Clean and fast content unleashes marketing’s potential

The omnichannel challenge

With content at the heart of everything from smartphone apps to webpages, delivering content to multiple destinations using the same technical foundation and platform is widely seen as the most efficient manner to organize omnichannel campaigns.

“No matter the industry, there is high demand on marketing departments to drive content across multiple arenas,” said Bernard Klopfer, senior director of marketing and sales enablement at Jabil, a manufacturing service company, during their presentation, ‘Unleashing Your Marketers Greatness’, at Discover MarTech. 

At Jabil, a company with 17 different business sectors and over 27,000 strategic suppliers, customized content is not a technological requirement on a spec sheet—it is an operational necessity. Klopfer’s content channels include webpages, interactive kiosks at conventions, and product laboratories. 

Klopfer and Jabil found that while many platforms could host content, most platforms themselves are not developed to adjust to content which is constantly changing and evolving.

“Jabil needed ‘comfortable technology’ with API integration, content sharing and customizable back-end integration,” said Bernard Gomez, founding partner of Crescendo Collective, a digital agency that served as a vendor for Jabil’s website redesign and redevelopment project. “Getting your technology to be clean and fast is one of the best ways to unleash a marketing team’s potential.” 

How marketing adds value

“As an engineering-based business, marketing had been traditionally overlooked,” said Klopfer. “We needed [marketing] to add to the beginning of the lifecycle to show that we can add value not just as a supplier. There was lots of demand on our marketing team because we have to support tight operational timelines.” 

The best practice in content management implemented to fulfill Jabil’s business needs was building a platform that allowed content teams to be extended, modified or include executive participation. This is the flexibility that allows marketing teams to build content fast and creatively.

“It is not uncommon for clients to have multiple approval processes and workflows,” said Brian Warrick, North American general manager for Magnolia, a consultant on the project. “The process depends upon the editorial concerns, compliance concerns and workflow differences between a new user and a power user who has a more in-depth understanding of the content.” 

Unfortunately, technology slows down many workflows, increasing the importance of connecting existing technologies while including proprietary APIs.

“You want a platform that gets out of the way and lets the user do things the way they want to,” said Gomez. “The role of technology is to deliver a unified process and experience and then get out of the way.”