When you’re solely focused on Digital Strategy and Drupal as your open source website and web application development framework like Mediacurrent has been for the last 10 years, you’re deeply invested in all of the great challenges and rewards that come with delivering products and solutions that are essentially only limited to your creativity and what you can dream up. In my presentation at DrupalCon Baltimore last year, I described how leading digital agencies and large enterprise global brands are shaping the new Internet with Drupal and other open source technologies. As all of us in the Drupal community begin our 2018 quests in Digital (now coined, “Digital Transformation”) having a reliable, innovative and proven starting point is critical for success and getting solutions to market faster.
From the early days in website design and development, having the right starting point was paramount and thankfully, Drupal answered that bell. Think about it. Before Dries created Drupal, all of us in the Web industry did our own thing coding in PHP, ASP and, yes, ColdFusion. Granted, those were fun and exciting times, but before Drupal:
- It was difficult to monetize and scale the wonderful work we did.
- We were challenged with replicating and maintaining features and functionality from client to client.
- We could not respond to the client demand for robust and maintainable Enterprise Content Management Solution (ECMS).
- Proactive Digital strategy and measurement suffered because we were all too busy focusing on publishing and maintaining content.
Taking this example one step further, Mediacurrent is able to save our clients hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by pairing our Digital Strategy and Drupal 8 development services with another great starting point that Dries and Acquia produced: Acquia’s Site Factory. From Universities to Large Enterprise, Site Factory allows Premier Implementation partners like Mediacurrent the ability to work with our clients to consolidate hundreds of individual web properties onto a single platform to strengthen our clients brand, adhere to best practices in governance and Web Accessibility and reduce maintenance costs.
What about when it comes to localizing a website in multiple languages to drive increased conversion using the user’s native tongue? Do we build a new website for each language? No, no, no! We look to our Network Translation partner, Lingotek, and all the great work they’ve already done is getting their platform ready for Drupal 8.
What about Project Management? Still working in Spreadsheets? Clients value transparency and Online tools such as Jira allow us to work in an agile way while capturing all of the project’s detail in one data repository.
Now, fast forward to today at this in this era of personalization. Our mission on this quest: Deliver the right content to the right person at the right time and on the right device.
- As a marketer? Are you doing this?
- Are you a digital strategist charged with the task - are you accomplishing it?
- Are you the technical lead and in charge of delivering personalization programmatically - how is that going for you?
In many cases, it’s how to get started that makes all the difference, and at Mediacurrent, we like another one of Acquia’s products for this, Journey, in helping us deliver these solutions to our clients - especially those clients and prospects of ours who need to deliver relevant content at each step on their consumer’s purchasing path. How does Journey help specifically? Great question.
Imagine it’s a Saturday morning and you’re browsing a “Top Ten Burgers” list on your favorite website (for me our client, Thrillist, is always a good source for this type of content). Less than a week later, your business trip takes you to Atlanta. You get off the plane and BAM! You receive a push notification about the 3 best burgers in Atlanta.
This concept is incredibly valuable for those of you in the Media and Entertainment industry as a way to drive new Ad Revenue. Imagine receiving a push notification about a product you abandoned in a shopping cart experience that the same product is in stock at a store less than 3 miles from where you are eating lunch. Thank you Journey!
No matter where your Digital Marketing Journey takes you, here’s the guide to have ready as you enter into the conversations:
- Have your data points ready. The questions to ask are:
- “What data do you currently capture about your prospects and customers?”
- “How are you currently using that data to improve your KPIs?”
I think our friends at the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, did a great job of using data to better serve its constituents online with the new Mass.Gov!
- Identify the list of technologies that are involved in capturing and understanding data. Obvious places to look are:
- CRM applications such as Salesforce
- eCommerce platforms, such as Magento
- Marketing Automation technologies such as Eloqua, Pardot and Marketo
- Good ole’ fashioned Google Analytics (Bots excluded of course!)
- Acquia’s Products Journey and Lift
- Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. Let’s say you sell Drones. If you were a consumer, what obvious questions would come to your mind? I know if it were me, I would need help with the following:
- Where can I fly my drone after I buy it?
- What do I need to know before I arrive at that venue? Are there any regulations that I need to be aware of?
- Where can I connect with other flying enthusiasts?
Acquia’s Journey Product, coupled with Drupal 8 and its support of Rest out of the box and the right Marketing Automation strategy would allow the company selling Drones to answer these questions at the right stage of the consumer journey.
- Assemble the right team. At Mediacurrent, we’ve learned that organizations who are most successful in moving their digital strategy forward are those that have these characteristics:
- Have a clear definition of how their digital strategy and assets will support their critical business objectives and drive ROI for the business
- Understand how to get the most from their partner agency
- Adopt a data-driven approach (vs trusting their “guts”) to identifying solutions
I’m really looking forward to what 2018 holds for us at Mediacurrent, as well as the Drupal Community. See you in Nashville!
Additional Resources
The 3 C's + 1 D of Drupal: Why Decoupled Matters | Blog
5 Things to Know About Digital Transformation | Blog
Digital Strategy Can Help Make Accessibility 'Just What We Do'| Blog
