Future-proof your content marketing with a headless CMS

The term “future-proof” has entered the bucket of advertising buzzwords. Indeed, many products are touted as future-proof for no other reason than they will not disappear down the road. Does this mean they will always remain fully functional and leading-edge? No and (definitely) no. It merely means they will exist in the future, and hence they are dubbed as future-proof. Logicians and philosophers call this kind of flawed, circular reasoning a tautology. Everyone else calls it annoying and misleading.

Due to this risk, when choosing a content management system (CMS) for your organization, it is critical to verify that it will legitimately — rather than allegedly — future-proof your content marketing, and continuously support and strengthen your organization as it adjusts and evolves. That is where a headless content management system enters the story and makes all the difference as part of your digital transformation.

There are five core factors that make a headless CMS the smartest, safest, and most strategic way to future-proof your content marketing:

• Excellent omnichannel experiences
• Ease of use for developers
• Scalability
• Always evergreen
• Low-cost, future-proofed solution

We explore each of these factors below. After, we focus on an important piece of the future-proofing puzzle that is missing from off-the-shelf headless CMS software — personalization — but that can be easily added with a creative hybrid headless approach.

With a traditional content management system, the front-end presentation layer is coupled with the back-end publishing platform. As a result, most sites and digital experiences are optimized for desktops (web), and then re-built for social media, mobile apps on smartphones and tablets, IoT-connected devices, etc. Keeping content across all digital channels up-to-date is an enormous burden for both developers and the marketing team.

What’s more, this is not just a content problem, it’s also a compliance risk. For example, if it’s necessary to update product-related messaging to incorporate new legal or regulatory details, then for days, weeks, or even months, content on some channels could be non-compliant. This can lead to sanctions, fines, and reputation damage.

On the other end of the spectrum is a headless CMS, in which the content layer is decoupled from the presentation layer. This gives marketers tremendous power and flexibility to adapt to changing needs now and into the future for content creation. Instead of being obligated to create multiple versions of the same content — one for the web, one for social media, one for IoT devices, and so on — they only need to create or update a single version. Once this done, the headless CMS automates content delivery to all channels in the optimal format and size.

Marketers are not the only folks who are delighted with the emergence of headless CMSs: developers are big fans, too. This is because the headless architecture empowers developers with the freedom and flexibility to use a wide range of front-end coding frameworks (e.g., Next.js), including those that are not in play right now, but could be introduced in the future.

No story about future-proofing would be complete without a look at scalability, and when a headless CMS is pitted against a traditional (monolithic) CMS, there is no contest: a headless CMS is categorically more scalable. If the back-end platform requires maintenance or faces any performance issues, then they can be addressed without disrupting the front end. Organizations also have unlimited hosting options and deployment environments.

In addition, there are four use cases where the inherent scalability of a headless CMS shines bright and makes a transformative difference; especially for ecommerce businesses:

Usage increases: A headless CMS hosted in the cloud enables infrastructure resources to automatically scale as end user demand increases (e.g., a major traffic spike on Black Friday or Cyber Monday).

Extensibility: A headless CMS allows developers to add custom features as needs and goals change into the future. They can also add to the underlying data model to support further extensibility, but without dealing with the cost, complexity, or risk of changing back-end code.

Integrations: With a headless CMS, developers can leverage a seamless integration approach for connecting and exposing assets through application programming interfaces (APIs), which enable the front-end and the back-end to communicate with each other. This enables a whole new level of flexibility, customization, and options as part of the user experience that can be exploited now and into the future. Instead of being locked into a proprietary platform, developers can easily curate a best-of-breed suite of API-first integrations to drive customer experience, while they support organizational change and growth.

Economies of scale: Ecommerce businesses that deploy a headless CMS in the cloud can benefit from the fact that underlying cloud-based infrastructures get less expensive per unit as transaction volumes increase.

On the natural landscape, the term evergreen refers to a plant that retains green leaves throughout the year. On the business landscape, this term is borrowed to denote something that is always up-to-date, and represents the latest (and greatest) version available. With a traditional CMS, updates — even relatively minor ones — are often time consuming, complex, and risky. However, with a headless CMS sites are code-based, which means there is no need to manage updates and upgrades, as they are handled automatically by the vendor. This also means there is no risk of dealing with plugins that are no longer supported (that cheering you hear is the sound of happy software engineers!).

