How Headless CMS Enables Content First Marketing Strategy

We have all heard the phrase “content is the king.” But the question is, ''Does content without strategy ever work?'' Well, we at Experro say – the right content at the right time in front of the right audience always works!

And that exactly explains the content-first marketing strategy enabled by headless CMS.

Headless CMS enables a content-first marketing strategy by separating content creation from content presentation, allowing flexibility, scalability, and consistency across multiple digital channels and devices.

Upon switching to Headless CMS, 43% of marketers thought they were less reliant on IT. Unlike traditional CMS, headless CMS owners enjoy the flexibility to customize the frontend with an eliminated need for technical expertise.

What Is Content-First Marketing Strategy?

Content-first marketing strategies emphasize creating and publishing valuable content in the initial stage of the business. Rather than directly promoting the new idea, product, or service to the audience, the content-first marketing strategy focuses on providing valuable resources and insights first.

With the help of appropriate headless CMS relevant content is delivered to the target audience across various digital touchpoints such as websites, mobile apps, social media channels, and IoT devices.

The content-focused approach enhances organization's digital strategy, fostering audience trust by delivering content at the right time.

Importance of Content-First Marketing Strategy with Headless CMS

The key points mentioned below highlight the importance of implementing content-first strategies using headless CMS:

1. Creating Brand Awareness

Creating brand awareness is the first step toward achieving several business goals. By publishing content, organizations can create and increase the brand awareness.

With a content-first marketing strategy, your audience will be well aware in advance of the product or service you are offering to them. Moreover, your business will be able to foster customer relationships by spreading valuable information.

2. Audience Engagement

Engaging your target audience is nearly impossible without an impactful content-first marketing strategy. Wondering why?

The content-first approach enables high-quality and engaging content distribution on different digital channels. Businesses can consistently deliver valuable content to increase audience engagement and brand visibility.

3. Leveraging SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The search engine prefers valuable and high-quality content. With a focus on a content-first marketing strategy, your audience will reach you before you get your audience. A search engine optimized content enables businesses to improve website ranking and increase online visibility.

4. Utilizing Time

Adopting content-first marketing using headless CMS allows you to optimize your website design, layouts, and infographics based on the content requirements from the beginning.

This approach saves time that would otherwise be wasted on making design changes later to accommodate the content.

5. Lead Generation

A well-executed content-first marketing strategy with headless CMS can be a powerful tool to generate leads. When you provide content that addresses potential customers' pain points and provides solutions, you can capture their attention, increasing the likelihood of generating leads.

Benefits of Using Headless CMS for Enabling Content-First Marketing

Using headless CMS for enabling content-first marketing strategy offers several benefits, which are as follows:

1. Content Creation and Management

The headless CMS enables greater flexibility in delivering and creating content. With the separated frontend (presentation layer) and backend (content library) it empowers developers and content creators to independently manage and customize the user experience.

Moreover, developers can easily edit and deliver content without making changes to the backend. The freedom to tweak and deliver content easily allows organizations to swiftly adapt to change and engage with the audience effectively.

Let's find out how content creation and content lifecycle management work in headless CMS:

• Content Modeling for Content Types and Structures

Content modeling in a traditional CMS can pose challenges when adapting to updated content types and structures. This is primarily due to the tight integration between content creation and presentation layers.

However, content modeling and structuring in headless CMS offers significant advantages in terms of reusing content. The content model enables you to effortlessly accommodate different content formats, including text, images, video, audio, and more.

Furthermore, the pre-defined content modules can enhance content-first strategy by providing structured and consistent framework to present content.

• API-Driven Content

API-driven content delivery offers numerous benefits in delivering seamless and dynamic content to users. It reduces the server load and improves website performance. This enables organizations to deliver seamless content and improve user experience.

• Delivering Personalized and Real-Time Content

Did you know? 80% of customers prefer to buy from a company that provides a tailored customer experience.

Content-first marketing with personalization is like the cherry on the cake feature of headless CMS. Customers will get relevant information based on location, preferences, behavior, and interests, enabling businesses to generate a seamless and tailored customer experience.

• Content Optimization for Improving Content Performance

Content optimization ensures the content is relevant, useful, and engaging to the customer. Headless CMS enhances personalization, improves content delivery speed, and integrates with third-party tools by providing flexibility in content creation and delivery.

Leveraging these capabilities allows organizations to create and deliver highly engaging and optimized content for their digital marketing strategy.

2. Improved Content Delivery and Distribution

Headless CMS offers improved content delivery and distribution with its unique architecture and features. Let's find out how from the following points:

• Omnichannel Marketing

Did you know? A company with an omnichannel marketing strategy retains 89% of its customers.

Omnichannel content distribution using headless CMS ensures delivering content on multiple digital devices without the necessity of custom development for each platform.

This function eliminates repeated content creation and enables delivering consistent content across all digital channels and devices. It enables content-first marketing on all digital channels.

• Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN ensures that content delivery is quick and reliable across all digital platforms to provide a seamless experience to customers. Integration with CDN enables content availability and quicker content delivery across multiple channels.

