Netflix (and other streaming services like Hulu, Amazon, HBO Go, and etc.) aren’t just altering the way we consume digital content marketing, they’re changing our perspective on how digital content should be organized.
Today we look at some lessons taken from the teams who do it best.
Lessons from Netflix
Content marketing adoption is growing strong and continuously evolving. Netflix and other streaming services are influencing digital content marketing strategies but not enough companies are applying the strategy which makes these services so effective - content management.
Currently, the most popular content management tactics are:
- 22% - A cloud storage system (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc.)
- 22% - Email attachments
- 18% - CRM or Sales Force Automation
- 17% - An Intranet
- 9% - Personal hard drive
That said, none of these tactics make content easy to find/use with only 9% employing a dedicated sales content management system.
Content management is about more than being able to open content, or use an iPad to sell. The objective is to provide a seamless searching and viewing experience that simplifies the search-find function and creates several viable avenues for the same solution.
Here’s how Netflix does right:
1) One Library, Limitless Filtering
Netflix begins by sorting its content into basic and familiar categories, followed by further sub-divisions like genres and sub-genres (Source: Glushko, J., 2014) Netflix doesn’t hide content in a folder and duplicate that content in other folders- it puts all of the content in one place, and filters down by related tags.
It’s important for the same content to appear across several tags. Like a Romantic Comedy appears in both ‘Romance’ and ‘Comedy’ on Netflix, Investment Outlook: High-Risk Investments should appear under ‘outlook’, ‘high-risk’, and other related tags in your content library.
Netflix has 76,897 tags for their 40 million+ content pieces (Source: The Atlantic, 2014) - but it isn’t enough for marketing teams to just make tags prior to release. Your sales team needs the ability to add tags on the go and your content management system should auto-generate tags to sort content for specific buyers.
Like Netflix, you want all your content in one place with several ways to filter that content down - not a bunch of folders to aimlessly search.
2) Recommended and Relevant Content
As you rate and use digital content, Netflix pairs your ratings with those of other viewers who share similar rating and viewing criteria. The moment you log in you can easily see “recommended for you”, “recently viewed”, “recently uploaded”, “trending” etc.
The top content management software allows users to rate all content. When you select a target customer from your integrated CRM the content management system should show you:
- The best content to use;
- The content that has already been shown to that client;
- How other sales reps felt about that content; and
- How that content worked for the buyer decision journey and industry.
You can’t afford to waste time searching for content, and you don’t have the time to show duplicate or outdated material.
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3) Precise, Expedited, Impulse Consumption
When you login to Netflix, the content that you see is different from what others see. Although you share one library, Netflix’s interface manages multiple profiles to sort the influence of recommended and relevant content, and you can create your own playlists to come back to. If a user shouldn’t be seeing something, you can hide it from a profile – just like parental controls.
This is exactly the kind of content management employed by the best sales enablement solutions:
- One content library with limits on who sees what at any given time;
- Easily move between target industries, buyers, and personas to personalize the main screen to only content that matters;
- Sales playbooks – your own ‘playlists’ – can be created anytime for personalized libraries or streamlined sales team communications.
Contextually relevant impulse consumption through rapid and cross-linked discovery (Source: ClickZ, 2014). Netflix has it, so should your content management.
4) Comprehensive Meta-Search Functionality
Netflix search function is incredibly versatile scouring descriptions, user reviews, actors, content themes, genres, and even related content. Remembering minor details of any content is all you need to find it.
Your sales enablement software must be capable of searching several factors like tags, comments, ratings, personas, industries, geographies, upload dates, campaigns, target client, etc. with intelligent sorting that puts the details in order of relevance.
When you’re in the sales presentation, the system should complement your discussion and enhance the sales process, not send you searching folders and showing old content.
5) Buyer and Consumption Insights
Netflix uses every ounce of data about its users to tailor the content dashboard. Data is the most important integrating factor that tells a story and creates a window into the future. Your sales enablement software must make client info available at all times because knowing what stage the buyer is in will add measureable value to your interaction.
The Benefits of Netflix-Style Content Management
Let’s forget for a second the user-specific benefits inherent in this type of search functionality. This future-proof sales enablement software gives you the power to reverse-engineer your content the same way that Netflix is reforming Hollywood (Source: The Atlantic, 2014).
Content consumption data doesn’t tell you how to make content - but it does tell you what you should be making, who you’re making it for, when you should be showing it, and how it influences them. This information allows you to reuse old content that may have been lost to time in the same way that Netflix targets old movies to a whole new generation of viewers.
Book a Demo and Let us Show you What Netflix-Inspired Real Sales Enablement Software Feels like
Sales Enablement Content Management is moving into maturity, it’s not enough to just have top level data and a platform that opens all your content in file folders. As libraries grow, the economics of content management favour a Netflix/Hulu/Amazon style approach.
