Episode 3: How to Execute a Persona-based Content Strategy at Scale

©2016 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
How to Execute a Persona-based
Content Strategy at Scale
Meagan White | Product Marketing
meagan.white@acquia.com | @MeaganWhite_

Agenda
– Industry trends
– Determining value propositions for personas
– Creating content for each stage of the journey
– Increasing content efficiency
– Evaluating and iterating your content strategy

1,200+
Enterprise
Customers
Who we are
The leading provider of cloud-
based, digital experience
management solutions according
to Forrester and Gartner
HQ in Boston with 14 global
offices in 7 countries
780+
Employees
2,000+
Partners
Inc.500
Fastest
Growing

Customer expectations are higher
than ever
Consumers Demand Valuable Content
74% of online consumers get frustrated with websites
when content appears that has nothing to do with
their interests
Research from Janrain & Harris Interactive

Generic content results in lost
opportunity
Leads targeted with personalized content produce a
20% increase in sales.
Research from DemandGen

The consumer
empowered world
Choice is fundamental. Differentiation matters.

– Customized for every individual, every device, every channel
– Orchestrating content and data from many sources into
a single experience
– “Sites”, “Browsers” are becoming journeys
– Massive 1:1 scale required
Every interaction will be personal

To succeed:
Organizations must adopt a new, personalized approach to their digital
initiatives, especially content, one that requires new levels of:
– Innovation
– Speed and Iteration
– Contextualization
– Scale

Determining value
propositions for
individual personas

Are you ready for personalization?
Personalization is an investment in time, resources, content and
technology. In terms of content strategy, it’s about delivering relevant
content to a persona based on specific context.
– Who they are
– Their interests and behaviors
– Where and when content is accessed and by what device
– Goals of the persona, why they are looking for content

80% 96%40%
eMarketer 2015 “Marketers Stuck on Basic Data for Personalization”
Personalization is a data challenge for marketers
11
Unable to personalize
because of inability to
link data across
disparate technologies
Don’t understand customers
beyond basic data
Challenging to build a
comprehensive, single view
of a customer

Episode 2: What does it mean to be data-driven?
Establish a data-driven culture
Data-drivenness is about building tools, abilities, and, most
crucially, a culture that acts on data. A data-driven organization
has a improvement mindset and continually tests.
Data-driven organizations:
– Collect data
– Have open data access
– Analyze data to understand why outcomes occured

Episode 2: Mapping segments to personas and
content
– For organizations that have defined
personas, the objective should be to
map them to your segmentation
– Mappings begin with the simple
exercise of defining the attributes of
your persona and how the data you are
collecting can inform those attributes
– The key to good segmentation is timely
and accurate data collection
Example: Buyer persona of a Director
level or above individual within the
Digital Marketing department of their
organization.
– Job Level: Director, VP, SVP, EVP, C-
Level
– Department: Digital Marketing
– Company size: Enterprise

VP eCommerce
eCommerce
Merchandiser
Agency CEO
Digital Marketing
User
Site Builder
IT Buyer
VP of Digital Services,
VP of Digital Platforms,
VP of Digital Ops, CIO, CTO,
VP of MarTech etc.
Site Admin
Front-End Developer Back-End DeveloperSite Architect
DECISION
MAKERS
Digital
Marketing
Buyer
Chief Digital Officer,
VP of Digital, Director
of Digital, etc.
Agency CTO
BUILDERS
MAINTAINERS
Establish your personas

