With the digital transformation happening faster than ever, marketers are on the lookout for new alternatives that allow them to better connect with their intended audiences. While a traditional content management system can operate in certain ways, it doesn’t offer the flexibility or growth potential to do much more than piecemeal multichannel efforts. Yet a headless content management system offers the capabilities required to create and deliver content to end-users in an entirely different fashion. This article details how headless CMS boosts marketing strategies and why, at this time, it should be considered a necessity for any successful business.
Flexibility to Reach Audiences Across Platforms
One of the most transformative features by which a headless CMS can revolutionize marketing efforts is omnichannel content delivery. Where a typical CMS sets content delivery to a designated frontend and cannot operate without it, a headless repository operates in an entirely different manner. A headless CMS possesses a content repository that exists absent of a frontend layer advocating for a particular display. Therefore, content can be delivered absent an intended endpoint, as APIs can transport content to almost any device or interface. Brands with content situated in the most remote corners of the universe can deliver it to its audiences, no matter where it resides.
This flexibility is essential in an omnichannel environment where customers interact with one brand across various avenues. With a headless solution, for example, marketers can say the same thing on the web and mobile apps, social media and digital kiosks, email, AR, VR, and even IoT. Each channel receives exactly what it requires, formatted in the proper aesthetic for the proper consumer, resulting in a unified experience. For example, a globally branded retailer running a seasonal sale can utilize the headless CMS to disseminate sales information throughout its omnichannel experience. Its branded website may host sale banners, its digital app may render digital renderings of product descriptions, and its in-store kiosks may feature geo-targeted efforts all from the same content repository.
Whether customers purchase digitally or in person, they receive the same information, which helps the brand build equity and trust in its efforts. Furthermore, a headless CMS allows businesses to continue their content distribution down the line as more information becomes available. An automotive company, for instance, could create storefronts via AR; thus, a headless CMS can push information specs, customization options, and in-person purchase opportunities directly into the AR experience so customers can interact with it more seamlessly and fluidly.
Even IoT smart devices can connect this way so that secondary devices, like smart speakers, more readily receive updated information for functionality and interaction. This is why a headless CMS supports marketing so effortlessly content is repurposed and sent out to downstream channels quickly. It’s as if this solution not only enables companies to get ahead of the anticipated developments in technology over time, but also provides the means for a consistent, omnichannel branding experience. A headless CMS is perfect for marketers who need a solution to get accustomed to a dynamic, evolving approach.
Enhanced Personalization for Better Engagement
Marketing relies on the notion of personalization, and the ability to provide a personalized experience can set an organization apart in a saturated market. Therefore, a headless CMS supports marketing campaigns because it enables such extensive marketing efforts and does so with relative ease and adaptability. For example, standard CMS platforms lack the reach of universal personalization.
However, a headless CMS effortlessly links with analytical tools, CRM applications, and any other data-driven pursuits to generate marketing opportunities that exceed just delivering a standardized message. Therefore, with this awareness stemming from such integrations marketers develop content relative to what people enjoy and how they interact with it and how they’ve interacted in the past a headless CMS can allow a larger media company to recognize what someone watched previously and suggest something else relative to the same genre, actor, or theme. A hyperlocal news station can do this even easier, providing people news or suggested features based on their actual address and zip code.
This is a fulfilling experience because it feels like the content is made for them and even more, it encourages even more engagement. Likewise, personalization in yet another digital realm ecommerce also makes customer transactions much easier. An online clothing store can take a customer’s buying and browsing history and offer them tailored suggestions, discount opportunities, and price changes associated with what they’ve bought or viewed in the past. For example, if someone tends to buy workout clothing, they may find that they receive special deals on new leggings when workout pants are added to the online store, and similarly, their app has a customized homepage about workout gear and accessories.
