Marketing + WCM=Competitive Advantage….Just ask Alterian or MediaSurface

Web Content Management is more than just a technology; utilized correctly, it can become the hub for all your digital content, an enabler to engage your customers in ways never before possible, if you are a marketer your WCM system could (and should) be the most valuable weapon in your arsenal for differentiation.

This has long been a belief of Molecular, but the recent acquisition of MediaSurface by Alterian is a good example of how WCM is being seen as a necessary component to any successful marketing offering

Here’s the first line of the Alterian press release, “Integrated marketing platform provider combines online and offline analytics with content and multi-channel execution to help marketers optimise customer experiences across the web”

A lot of marketing speak for sure, but I think Jason McNamara (Alterian CMO) is correct when he says “Analytics is the new measure of how well marketers understand their customers, but people react to content. And reaction and interaction with content creates new analytics. Unlike offline, these interactions are often inbound and real-time in nature, thus impossible to manage with manual processes….”

This is just one example of how technology companies are trying to combine, analytics, content management and campaign management to create offerings that speak better to marketing departments. Something they all feel they most do as they see the money (and decision making power) moving from IT to to the business.

Other recent examples include Interwoven’s acquisition of Optimost (A/B testing) and Vignette’s acquisition of Vidavee (video and analytics).

Will all this activity enable these companies to make the jump from selling technology to IT to selling solutions to marketing? In the future, maybe, but right now it’s just a good story with little “real” integration and few success stories. And as is always the case with technology, it’s usually not the product itself that makes you successful, it’s HOW your organization uses that technology that gives you the competitive advantage. If you don’t understand what you need the technology to do, just buying an integrated platform isn’t going to make you a success.