SUCCESS
IMPERATIVES
New Logos / Upsell
Sales / Revenue Targets
Awards / Recognition
Industry Rankings
DECISIONMAKERS
VP
eCommerce
Agency
CEO
IT
Buyer
Digital Marketing
Buyer
Agency
CTO
PAIN POINTS
Building pipeline and finding
interesting ways to upsell
existing clients
Desires more alternatives to
bringing in more services
through her accounts
Would like to continue to win
big named accounts and beat
the competition
SUCCESS
IMPERATIVES
New Logos
Sales / Revenue Targets
Project Launch Time / Quality
Qualified Delivery Teams
PAIN POINTS
Fearful of failing to deliver
projects that are revered and
respected by his peers (that
win awards for innovation)
Running over-time on a project
because the technology lets
him down
Fear of losing the team
because they are not doing
interesting work
SUCCESS
IMPERATIVES
Web Traffic
Marketing Leads and
Conversion Rate
Closed Won Business
PAIN POINTS
Resources
Budget
Justifying hiring need (staffing
problems)
Frustrated with current
technology and ready for a
great demo to solve the team’s
problems
SUCCESS
IMPERATIVES
Business Goal Achievement
Meeting Budget Requirements
Timeliness of Project
Completion
Longevity of Platforms Selected
PAIN POINTS
Resources: expertise,
headcount, budget are always
a struggle
Outdated systems
Business visions / goals being
unclear, which causes the IT
Buyer’s responsibility to be
unclear
SUCCESS
IMPERATIVES
Sales / Revenue
Lifetime Customer Value
PAIN POINTS
Presenting a unified online /
offline experience for the
customer when behind-the-
scenes is a disjointed process
Manual processes are required
for tasks that seem simple
Desires to simplify the process
so their team can focus on the
things that will really move the
needle
Potential Job Titles: Chief Digital
Officer, VP of Digital, Director of
Digital, etc
Potential Job Titles: VP of Digital
Services, VP of Digital Platforms,
VP of Digital Ops, CIO, CTO, VP
of MarTech, etc.

PERSONA
TYPE
Name
Age: xx
Occupation: xx
Department: xx
Years Experience: xx
Tools of the Trade:
• GitHub
• Slack
• xxx
Digital Passions
What is this person passionate about
when it comes to technology? Clean
integrations? Good UX? Driving
Revenue?
Use a first-person narrative as if the
persona is telling you what they care
about most.
Industry Influencers:
What trade shows, publications or
events does this person use to keep
them up to speed?
Revenue
Growth
Influencer
User
Motivations / Goals:
What is this person trying to do? Save the world? Keep it secure? Sell stuff?
Inform the world?
Cost Control
Decision Maker
Buyer
Acquia Value Drivers:
Reliability Flexibility
Pricing Security
Frustrations/Challenges:
What is going wrong today? What are they frustrated with or challenged with
that Acquia can solve for?
How to connect with [NAME]:
What digital marketing efforts work, and what should we definitely not do? Dev.acquia? Targeted emails? Through Leadership?
Analyst reports?
“key quote that explains why this persona loves Acquia or what Acquia enables this persona to
do”
Success Metrics:
Sales
Average Order Value
Return Visits

DIGITAL MARKETING
BUYER
Donna Mercer
Age: 35
Occupation: Director of Digital
Marketing
Department: Marketing
Years Experience: 10-15
Tools of the Trade:
• Google Tools
• CMS
• Marketing Automation/CRM
“Without Acquia’s advice and recommendations we wouldn’t be where we are with our web
platform.”
Digital Passions
I am passionate about a good user
experience on my website, well done
integrations with best of breed tools and
driving traffic and revenue numbers
through digital.
I works closely with all other teams in
marketing but most closely with
marketing operations and
development/design teams.
Industry Influencers:
Vendor trade shows such as
Dreamforce or Siriusdecisions
Conferences. Donna goes to LinkedIn
or Flipboard for relevant articles.
Revenue
Growth
Influencer
User
Motivations / Goals:
Donna needs to ensure her company is reaching their audience through their
website and other digital efforts. Her team is trying to make sure they are able
to easily present a clear message to their audience and update it quickly and
easily through a CMS, so it is the most recent and relevant content.
Donna works closely with her IT counter part to help make a platform purchase
decision. Working closely with IT helps Donna vet the parts of the platform she
isn’t familiar with.
Cost Control
Decision Maker
Buyer
Acquia Value Drivers:
Innovation Ability to Integrate
Expertise Flexibility/Reliability
Frustrations/Challenges:
Donna struggles with resources, budget, and being able to justify hiring needs.
She is also frustrated with the technology they currently have and ready for a
great demo to solve their problems.
How to connect with Donna Mercer:
Donna will reach out when she needs something. She receieve a lot of promotional email which is helpful for her to know
what’s going on in her space, but she rarely responds. She also notices ads and will possibly click when they are
relevant to a project. Donna reads analysts reports and case studies. She will also check out booths at tradeshows.
Success Metrics:
Web Traffic
Marketing Leads & Conversion Rate
Closed Won Business