3. Enhanced Customer Experience

The following points highlight the fact how headless CMS enhances customer experience.

• Integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems

Through integration with CRM software, customer insights are fetched based on their past interaction and contextual data. Deriving customer insights enable content personalization and helps to deliver engaging content to the users.

• Scalability and Security

In 65% of the cases company has a negative impact or reputation because of data breach cases.

Headless CMS ensures scalability by decoupling the content creation layer from the content presentation. It provides more security than traditional CMS by reducing the risk of data breaches, and the ability to reuse content decreases the development cost for each platform.

• Localization and global content delivery

With headless CMS, you can make Multilanguage content for a global audience on different channels. You can also track the progress of your content in different regions and languages to derive better customer engagement.

• Future-proofing your content infrastructure

Decoupled CMS separates the content presentation from the content creation layer; that is how it becomes easy to adapt to change regarding technology and managing content on different channels. Moreover, content can be repurposed in the future without custom development for each platform.

4. Improved Collaboration, Workflow, and Time Execution

 Headless CMS improves collaboration, workflow, and timely execution in several following ways:

• Workflow automation for content creation and management

With the help of workflow automation, tasks are automatically assigned, reminded about deadlines, approved, and reviewed. You can also track errors and track your content's progress to ensure work efficiency.

• Versioning and content rollback

Versioning and content rollback in headless CMS track the change in the content and updates it over time. It also stores the content in history for future reference. Content governance follows policies and guidelines to ensure content is relevant and valuable.

5. Data-Driven Decision Making

Headless CMS empowers organizations to make data-driven decision making with the help of following features:

• Analytics and Insights

Customer insights are the door to understanding the customer's needs, preferences, and behavior. Headless CMS can provide you with improved analytics and insights that can create valuable and data-driven content.

• Integration with Third-party Tools

The headless architecture enables easy integration with analytic tools to derive insights about your content. By measuring content insights, you can track your progress in the content management journey to get more focused and able to make data-driven decisions.

5 Steps of Headless CMS Best Practices to Empower Content-First Marketing Strategy

To effectively engage your target audience and optimize content strategy using headless CMS involves several essential steps that are as follows:

1. Know Your Target Audience

Understanding who your target audience is and what they want is crucial for content-first marketing strategy. Identifying the requirements of your target audience allows you to create relevant, personalized, and engaging content.

Understanding your audience can be achieved by asking the following questions:

• What type of content do they like to consume most? (Blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, etc.)
• Which digital channel does your audience engage the most?
• What are the interests and hobbies of your target audience? 
• Which of your competitors does your target audience follow?
• What drives user's decision-making process to purchase from you?

Asking these questions enables businesses tailor their messages and effectively implement a content-first marketing strategy using headless CMS.

2. Mapping Out Content Architecture

After understanding your audience, second step is to map out your content architecture. It involves the following steps:

• Outlining content categories.
• Planning content formats.
• Establishing content hierarchies.

Mapping out content architecture will ensure your content structure aligns with your business goal and target audience.

For instance, outlining content categories and establishing hierarchies in advance will allow you to boost SEO. Moreover, by thoughtfully categorizing and planning content, organizations can empower marketers to deliver relevant and purposeful content.

3. Creating Content Calendar

After creating a content architecture, it's time to establish a content calendar. Creating a content calendar is fundamental step to ensure consistent and effective content delivery.

While creating a content plan, you can target relevant keywords your audience is searching for. Furthermore, by planning the flow of content businesses can identify potential gaps or setbacks in the content-first marketing strategy.

4. Measuring Results

Measuring the content strategy results is a crucial step of content management best practices. It allows you to identify what works the best and what doesn't!

Businesses can measure their content strategies with analytics tools, SEO performance, bounce rates, SERP ranking, etc.

5. Choosing The Headless CMS

Choosing the right headless CMS for your organization is a crucial decision. An appropriate content management system elevates your business capabilities and helps to unlock business's fullest potential.

Experro, our cutting-edge headless CMS platform, is designed to revolutionize the way organizations manage and deliver content. With its versatile features, it empowers organizations to provide seamless and exceptional customer experience through content.

Examples of Successful Content-First Marketing Campaigns Using a Headless CMS

1. HubSpot

We all are aware of HubSpot, a well-known inbound marketing platform. Its digital content-first strategy is widely prevalent among its audience.

The company has established a great relationship with its target audience using content-first marketing with headless CMS. HubSpot has been successful in delivering relevant content to the right audience.

2. The New York Times

The New York times use headless CMS to deliver relevant content on various digital platforms to their users. This has enabled them to drive traffic and engagement over multiple platforms.

3. Senses

Senses is a luxury and fashion eCommerce website with headless CMS to create personalized shopping experiences. 

Wrapping Up

Adopting content-first marketing strategy with headless CMS unlocks endless business possibilities. By leveraging the power of content-first strategy organizations can create personalized customer experiences that captivate their audiences, drive business growth, and stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Book a demo with Experro to create one such elevating experience for your business.