Optimising the Content Experience

Content marketing may no longer be the hot new trend. However, it is still vital to many B2B marketing strategies. An avalanche of new content is produced every day to support enterprise demand generation and ABM strategies. The unsolved challenge is how to encourage consumption of all this content so that it drives conversion, whether that's by improving discovery or optimising the visitor experience. Updating the corporate website with a best-in-class content library is typically a critical step in achieving this objective. 

For those marketers who don't want to engage with a web developer, there are technologies that offer off-the-shelf content experiences. Vendors such as Pathfactory and Uberflip can create user-friendly content hubs that incorporate the full set of personalisation and analytics capabilities expected from any martech platform. Both Pathfactory and Uberflip were heavily hyped at the start of the content marketing revolution a decade ago. They've since fallen out of favour because their platforms can be easily replicated in most enterprise-scale CMS or DAM solutions. It's been some time since I last crossed paths with either platform in production. Until, unexpectedly last week, Pathfactory announced they were acquiring Uberflip.

Evolution of Experience

The pitch for vendors such as Uberflip and Pathfactory is based on ease of use, both for prospects and marketing. They allow enterprises to create personalised content hubs without touching a line of code. From an end customer perspective, the key differentiator is around content bingeing - encouraging visitors to view multiple pieces of content in the same session. This approach has become commonplace across many forms of content marketing but was popularised by Pathfactory and Uberflip. They focus on optimising the user experience to serve the next asset as soon as the current one is consumed, so that prospects are accelerated through the funnel at a far quicker pace than in the past.

Combined with strong personalisation capabilities, the idea behind Pathfactory and Uberflip is that marketers can deliver more from their content engine in comparison to the manual approach. Increasingly, this strategy also requires investment in AI features to drive that personalised experience. Pathfactory have made a big pitch around AI in recent months. Their platform has long had predictive capabilities. Asset selection for Pathfactory content experiences doesn't have to be done manually. They can select the most appropriate content for each customer using AI-driven content analytics.

On top of this, Pathfactory recently announced Chatfactory, a new AI-powered chatbot capability. They're far from the only ones to spot the benefits of AI chatbots in B2B marketing. However, they entered the chatbot space from a different direction than most. The sales pitch for Chatfactory is focused on content discovery, surfacing the right content from the most complex enterprise websites. In effect, Chatfactory is seen as a tool to empower prospects, by giving them the ability to generate their own content experiences or ABM content hubs without input from the marketer.

AI in Experience

All this fits into another hot B2B marketing trend: self-service purchasing. If done correctly, the technology allows buyers to accelerate themselves through the funnel without needing to engage with a human sales rep. Reducing human touchpoints throughout the funnel has become a hot topic in both sales and marketing circles over the last year, driven by the evolution of digital selling as well as changing buyer preferences. Marketing has a vital role to play in this transition, by making sure the right information is placed before the right prospects at the right time.

AI has the potential to deliver the types of personalised buying experiences needed to do this, taking on the interactions that can only be delivered by a human sales rep today. There are definite risks to this approach, particularly around content accuracy and consistency of messaging. Businesses will require the right content, as well as the right technology to overcome these challenges. After all, AI models can only be as accurate as the data they're trained on. However, user experience is the most important challenge of all - the right content can't compensate for excessive buyer friction. However, businesses and technologies should be seeking to optimise the purchasing experience at all stages of the funnel. Those that succeed will be well placed to prosper in the marketplace of tomorrow.