The future of marketing with cloud CMS

To stay connected with consumers, we have all had to adapt. Since the pandemic, most of us have prioritized our digital business initiatives. One of the top expected outcomes was significantly enhancing customer experiences. We’ve seen many organizations accelerating the pace of their digital transformation to improve customer experience in the short term and then remain agile enough to keep their CX fresh.

Brands are constantly thinking about how to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Forward-thinking brands are looking beyond the technologies for today’s needs and want to future-proof their martech stack with seamless integrations into other business critical systems. The stack also needs the flexibility for quick adjustments to the business, the market, and consumer demands.

The cloud is the future, and the future is here

It’s no surprise then that leaders across industries are prioritizing cloud solutions. According to IDC, spending on cloud IT infrastructure increased by 48% in 2020, exceeding non-cloud IT infrastructure spending for the first time.

In fact, most organizations are accelerating their use of cloud technologies, with 83% of leaders saying the cloud is “very important” or “extremely important” to their organization’s future strategy and growth. Whether to maintain their competitive edge, accelerate innovation, or transform interactions with customers, employees, and partners, organizations across the board realize the cloud is the future.

What this means for marketers

Like other business units, the cloud is the future for marketers. We’ll talk more about why a composable strategy makes sense for our cloud-based world, but for now it’s enough to point out that the best place to start the transition is often with a central piece of martech: the CMS.

A cloud CMS includes (or should include) all you know and love from your on-premises CMS — tools to create, edit, store, and deliver content across channels, visually intuitive editors, SEO tools, etc. — while outsourcing hosting, getting rid of laborious upgrades, increasing accessibility for teams across the globe, and easily handling seasonal spikes in traffic.

These benefits are often more than enough to convince teams it’s time for a move. While there are ways to simplify the transition from one platform to another, and the actual process of doing so can be an impetus to get your house in order — from team processes to asset organization — the transitioning process is not simple.

So, I want to take some time to discuss some of the other advantages, and why going through the process sooner rather than later is a better route for most marketing departments.

Top benefits of a cloud CMS

1. Increase speed

From implementation, setup, and integration to adoption and usage, the right cloud CMS accelerates processes across the board. The speed advantages don’t stop at launch day, either.

Teams can spin up new websites, apps, microsites, and landing pages much faster. In addition, a cloud-hosted server gives your development team a unified, modern platform for collaboration. If the platform is headless, which most cloud-based CMSs are, development teams can work in parallel with content teams, versus having to wait for each other.

In short, a cloud-based CMS enables fast implementation, fast content distribution, easy and fast edits, and of course fast optimization — all of which are important when trying to keep up with changing customer expectations and market dynamics.

2. Boost productivity

A cloud-hosted CMS eliminate silos and promotes seamless collaboration. Marketers won’t have to tap developers on the shoulder whenever they want to develop new content, and developers can now spend most of their time working on interesting and high-value projects, versus helping a field marketing team, for example, launch a targeted microsite. This all translates to faster execution and more productivity.

3. Improve ROI and profits

While an initial investment is needed, moving to the cloud is often much cheaper in the long run. Some large companies report saving 20%-50% annually due to higher productivity, less work from IT, and decreased maintenance costs.

4. Adapt quickly

The past several years taught us all how quickly the world can change. Whether it’s shifting consumer expectations or the need to embrace a new commerce model (marketplaces, D2C, etc.), cloud-based technologies make speedy adaptation easier. Consistent and automatic updates mean the end of costly and time-consuming upgrades. Silos also break down and collaboration increases. When everyone on the team has instant access, it’s much simpler to get create, approve, and publish fresh content.

Why composability is key for today — and tomorrow

From streamlining collaboration to more seamlessly integrating marketing systems, there are many benefits of a cloud-based CMS.

But the most critical aspect might just be composability. Sitecore firmly believes the days of monolithic, legacy solutions will soon be coming to an end. Marketers want and need to be nimble. It’s why we’re all-in on providing composable solutions — enabling brands to incorporate only the solutions they need into their martech stack, versus waiting for months or even years to implement an all-in-one solution that includes products they neither want nor need.

Cloud-native, composable SaaS solutions enable brands to implement and deploy in days or weeks versus months or quarters. For many marketing teams, the place to start is with the CMS, for others it may make more since to begin with a Customer Data Platform (CDP), Digital Asset Management (DAM), or a personalization solution.

It all comes down to your unique history, business goals, future aspirations, and current needs. If composable is a new concept to you, or you would like to learn more about it, start here. If you’re ready to talk options, Sitecore solutions experts can provide all the answers you’re looking and show you a demo of our platform.