This not only makes the likelihood of a purchase higher, but it also engenders trust and loyalty, for the customer feels as if the company already knows them. It’s not only websites and apps anymore that receive personalization; social media, email, and voice command interfaces do as well. A headless CMS enables a company to push personalized content across all channels in real time, so the customer experience with the brand is equally personalized no matter where one engages. In addition, personalization involves when content is delivered and how it is delivered, in addition to who gets which content. A headless CMS allows marketers to experiment with timing based on when people use certain applications appropriate push notifications, for example, or a birthday discount.
There are certain times of the year, supported by analytics, when people travel more than others; thus, the CMS can deliver an ad with recommendations for an anniversary vacation at that exact time. Gaining an awareness of how and why to effectively personalize via data-driven methods only bolsters the rationale behind how a headless CMS supports marketing efforts so effectively. When given the opportunity for content to be intentionally and personally rendered for a specific person, it’s always sky-high engagement, conversion rates, and loyal customers. When the customer is always taken into consideration, a headless CMS merely makes sure that marketing efforts are something more than just marketing efforts, but instead effective experiences that transform the game in the first place.
Streamlined Collaboration Between Teams
When marketing can do its job without needing to focus on development, everything is firing on all cylinders. Headless provides the necessary communication and collaboration between content creators and developers with these proper workflows. For example, Storyblok has a visual editor where marketers can edit/create/test content live.
This means for minor edits and changes, there is no back-and-forth with developers engaged as they are busy with more significant issues. Having the speed to experiment and edit does not rely on developer approval or time to implement; instead, things get done faster, and marketers can get things out the door, experiment, and adjust existing campaigns as soon as they see fit from analytics feedback. Marketing stays on time and on task with everything else going on in the marketing realm.
Faster Time-to-Market for Campaigns
In marketing, time-to-market is everything. A headless CMS enhances marketing efforts by reducing time-to-market. While a legacy CMS may trap content or campaigns until web developers take months to implement a new feature or change after all, the developers must be in the weeds of the code to launch it, and they’ll be at a standstill until its complete. Meaning that by the time something is published or launched, it’s too late for engagement; a headless CMS allows marketers access to everything they need to create and publish content whenever and wherever they see fit – they shouldn’t have to wait. For example, if a marketing team wants to implement a holiday sale initiative, the headless CMS allows everyone access to change promotional graphics and calls-to-action across all digital platforms simultaneously so that changes are made everywhere for on-time launch.
Scalability for Growing Businesses
Where there are businesses, there is content. A headless CMS can scale with an enterprise’s content needs and integrate effortlessly with other applications that may be necessary. Enterprises with global aspirations need to foster engagement in various markets; a headless CMS can offer multi-language content and regionalization efforts without interfering with the quality of brand efforts in other markets. A solution like Storyblok has a reliable ancestry, so using it safeguards these efforts from re-invention down the line.
Data-Driven Decision Making
A headless CMS generates real-time, usable data that enables marketers to evaluate how engaged users are. Since a headless CMS integrates with various analysis tools, it can reveal how users engage with the show, how well certain initiatives fare as peer-reviewed ratings, and how extensively engagement is tracked. Thus, marketers can leverage this data to revise their current strategic initiatives to better pave the way for success and improve ROI. For example, if one specific kind of episode always gets better ratings than any other form of engagement, marketers can take that data to revise future initiatives to hone in on that kind of episode instead. The capacity to refine based on immediately available data is a powerful way a headless CMS fosters successful marketing initiatives in a measurable way.
Conclusion
Headless content management systems are the future of asset creation for marketers, and as the marketing world continues to be inundated with projects from all angles, companies need resources that will allow for differentiating advantages to uniquely tailored, persuasive distribution and engagement across various channels.
Thus, a headless CMS would enhance marketing projects due to its transformative potential for how marketers view their assets going forward, never mind flexibility, scalability, and customization more than a traditional option could provide. Furthermore, plug-and-play options like Storyblok, on top of such practicality, render it an all-encompassing experience with simple, intuitive usability and strong integrations for any company looking to reinvent its marketing. Transitioning to a headless CMS is a step toward the future. It means more flexibility, more creativity, and more successful futures.