When creating value propositions for personas...
– Remember: It’s not about you or your services, or what
you want to tell your customers
– Take a customer-centric approach to developing value
propositions for each persona
– Gain vs Pain: Focus on your persona’s problems / pains
– How you solve their problems, improve their situation
– The benefits and value you provide
– Why you’re better than the competition

Winning value propositions are:
– Clear and easy to understand
– Speaks in the customer’s language
– Communicates the value and benefits to the customer
Validate your value propositions with customers to ensure you’re on
the right track.

Creating content for
the buyer journey

Key content questions to address up front:
– Who is involved in the content creation process?
Writers, digital marketers/technologists, SMEs etc
– Do you have a process with set expectations?
– Are your content assets and content creators aligned
with your roadmap?
– Does your organization have a digital-first mindset?
– What processes and systems will our organization need
to consistently generate value added content that can
scale across our target personas?

What kind of content should you create?
Understand the types of content
you will need to support visitors
across the buyer’s journey
– Top of funnel - Awareness /
Education
– Middle of funnel - Evaluation /
Consideration
– Bottom of funnel - Conversion /
Purchase
eBook
Blog
Video
How-to
Educational
webinar
Infographic
Awareness ConversionEvaluation
FAQ
Product webinar
Analyst / 3rd
party review
Datasheet
Case study
Buyer guide
Technical
whitepaper
Demo
Trial
Consultation
ROI calculator
Customer kits
Customer
reviews
User manuals

You may end up with something like this:
eBook
Blog
Video
Awareness ConversionEvaluation
FAQ
Product webinar
Case study
Analyst / 3rd party
content
Demo
ROI estimate /
calculator
Digital Marketing
Buyer Persona
Topic:
Personalization
Value props:
Innovation, customer
acquisition, retention

Episode 1: Perform a content audit
Content audit:
This is where the content audit from episode one will come in handy. An audit is an official review, in
this case for the purposes of personalizing an experience.
What content do you have? What content do you want? What’s missing?
– By persona, topic, stage, type
– Is it still relevant, can it be refreshed, how many different ways can you say it?
– Be iterative in your list building

Content creation: Where do I start?
Be data-driven:
Remember: Your audience should decide the type of content
you produce.
– What’s working, what’s not?
– Is your content engaging the right audience, everywhere?
– Analyze your data to identify what type of content your
persona segments like best and what channels they visit
often (email, social media, webinar etc)

Increasing content
efficiency

Building a content machine for personalization:
Make it repeatable
1. Plan: Plan before you create. Think about the persona target, value proposition and key
messages, process, and calendar
2. Produce: Create the content, establish the workflow process across teams and locations,
establish turnaround times, document the production process including typical distribution
channels to speed your content marketing efforts
3. Distribute: Promotion is a key part. Why spend time creating content that can’t be seen?
Share content to key channels where personas engage. Leverage a personalization tool
for content syndication to make it easy to surface, publish, reuse and share personalized
content across channels.
4. Measure: You’ll never know if you’re persona content strategy is successful without
measuring your performance. Identify success metrics. Continue to measure and tailor
content strategies to optimize them across personas.

Repurpose and refresh, don’t
recreate:
– Creating new content takes time
– Repurpose and refresh what you can to extend the life of
your content
– Pro tip: To save time and resources for new content
assets, break down a long form asset into several smaller
ones

Streamline content access and distribution
– Allow involved teams access to available resources so
content can be easily found, used, translated, or shared
– Make it easy for your teams to find relevant content via
a central repository
– Use a digital asset management tool, CMS and
personalization tool that can support tagging of
assets and your entire organization
– Tag by persona, topic, content type, value prop,
journey stage, language etc

Get flexible with your content distribution strategy
– There’s no one channel fits all for personas
– Marketers need to distribute content to multiple channels in
real-time across the customer journey
– To make the most of existing resources, make sure that your
digital experience platform/personalization tool and CMS are
flexible enough to deliver content across any channel – not
just web – so it can support the customer journey (leveraging
an API-first CMS can help)

