Usually, a CMS remains static. It acts as a repository for your site’s content. It changes when you add more content or create updates, but it isn’t enriched in and of itself and doesn’t change based on user behavior.
Data-driven content strategies take advantage of the abundance of content available on the Internet and use web data in CMS applications to change the game completely.
But how do you accumulate this data and make it available in your CMS? And, more importantly, what good is it?
Let’s take a look at the advantages of data-driven content strategies and how to integrate web data in CMS applications to create more effective content.
Content marketing strategies are challenging for many organizations. Some marketers refer to their “strategy” when it’s merely content production with no particular goal in mind. Others may have goals that aren’t clear or manageable, so progress is impossible to measure.
Statistics from the Content Marketing Institute shed more light on these challenges.
Only 40% of B2B marketers surveyed had a documented content marketing strategy. An additional 33% had a strategy, but it was not documented. 27% had no marketing strategy at all.
The statistics are even more stark for data-driven strategies.
Harvard Business Review reports that only 26.5% of organizations are data-driven.
This is particularly surprising when you examine the advantages of using data-driven content strategies.
McKinsey & Company reports a 50% reduction in customer acquisition costs and a 5-15% increase in revenue when companies use personalization data.
Data-driven content strategies are more effective because they aren’t based on whims, hunches, or the perceived need to check a box. They work because they are built on actual trends created by real users.
But to build a data-driven strategy, you have to accumulate data. This is our next step.
APIs turn your CMS from a static content repository into a dynamic data hub. APIs integrate with your CMS to filter data into one place for content enrichment.
API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. APIs facilitate communication between software applications via data and functionality exchange. A helpful analogy is to think of an API as a bridge from one piece of software to another.
You use APIs all the time in your digital life. Here are some examples.
Video APIs – YouTube videos embedded into websites.
Weather APIs – Weather data is scrapped from third parties and funneled to applications.
Paypal – Paypal integrates with eCommerce platforms for a convenient user experience.
Travel APIs – Booking sites like Expedia gather and integrate flight data on one platform.
APIs and web scrapers help you accumulate relevant data in your CMS.
If the API is the bridge for your data to cross, web scrapers are the collectors of all the data. Imagine them as the ushers corralling all your data into a queue, waiting to cross the bridge.
The exact functionality of scrapers varies somewhat, but generally, a user feeds a scraper the URL from which they wish to extract data. The scraper analyzes the HTML (and, in advanced cases, also CSS and Javascript). Then, the collected data is exported to a chosen format.
So, how do these cool tools help you use web data in your CMS?
Let’s look at some examples.
Let’s say you conduct an Instagram campaign prompting users to post reels using your product, and you repost the reels to your own feed as user reviews. APIs allow embeddable widgets that put your Instagram feed live on your site, providing real-time social proof to your target audience.
As we shared in the McKinsey & Company report above, using personalization data in your content increases ROI significantly.
Think about every time you log in to your Amazon account. You are greeted by name.
Screenshot provided by the author
Of course, Amazon also shows you products related to past purchases, focusing on your specific and individual interests.
Let’s not forget Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign, which made it seem as though a frosty bottle of Coke was made just for you by producing bottles with popular names on them.
These are all examples of personalized content at work. Use your web data to get creative and effectively speak to your target audience.
Dynamic data is particularly useful for mid-funnel content. Think about using data integrations for things like price and feature comparisons and real-time data feeds displaying metrics your target audience cares about.
Real-time data lets you keep your pulse on evolving trends. This is important to stay a relevant thought leader in your industry.
Tools like the Web Scraper API from Bright Data allow companies to extract real-time data from social media and platforms like YouTube, including video content. Combined with AI, these insights are invaluable for uncovering insights to fuel your data-driven content strategies.
Let’s look at an example.
Developer Dhanush Reddy shared a project on Dev.to that uses web scrapers to extract Reddit subreddit discussions every two hours and convert them into a live podcast. Talk about transforming user-generated content to your advantage!
Bright Data’s tools can help you do the same kinds of things, like:
In the past, digital marketing strategies like this were incredibly labor-intensive. Marketers had to compile data manually, making it hard to turn things around with the speed the information age demands.
By enabling seamless data integration across multiple platforms, businesses can now leverage real-time insights for quicker decision-making. Plus, when dealing with large-scale data migrations, transitioning from Oracle to MySQL can help streamline operations and reduce costs.
Integrating real-time web data with AI empowers CMS users to quickly craft and replicate timely, relevant, and impactful content strategies.
Before you get too ahead of yourself with integrating web data in CMS applications in your organization, make sure you have the basics of your data-driven content marketing strategy down—literally, on paper.
Remember the stats we shared in the first section of this article. Companies with documented content strategies do the best. Companies with documented data-driven content strategies do even better.
So don’t put the cart before the proverbial horse.
Dial in the basics of air-tight data-driven content strategies.
You’ve likely heard the good-sense advice of SMART goals. As a refresher, the acronym stands for
For instance, “make more sales” is not a good goal.
“Increase newsletter conversions by 10% by the end of Q2” follows the SMART framework and allows for measurement of success.
The second oft-overlooked part of having clear, measurable goals is writing them down. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 87% of the marketers surveyed believed documenting their content strategy was effective.
With your goals in mind, use your data to build the rest of your strategy. For instance, if the data shows your potential customers watch embedded videos more than they read product breakdowns, lean into educational videos as a core content type in your strategy.
A pitfall of the trade is getting caught up in the awareness stage of customer journeys and not adequately filling in the rest of the funnel with types of content that answer questions and add value.
Blog posts are wonderful and have their place, but they are far from the only type of content and certainly not the answer to rapid conversions.
Remember to diversify your content with a data-driven approach at every step of the buyer journey.
Leveraging web data in CMS applications may seem complex, but it doesn’t have to be. We understand the demands content production puts on organizations, and it’s our goal to help.
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