Customers today want personalized, relevant content, and they want a consistent experience across all digital content channels. They also want anywhere, anytime access to content. While enterprises have managed to create a variety of great content to cater to this demand, they spend a lot of time and money in creating the same type of content again and again, duplicating efforts and repeating redundant processes. All this because of the lack of a mature approach to manage content.
Enterprises continue to use legacy multiple platforms and solutions to store, manage, and distribute content. Instead of the ad hoc use of technology, enterprises need a Content Maturity Model to manage and monetize their content assets. Marriott’s content strategy is a great example of how an enterprise can completely reinvent its content strategy to stay competitive.1
A content maturity model helps enterprises:
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Understand the limitations of the existing system
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Prepare a blueprint to improve their content management
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Upgrade their IT infrastructure to be able to deliver better digital content consumption
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Deliver personalized experiences to customers and increase revenue
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Create new and personalized artifacts mapped as per the sales and marketing funnel
What Is a Content Maturity Model in Real?
Essentially, a Content Maturity Model is a blueprint for how enterprises can use strategy and technology to master content production and distribution across the enterprise. It specifically targets the disconnected content lifecycle and the siloed approach that most enterprises still employ in managing their content and encourages them to reimagine their approach. It allows marketing teams to test how advanced their content operation is and presents guidelines for beginning or continuing their content transformation. There are five stages of maturity in the journey to building a results-oriented content strategy.
Stages in the Content Maturity Model
Stage 1 - Ad Hoc
There is no coordinated strategy for managing content. Content-centric workflows are mostly paper-based and the content is randomly distributed across various repositories, including email, shared drives, physical media, and files stored in the cloud.
Stage 2 – Opportunistic
Technology and formalized processes for managing the content are in place but are still departmental and not enterprise-wide. Even the planning is short-term and funding is focused on specific tactical opportunities. This means that cross-departmental or business unit collaboration is ad hoc and still wanting.
Stage 3 – Repeatable
The problem of individual silos have been understood by senior management, and content management initiatives have been pushed up to an enterprise level, with support and budget now provided.
Stage 4 – Managed
The enterprise has evolved from deploying one-size-fits-all content management platforms to implementing purpose-built content management solutions. A unified interface provides access to multiple content repositories, which is accessible any time.
Stage 5 – Optimized
Enterprises with a high content maturity index, have a collaborative culture of continuous innovation.
“MarketStar has worked with several organizations in their effort to increase the maturity of their content operations by helping them evolve through these stages. Through these engagements, we’ve sharpened our skills on what it takes to build a successful content.”
Why Do You Need a Content Maturity Model
According to a recent CMO Council report,2 as much as a third of most marketing budgets are dedicated to content origination, few companies formally assess the effectiveness of their content strategies and the relevance and value of content offerings. Even fewer are examining the performance, influence and impact of content in the pre-sales, conversion and customer relationship development areas.
That’s where content maturity models prove useful by mapping content initiatives with business objectives, hence monetizing good content. They also help your marketing team understand the challenges and opportunities around developing and marketing content. To begin with, once you assess where your organization lies on the maturity index, you can use that assessment to align internal stakeholders around a common objective, and in an ideal scenario, even get them excited about evolving their content creation and marketing styles. A content maturity model will provide you with some structure and support to get started on enhancing your content marketing program by bringing in high levels of cross-channel and cross-team visibility and interaction.
Conclusion
The advent of digital transformation and the evolution of content management technologies is driving enterprises to change the way that they approach, think about, and manage their content.3 A well-defined Content Maturity Model defines the systematic steps you can take to transform your disparate, fragmented and siloed enterprise content into powerful and engaging content. Note that the implementation of a Content Maturity Model needs buy in from senior management who must understand the value of a structured content operation and provide the needed resources and support. Along with leadership buy-in, another critical prerequisite is that internal teams will need to stop working in silos and will have to align to a common strategy and create core content to reuse across all channels.
Many companies have started the journey already. And though this journey will take time and effort with increasing maturity along the way, each stage offers measurable benefits and provides a common framework for collaboration and best practices across departments.
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