Content Supply Chain
Content production is going through a period of immense growth. According to a 2023 Adobe survey, 88% of marketers said that the demand for content doubled in two years, while two-thirds of those surveyed said that they expect that demand to grow by up to 20 times over the next two years.
The biggest MarTech names agree: the only way to appease an audience with a growing appetite for personalized, and timely information is to develop a content supply chain that combines people, technology, workflows, and data.
In this post, we’ll explore what a content supply chain is, why it’s essential, and how technology solutions – like Bluprintx’s Adobe Content Supply Chain Accelerator – are helping companies thrive in the face of so much demand.
But first…
Simply put, a content supply chain is the end-to-end process of creating, managing, and distributing content — from strategy to optimization and engagement. If you’re producing content, your team already has some iteration of a content supply chain.
Content refers to any asset or material that you distribute to your audience — whether that’s social media posts, press releases, whitepapers, or blog posts.
This pretty much describes what most marketers would call a traditional content supply chain:
Content Creation > Production > Distribution > Feedback
Why is the traditional content production line no longer cutting it? Without going back as far as the days of pre-internet content publication, the main issue that marketing teams face is scaling their production to publish content at high volumes without losing quality or consistency. Additionally, traditional supply chains leave out the possibility of using data and analytics to help inform and optimize content creation and answer the call for personalization.
If we look at a content supply chain like a manufacturing supply chain, it becomes easier to imagine the eventual consequences of an inefficiency or breakdown:
A conveyor belt starts to slow down and move product at half its normal speed. The on-site mechanics are too busy fixing another machine to address the issue right away. In the meantime, the workers on the other end of the conveyor belt are only loading half the number of products into boxes, which means that half the time, they’re standing there (on the clock) doing nothing. The transport truck sits idle for longer because it takes twice the amount of time to fill it with goods, which causes a delay in shipping. These delays increase cost, which causes the customer to find another, cheaper product.
Content lifecycles often contribute to strained supply chains because so many teams and systems are involved in ideation, creation, and production. Without streamlined content workflows or straightforward systems to store and manage digital assets , the supply chain starts to break down. This wastes budget, puts unnecessary strain on employees, and ultimately slows down production.
Thanks to the increasing complexity of the consumer’s digital experience, companies are adopting a more strategic, efficient, and collaborative approach to content. That means that everything – from workflows to asset management to analytics – has gone through a transformation of processes and technologies.
Contemporary content supply chains now look more like this:
Organizational Strategy> Briefing, Planning, and Resourcing > Creation, Review and Approval > Content Delivery and Analysis> Optimization and feedback
As your go-to Adobe-Accredited Partner Solution for Content Supply Chain, Bluprintx offers best-in-class content supply chain technology integrations to help address your biggest content challenges.
In order to strategize and orchestrate content of this volume, teams need full visibility into various pipelines in one central location. A work management system can help teams break through department silos and open the floor to collaborative efforts.
This core pillar enhances your team’s ability to see your workforce capacity, allocate the right resources, understand risk, and simplify your approval process.
Your team can create personalized customer experiences at scale with the help of GenAI, which speeds up everything – from producing copy to automating asset updates to brainstorming new ideas. These tools also help teams collaborate on the same project or task in real time to ensure all stakeholders are working on the correct versions.
Suddenly, the feedback, review and approval processes are faster, which means fewer revisions will be needed down the road, and tasks can be handed off more quickly.
A digital asset manager (DAM) is one of the most essential technologies your team will use to store, categorize, manage, reuse, and source assets of all kinds across the organization. DAMs also simplify content governance and digital rights management for large enterprises by enabling access and permissions control.
Asset managers can help you achieve a better ROI by personalizing and reiterating your most successful assets to reach new users. This allows you to continually create content without having to invest in new production.
Not all DAMs are created equal. If your company is looking to optimize each stage of the supply chain, look for a DAM that also simplifies asset findability and tagging.
Find your customers wherever they spend their digital time. Using a content distribution platform that can automatically enhance and schedule assets for each channel will help your content get to market faster and increase your exposure.
Integrating automation and AI will make updating, optimizing, and version testing content as easy as clicking a button.
Measuring content performance is the crucial last step in the supply chain. Integrating analytics tools will give you invaluable insights into content engagement, which allows your team to test and tweak until maximum impact is reached. All the data you collect can be used to improve your marketing strategies, inform future content schedules, and get the most from your assets.
Scaling content to meet this level of demand without it costing a fortune requires technological integration to help increase productivity and streamline processes.
Without a shadow of a doubt, modern content supply chains would not be possible without technology like generative AI, automation, and machine learning.
For example, Bluprintx’s Adobe Content Supply Chain Accelerator helps companies…
And for every stage of the content supply chain, there’s a tool or a technology that’s there to help:
Let’s dig a little deeper to examine the core pillars of the modern content supply chain and how integrated tech helps every step of the way.
We are focused on solutions, not software purity. Learn more about our cross-platform, technology-agnostic approach that’s enabling businesses to maximize their existing Martech stack.