This past month marked the one-year anniversary of the pandemic that caused an unimaginable amount of disruption in the marketing industry. Priorities shifted among consumers, events were canceled, and screen fatigue set in. It has been an experience, to say the least. Companies have had to communicate at higher volumes and with more variety, which has left marketing teams struggling to keep up. A recent Harvard Business Review survey highlighted that only 20% of marketing managers were satisfied with the effectiveness of their departments. That’s pretty staggering when you stop and consider that means 80% of marketing managers are unsatisfied with the level of effectiveness their departments bring to the table.

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But it also all checks out. Due to the pandemic, it has become harder to collaborate, craft the right message, engage consumers, fill new digital requirements, and track effectiveness. As a result, content strategies have morphed every company touch point from what should be a creative opportunity to a risk.

The solution to the problem shouldn’t mean stringing together more guidelines, templates, use cases, and file types. Let’s be honest: No one has the patience or capacity to take on more rules and guides. Instead, marketing leaders should look to simplify how company content is scaled to support a flat approach in a dynamic world.

What does a dynamic world look like?

When COVID-19 hit, everyone was forced into a “digital-first” model almost overnight and 85% of respondents in McKinsey’s survey said they accelerated digitization to enable interactions with everyone working remotely. It was a turbulent process, but the digital trend is continuing into 2021.

According to a survey from Enterprise Technology Research, the percentage of workers permanently working from home is expected to double in 2021, and The Wall Street Journal predicts that between 19% and 36% of all business trips could disappear. It is critical that companies continue to take actions to support the digital-first approach.

That said, a digital-first approach goes beyond basic videoconferencing for meetings. It also means documents should deliver added context, advance digital conversations, and create clarity where there is chaos. Sound too good to be true? Nah, documents should be dynamic and crackle with kinetic energy.

With the help of different file formats such as images, audio, video, design tools, and event APIs and integrations with other apps, documents have the ability to create a unique experience for consumers and creators. But what’s more important than creating a unique experience? Reducing risk by creating a consistent one that delivers the right content in an engaging way from one end of a brand’s interaction to the other. You do this by:

• Using a content creation system that allows you to be agile and effective at the same time
• Making it easy for your marketing team by limiting barriers to an inclusive content creation system
• Measuring what’s working so it can be replicated — remove the guesswork

Let’s be real: We have to be agile these days. 

OK, agile may be a little buzzword-y, but in a world full of rapid change, documents need to be able to keep up. People all across the organization are looking to the marketing teams to help create new assets to communicate business pivots such as the company’s new COVID-19 vaccine policy or even a new ABM campaign for the latest whale the organization is trying to catch. There isn’t always the luxury of engaging an army of design ninjas to ensure materials are aligned with brand standards. What you need is a system for content creation that allows individuals to produce an interactive experience with a drag-and-drop easy platform.

Make it easy for folks.

In today’s world of work, companies are more productive by limiting barriers and being inclusive so people can get things done faster and more efficiently. Gone are the days where only one person can complete a task. That’s no longer feasible because that person might be also serving as their child’s online teacher that day or buried in work due to the sudden shift in demand. People are balancing more during the workday, and it’s important to make it easy for folks to support each other and the work.

Various studies from Hubstaff highlighted an increase in productivity for 65% of remote workers, but if the acquisition of new skills wasn’t supported or encouraged, those gains could quickly disappear. Today’s documents need to be built for teams to create, share, and edit with anyone, anywhere, securely, and on any device.

 Let’s make an impact (and measure it).

How many times have you been asked to answer whether anyone actually read a piece of content? Do we know how it performed? Did it make an impact?

For most, the answer has been, “I don’t know.” However, in today’s digital world, we can and should have the ability to measure the impact of any document so marketing teams can more easily connect content to outcomes. In our digital-first reality, things are changing rapidly, and we need to be able to ebb and flow with those changes while being supported by metrics.

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The world has changed a lot over the past year, and the way we used to work just doesn’t cut it anymore. The phrase “work smarter not harder” has never felt so prevalent. While many are struggling to keep up, content creation doesn’t have to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. By working in a more efficient, consistent, and agile way, companies can reduce the risk they face by unintentionally creating a bad brand experience while trying to keep afloat. The digital-first era is here to stay, so we better jump on board!