BMC Case Study: How to Take a Content-First Approach and Measure the Success of Your Content Strategy

BMC Case Study

How to take a content-first approach and measure

the success of your content strategy Mark Fries

Principal Strategic Marketing Manager, BMC Software

@mark_f

Derek Phillips

Director of Content Strategy, ISITE Design

@digistrategist

@mark_f @digistrategist • #intelcontent

AGENDA

① Where We Were

② What We Did

③ How It’s Working


1 Where We Were


The Five Challenges

① Inconsistent representation of the brand story

② Too product-centric, not reflecting customer needs

③ Cumbersome and overwhelming UX

④ Lacking content direction

⑤ Needed scalable technology and infrastructure


Inconsistent representation of the brand story


Too product-specific, not reflective of customer

needs


Cumbersome and overwhelming UX


Lacking content direction and governance


• 200+ products

• 5 separate business units

• Moving to centralized content management and editing

• New commitment to testing and optimization

• Plans to expand global footprint

Needed scalable technology and infrastructure


2 What We Did


The Five Approaches

① Defined specific business goals and aligned them to

touchpoints

② Defined the customer needs

③ Aligned pages to personas

④ Defined the content components: think modular

⑤ Mobile first, mobile always


Defined specific business goals and aligned them

to touchpoints

We asked the questions: • What is the purpose of this page to

our business? • What are the KPIs we’re measuring? • What is the primary call to action? • More importantly: What role is it

targeting? Strategic vs. Functional


DEFINING SPECIFIC NEEDS AND IDENTIFYING CONTENT TO MEET THEM ENABLED OUR MODULAR

APPROACH


Defined the customer needs We made some assumptions and then tested them with customers.

Assumptions Prototype

& Test Adjust

Some key insights learned:

• Users commonly have specific products in mind, or a specific functional need

• Users prefer functional categories

• Product/solution features preferred to high-level benefit statements

• Data sheets are a highly valued content asset


Aligned pages to profiles


Defined the content components


Designed in the browser

Some key benefits:

• Working with real content to better

inform design

• Could see the mobile experience and

break points

• Foundational FED mark-up sped up

development time

Jumping quickly to building a site, vs. building pictures of sites


Strategy applied to the copy

Translated to copy decks to speed production and ensure alignment.


Reused the content components Think modular…


Mobile first, mobile always

Concise Actionable Focused on task completion Contextual


Mobile first, mobile always Also made defining hierarchy easier

• Lead with most important • Stack in order • Provide paths


LET’S CIRCLE BACK ON A FEW KEY CHALLENGES


The Three Specific Challenges

① Streamlined and intuitive UX

② Comprehensive content direction and governance

③ Scalable technology and infrastructure


Bottom-up experience:

Ensuring visitors entering directly

on product/solutions pages (most

visitors) are given appropriate

context and options to continue

engaging

Streamlined and intuitive UX

Top-down experience:

Giving visitors who enter on home

page or category level pages

simple choices to disambiguate our

offerings


We have a clear POV and strategy behind how our site is

constructed

• Makes conversations with the business easier

• Eases optimization since learnings in one area can be

deployed in multiple places

Comprehensive content direction and governance


Remember this?

Scalable technology and infrastructure

The Intelligent Content Approach was key to our getting there: • Atomized the content • Established coding

standards • Enabled utility of the

CMS • Proved the design

worked


3 How It’s Working


The Four Big Payoffs

① A framework for optimization

② Increased content creation efficiencies

③ Overall engagement is up

④ Contacts – UP! (And that means money)


Our goal with optimization: never “redesign” again

• Highly structured infrastructure makes it possible to

get experiments up and running quickly anywhere

• Findings from experiments can easily roll out across

the site

A framework for optimization


NEVER REDESIGN AGAIN. THINK ABOUT THAT.


A framework for optimization



1. Headline & Customer Logo • Top level benefit/result of engagement with

BMC • Customer Logo

2. “At a glance” data points • Up to 4 key statistics that communicate either

benefits/outcomes of the customer’s engagement with BMC or key stats on the customer’s organization

3. Video (if available) or customer quote • Real stories from actual business leaders and

user • Focus on benefits and outcomes BMC brought

to the business

4. Body b. Challenge

• Brief description of the business problem • Can be in sentence format or bullet, may

include in-line links to more information c. Solution

• Brief description of how the problem was solved through partnership with BMC

• Can be in sentence format or bullet, may include in-line links to more information

d. Results • Brief description of business impact • Can be in sentence format or bullet, may

include in-line links to more information 5. Next steps

a. Contact BMC CTA b. Related products

• list with links to learn more/try c. Related Resources

• White papers/reports/videos related to the challenge (2-3 max)

3

4

2

1

5

Mobile first hierarchy

Visito

r min

dse

t

Do

es this relate to

my ch

allenges?

Ho

w can

I learn m

ore?

Wh

at are the d

etails?

5a

5b

5c

4a

4b

4c

Increased content creation efficiencies

10% MORE ORGANIC TRAFFIC (YOY)

50% MORE DATA SHEET DOWNLOADS

200% INCREASE IN TRIAL STARTS

67% INCREASE IN CONTACT ME REQUESTS

Overall engagement is up


+67% Contact Sales

Requests

Revenue!

+67% Marketing Sourced

Pipeline associated

with requests

=


Derek Phillips

Director of Content Strategy

ISITE Design

@digistrategist

Mark Fries

Principle Strategic Marketing Manager

BMC Software

@mark_f


Business

BMC Case Study: How to Take a Content-First Approach and Measure the Success of Your Content Strategy