that are coming out, and it’s forcing us to evolve as marketers.
And that’s a great thing for us, and it’s a great thing for our organizations and our brands.
Published August 14, 2024
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