Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to gain strategic advantage, drive revenue and reduce risk through their digital technology ecosystems. Organizations must be able to launch localized digital products and experiences rapidly and efficiently to support and engage end users.

At Kin + Carta, a global digital transformation firm, the need for easy-to-implement, localized digital experiences is clear. As a Contentful Gold Partner, Kin + Carta recommends content platforms as a way of helping to solve business problems and inefficiencies when clients serve global markets.

Content platforms for global marketing

In many cases, our clients struggle to modernize and become more efficient in several facets of their business. When companies seek comprehensive digital transformation, there’s often a clear need for modernization for both their software and content. With localization, enhanced global marketing strategies, modular content and modernized custom software, clients are set up to succeed and function better.

Contentful equips Kin + Carta’s clients with a flexible content platform that simplifies operations at a global scale. By centralizing content, it promotes reusability across both local and global markets. A platform like Contentful helps us overcome key limitations like siloed teams, over-engineered processes and legacy technology.

Learn more about how Contentful supports content localization for global marketing strategy.

Siloed teams

Whether it’s a global or regional team, teams are often siloed and use different tools, including separate content management tools. This creates inconsistency and duplicative work, effectively wasting money. When teams are unable to easily repurpose corporate brand content in local markets, they spend more time spinning their wheels with less output, and the readers of the content suffer the most by consuming content that isn’t relevant to them.

On an operational level, marketers and content creators are in a standstill as they wait for development and engineering teams to create pages that help them manage the localized content. In turn, engineering talent is bogged down with monotonous work, and these inefficiencies slow time-to-market of new content, features, and products that users truly want. 

Especially in the midst of COVID-19, teams have been more siloed than ever. Kin + Carta has seen the bottleneck often caused by blocked teams. Siloed teams have more difficulty rapidly and efficiently launching localized digital content, products, and experiences. This is mainly due to the new nature of working remote and not having the right technology to support modern digital product development practices.  

With a decoupled microservices approach, content and engineering teams can be productive within separate workstreams, allowing each team to progress in an agile manner to get their work done. Working in this manner allows for more frequent releases, more time to focus on the quality of the content, and happier teams. The end result is that end users have a better user experience and are getting the content they covet quicker than ever before. 

Overengineered processes

Disjointed customer experiences on a localized level are often a reflection of what is going on internally with a company. Teams in various functions, regions, and units taking different approaches to marketing can result in a disjointed customer experience with inconsistent engagement. 

When multiple teams work on different pieces of the experience in separate platforms, attribution for each channel quickly gets lost, and before you know it, you're increasing your spending without increasing returns, which lowers overall marketing ROI. Also, when you’re unable to identify what’s driving the most traffic, where to invest, and how much to allocate, the lack of visibility builds over time and hampers the overall lead acquisition strategy.

Kin + Carta has many clients worldwide that find themselves burdened with over-engineered processes. A common goal for these clients is streamlining functionality of their systems and processes, so the teams can deliver better work. While many issues involving processes can be solved through software, they also need to be supported with change management principles.

With a clearer, more simplified process, it’s easier to identify both short-term tactics and long-term strategies, paving the way for success and a better experience for the customer. 

Legacy technology

Kin + Carta works with many clients using legacy technology. Sometimes it’s inherited from past predecessors or the same technology that got the company to where they are today, but it’s not going to support future growth. These legacy systems are typically complex, slow and closed off, funneling engineers and marketers through antiquated development languages, coupling front-end experiences with the backend content structure and resulting in templated approaches that are neither flexible nor scalable. 

While legacy is not always bad, it’s often synonymous with slow and outdated. Some companies are married to their legacy monoliths, unwilling to part ways, and others are ready to start fresh and welcome new technologies. 

Legacy technology can create digital sprawl, which leads to disjointed systems that are difficult to use and scale. When your business is unable to reuse localized content across geographies, launches become stalled and innovation is hindered. This requires more effort to build, an increase in spending, and even more effort to keep in sync when adding new, localized experiences to new channels and geographies.

When we can use API-first tools, connect them with other translation platforms, and leverage best-in-breed content platforms, we can quickly help our clients efficiently scale their global marketing efforts. Instead of worrying about the legacy technology that used to hinder the digital experience, we enable our clients to focus more on creating the content and journey that their customers want and expect from companies doing business online. 

Visit Kin + Carta to learn more about their team, or read more about content localization for global marketing strategy.

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