We are past the one-year mark of the pandemic halting all marketing efforts, and marketers are in a unique position to reevaluate their current tech stack. 2020 posed unique challenges for marketing teams, including increased pressure to produce direct revenue with reduced resources and budget. The phrase “do more with less” haunted many marketers. In fact, Gartner’s 2020 CMO Spend Survey states that, in mid-2020, 44% of CMOs faced budget cuts, and 11% expected budget cuts of more than 15%.
The traditional martech stack is made up of tools and technologies designed to achieve things like streamline collaboration or analyze data to determine the success (or failure) of a campaign. But marketers have an opportunity to make their stack even smarter and more innovative by adding tools that spark and empower creativity. In this digital-first world, they have the opportunity to transform and prioritize their online content strategy to compete and win in a crowded space. Teams must invest in tools that impact digital touchpoints across the customer journey and ensure their entire stack speaks to this.
One tool that should be on the top of the list is an immersive content platform that allows marketers and designers to skip developers and get their digital vision out into the world quickly and creatively. An immersive content platform is the do-or-die tech that marketing teams need to compete, win, and actually achieve more with less. The ability to create quick and easy immersive content allows marketers and designers to create engaging, extraordinary experiences through interactions, animations, embedded media and storytelling.
Immersive content is the difference between being forgettable and extraordinary
We always remember the really great experiences in our life or the really terrible ones. No one remembers the mediocre middle. It encourages participation from the audience and forms an emotional connection between the brand and its customer. With immersive content, marketers break through the noisy mediocre middle.
When evaluating the customer journey — from awareness to consideration, purchase and finally, advocacy — too many marketers rely on outdated solutions to grudgingly pull prospects along the path. They focus on landing pages, case studies, campaign microsites and training materials. Immersive content can unlock so much more. Smart marketers look beyond the first impressions and use immersive content to engage their audience at digital touchpoints across the customer journey – sell sheets, proposals, sales presentations, in-store displays and more.
Make a Digital Splash
Marketers can no longer rely on in-person experiences to attract potential customers or engage with current ones. During the pandemic, companies learned that their digital presence is their only presence. And while the pandemic won’t last forever, the lessons learned during it and the digital weaknesses it laid bare, will linger. Yes, hopefully in-person events and showroom visits will resume safely, but the importance of your company’s digital strategy will only continue to grow. If you’re still waiting for life to return to prepandemic ways of doing business, you’re sadly mistaken. You need to catch up – and fast.
You may be known for providing an unforgettable in-person experience, but how are you replicating those in a virtual world? Immersive content can be the key to transform your digital presence and make that personal connection with your audience. Turn that stale PDF into an interactive landing page. Rather than sending out a boring survey after a virtual event, create an experience where users navigate through the survey to share their feedback. The possibilities are endless; marketers just have to take the leap of faith to embrace immersive content.
Actually Do More With Less
With an immersive content solution in their tech stack, marketers can spend less time waiting on developers for their vision to come to life. Less time guessing why a piece of content isn’t working and more time troubleshooting in real-time. Less time on stale pieces of content and more time creating experiences. Are you catching my drift? Less is always more — especially in marketing.
When your marketing team is spending less time in reactive mode and more time proactively producing exceptional content, it leads to more revenue-generating opportunities for the entire organization.
So, next time you’re told as a marketer to do more with less, embrace the opportunities to do just that with an immersive content platform at the top of your tech stack.
Author
Get our newsletter and digital focus reports
Stay current on learning and development trends, best practices, research, new products and technologies, case studies and much more.