At the same time, a headless CMS keeps content evergreen. This is because (as highlighted earlier in the discussion on omnichannel publishing) simply updating one piece of content automatically updates all related content across channels: web, social, mobile apps, IoT, etc. Site visitors always get the latest and greatest on-message, on-brand, and in-compliance content, regardless of their channel, device, or location.

This benefit also frees the marketing team to focus on high-priority and high-value activities, instead of getting bogged down re-creating content over and over again. Research has found that most creative marketing teams spend between 20%-40% of their time managing the manual process of design adaptation.

It is not just far easier to create and distribute new or updated content using a headless CMS: it is also much faster. In fact, marketers do not even have to wait for developers to build templates before they jump into action in the workflow. They can concurrently start building new assets, which accelerates projects and translates to significant cost savings. Indeed, as the saying goes: time is money.

Furthermore, it is worth reiterating that a headless CMS eliminates provider lock-in, which is not just rigid and restrictive, but also costly as vendors do not face normal competitive pressures: they are the only game in town, and organizations that want to play are forced to pay. A headless CMS enables organizations to create and evolve a customized best-of-breed stack for each dimension of their marketing campaigns. If they are not happy with an integration partner’s product or pricing, they head into the (very large and constantly growing) API marketplace and find something better.

So far, we have looked at how to future-proof content marketing with a headless CMS. Still, there is another piece of the future-proofing story that needs to be addressed: personalization.

Over time, customer segments change (and customers within segments change), and it is essential for organizations to align their content marketing to these shifts. Messaging and strategies that may have been highly effective a year ago may no longer apply. Consider that:

• 90 percent of customers view personalization as “appealing.”
• 80 percent of customers are more likely to buy from a brand that offers personalized experiences.
• 77 percent of customers will pay more when offered personalized experiences.
• 72 percent of customers will only deal with brands that offer personalized experiences.
• 44 percent of customers feel that personalization plays a major role in determining brand loyalty.

Plus, new technologies — especially IoT — will dial up the level of personalization that customers expect in the years ahead. By 2025, more than 64 billion IoT devices are expected to be operational worldwide, and the global IoT marketplace is expected to be valued at $1.6 trillion USD.

Frankly, despite all of the game-changing advantages, personalization is an area where a headless CMS falls short vs. a traditional CMS. This is because decoupling the front-end and back-end, while certainly versatile, also severs the capacity to transfer customer interaction data. As a result, it is not possible to personalize experiences or run content analytics activities. Fortunately, there is an effective way to bridge this gap: a hybrid approach.

A hybrid approach enables developers to use the front-end tools and frameworks of their choice (e.g., Vue.js, React.js, Angular.js, etc.) to get the most from content, but without additional back-end development. At the same time, marketers can implement APIs to carry out core tasks that are associated with a traditional CMS, such as:

Retrieve and interpret content and personalization rules in real-time, so that customers are presented with content based on profile information, past interactions, and other data points. Generate real-time analytics and A/B testing to glean business intelligence such as what campaigns work best, how customers are navigating websites, and more.

Maintain control of creating, editing, and previewing content construction in real-time with features like WYSIWYG editing, digital asset management for inserting media, and inline editing. As a result, marketers can drive personalization and deliver content for every stage, and every device, across the customer journey.

When it comes to selecting a CMS solution, your organization obviously needs to focus on the present as part of your marketing strategy. Yet it also must look to the future — because it is the road ahead that will ultimately determine whether your decision is right or wrong, and your investment is rewarding or regrettable.

Choosing a leading headless CMS for your digital experience platform (DXP), and augmenting it with a hybrid approach to unleash the power of personalization and analytics, will ensure that your developers, marketers, and most importantly your customers will win – not just now, but for years and decades to come.

Schedule a demo with one of our product experts to see Sitecore’s best-of-breed, composable headless hybrid CMS, XM Cloud, in action. During the demo, you’ll learn how your organization can:

• Future-proof your content marketing.
• Deliver personalized content to any device or touchpoint.
• Collect useful data across a broader range of channels.
• Provide modern, omnichannel customer experiences with ease

Click here to schedule a demo.