– Multiple end points
– Beyond the browser
– Everything contextual across mobile devices,
120 digital signs, in-cabin video
– Transformed passenger cruise experience
Cross-channel Continuous Experiences

Prospect Customer
$
MARKETING/COMMERCE PLATFORM User Data Silos
CHANNELS
Content Silos
A typical customer experience
Visitors get
generic experience
Content stuck in
silos, duplicated
Users are
unknown Incomplete ‘picture’
of customers
32

Prospect Customer
Unified
Content
$
MARKETING/COMMERCE PLATFORM
ACQUIA LIFT
Profile ManagerContent Hub Experience Builder
Faster time to ‘Win'
CHANNELS
Unified
User Data
A personalized experience with Acquia Lift
33

Unifies and syndicates
content from existing
content repositories
Dynamically creates user
segments in real time
Personalize on
any platform
(excels on Drupal!)
Designed for marketers
to be fast & easy to use
Builds customer profiles
from disparate sources
Personalization with Acquia Lift
34
Value Prop
Personalize the customer journey, bringing together content
and customer data from any source.

Acquia Lift
– Deliver continuous, personalized experiences
across devices & channels
– Unified visitor profile of each anonymous and
know visitor’s historical and real-time activity
across sessions and devices
– Real-time, adaptive segmentation
– Turn insight into action with pre-built customer
reports that visualize segments, testing results,
and goal progression

Click a
‘slot’ to
personalize
2 Select a target
segment
3
Search and find
the perfect digital
experience for
that segment
Your
site
Acquia Lift drives engagement through personalization
36
1
2
3

©2016 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary37
Aggregate
content from
all sites,
departments,
and
technologies
Import, discover,
share content
from anywhere
Automate and
syndicate
content updates
How Acquia Lift unlocks the value of content
1
2
3

Evaluating and
iterating your content
strategy

Episode 1: Data to collect, access, and analyze
– Customer Identity: email, name
– Demographic: age, gender, income
– Geographic: country, city
– Firmographic: company name, industry, company size
– Audience Behavioral: click paths, views, form fills,
purchases, social engagement
– Implicit: interests, preferences
– Explicit: data directly given to you by a customer - for
example, a survey

MARKETING/COMMERCE PLATFORM
Profile ManagerContent Hub Experience Builder
Unified Data
ACQUIA LIFT
Unified Content
APIAPI
Acquia Lift in the marketing ecosystem
Web Campaigns Social IoT CommerceMobile
PERSONALIZED
EXPERIENCES
Conte
nt
Syste
ms
– Documents
– Images
– Structured data
– Translations
– Commerce
40

Map known
and
unknown
users
Collect and
unify
audience
profile and
behavioral
data
Assign profiles
to segments in
real-time
Analyze data
to discover
customer
insights
Acquia Lift: Tackling the user data challenge
41
1
2 3
4

Test, revise, repeat:
– Once you publish and share content, evaluate it’s
effectiveness: awareness, engagement, conversion
– In areas where you see a lack of engagement or
conversion, make the necessary changes to your content
strategy and redistribute
– There’s a lot of data out there… make analyzing your
content strategy a little easier, integrate your CRM, web,
email, and social analytics with a personalization tool to
get a holistic view of your customer across channels and
devices

Make sure to register for our last two episodes! Visit:
www.acquia.com/resources/webinars
Episode 4: Personalization Best Practices
September 19, 2017 - 1:00PM ET
Episode 5: Using Technology to Accelerate Your Personalization Initiative
September 26, 2017 - 1:00PM ET
More personalization episodes now on-demand:
● Episode 1: Personalization Begins with Content
● Episode 2: Define Customer Segments Using a Data-driven
Approach

44 ©2016 Acquia Inc. — Confidential and Proprietary
Thank You
Q&A
Meagan White | Product Marketing
meagan.white@acquia.com | @MeaganWhite_

Episode 3: How to Execute a Persona-based Content Strategy at Scale

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Episode 3: How to Execute a Persona-based Content Strategy at Scale