Xperience by Kentico has been around for a while now. However, some agencies are still on the fence because some expected features are not there yet. Is that fair? Does that align with the idea of Xperience by Kentico? Let's talk about how to change your business today to optimally align your agency with all the great things Kentico is working on.
My name is Roel Kuik, I am a Kentico Practice Lead at Aviva Solutions. I also am one of two of the Kentico Xperience Marketing MVP’s. Basically, I get to talk to businesses about how to fulfil their digital marketing ambitions by optimizing business processes and technology.
Leveraging technology will be a recurring theme in this blog. As its no longer just about the technology itself, its about the solution you provide for your clients. How it adds value to their processes. Its not about you as an agency making a project as technologically intricate as possible. And that might require a shift in mindset for some agencies.
Years ago, businesses started needing more than just a cms. They wanted to create the best possible customer experience for their visitors and achieve digital success. Oh, and let’s not forget deliver a true omnichannel experience. So integrating digital marketing into contentmanagement became the best thing since sliced bread. The possibilities of a so called digital experience platform are endless. As you can expect from an agency, we all started selling dxp’s. Tapping into the ultimate dream of our clients: the perfect customer experience for their audience. Perfect world right?
Tragically, the ultimate dream turned nightmare in quite a few cases. Why? Because most agencies where perfectly capable to technically built the platform. But as soon as the development was done, they handed over the keys to their client and ran towards the nearest exit as fast as possible. Setting up Email? Activating marketing automation? Leveraging personalization? Don’t call us, we will call you.
What happens after that? After a year of trying or not having touched on digital marketing at all, your client realizes that they are paying for a heavily overprized cms. And leave your agency, start all over with a new platform or end up with us at Aviva Solutions😊
Even now, 75% of businesses on a dxp leverage less than halve of its capabilities. Imagine selling your client a dxp because of e-commerce of digital marketing without having a clue on how to actually leverage these capabilities for your clients.
So, the question is, how can you as an agency take this as an opportunity to grow and drive your clients digital maturity to greater heights? It may have something to do with your own digital maturity…
And if you are wondering why? To make your clients happy and build longterm relationships with them. And to continuously generate revenue after launching the initial project. Basic knowledge is that its easier to generate revenue through your existing clients than it is to find new clients. If done correctly, you are not waiting for your clients requests for change, but your generating your own demand. And they will pay you, because you are continuously adding value to their business. And as their digital maturity increases, so will your relationship and your position as a necessary part of their business. And that’s the sweet spot where we as an agency would like to be.
So, what do you need to do as an agency to give them what they need? What shift must you make to not be surpassed by competing agencies?
Practice what you preach
When I joined Aviva Solutions in 2016, we where using Sitecore 6 or 7 for our own website. It took our content editors about a week to publish a page, let alone create a meaningful inbound marketing strategy that turned visitors into clients. Later we switched to Kentico 11 at that time with the EMS features. That’s where our digital growth started. First step was to eliminate Mailchimp as our ESP and switch to emailing out of Kentico.
Next step, marketing automation. Followed by A/B testing and personalization. And believe me, it was a struggle. No real knowledge to fall back on, just trail and error every day to get where we wanted to be. But, it gave us a huge amount of experience with the product that we were actively leveraging to improve the customer experience of our clients. Which we did not leverage before. Like most of us, we previously were ready to run towards the exit. And now, we take our clients to the finish line and beyond. Because we fully understand the possibilities within the platform we are able to provide business solutions that add actual value to our clients by leveraging those features.
Understand your clients needs
Most clients have no idea on how to solve their digital challenges. That’s why they hire us, right? And they will almost never ask you what it is they really need. They will ask you to deliver a specific outcome, but is that really what they are asking for?
Remember when you first started dating your partner? And you asked them what qualities they find important in a partner? Chances are that they said: humor. What they did not say or mean is that their ideal partner is Jim Carrey. The sentiment behind the humor quality might be something more like being able to put things in perspective or being lighthearted.
And what do we as an agency like to do when clients tell us they value humor: Deliver them Jim Carrey. Why? Because you did not get to the real pain points of your client. What’s the question behind the question? Why is this important? If you understand why they are asking for this, not only do you have a more detailed insight into your clients challenges, but you are able to provide a better solution. As a bonus, your client will feel more understood then before.
If you have a firm grip on their challenges and you know how to leverage the features within a platform, you are able to guide your clients towards digital growth.
Understand their digital maturity and goals
There’s no point in starting to talk about personalization with your client as a short term goal if they now even struggle to send out a simple newsletter twice a year. Instead, get a grip on where they stand now and start working towards a digital maturity roadmap that will allow for steady digital growth based on their increasing maturity. Using the DEMM calculator is a great way to start getting used to having these conversations with your clients. With just 13 questions, you can create a fit / gap analysis on current position versus their ideal maturity level. Which in turn leads to a roadmap filled with epics and tickets. And those turn into…
Just think about it. Just setting up email requires some system work to actually be able to send emails. But then there’s the designer and UX-er to craft the design. Followed by front-end and then back-end. And the analytics expert to suggest improvements, followed by the marketing expert to improve the user experience and so on and so on. Imagine the work if you suggest a new template every 3 months 😊 And that’s not even talking about the other features within the platform.
Change your project approach
We all like to have our own take on the perfect project approach. But getting your client ready for digital growth might require a slightly different approach then just focusing on launching a new platform.
Preparation
Spend more time with your client to get a grip on what they are actually asking for and what the solution should achieve. Gather information from all available sources like Hotjar, Analytics, or 3rd party tools and incorporate those insights into your solution. Make sure you understand the clients business processes to ensure that your solution can actually be adopted without completely disrupting their business. Specifically their content production and publication process is extremely important to focus on due to the central Content hub in Xperience by Kentico.
Development
Make sure your team is skilled, experienced and certified. Preferably build a bridge between the business and development. If your technical team understands the pain of your client, they can leverage their knowledge to provide better solutions. Your developers don’t need to write marketing plans of course, but if they are able to sympathize with the business, you will end up with better solutions. The marketing courses for developers provided by Kentico are a nice example on closing this gap.
Making it better
Analyze the results of your solution using actual data if possible. Plan quarterly meetings with your clients to talk about these results and suggest improvements. Combine these with strategical sessions to keep your eye on the future goals next to short time improvements.
On the public roadmap you can see that Kentico has a clear view of the future. Xperience by Kentico was launched a while ago, and with the latest update they are taking another huge step forward. With loads of new capabilities being released in the future. Which is great of course, but how does this affect you as a partner? Will you stay on the fence for now or will you take Kentico’s path to digital growth as an opportunity for growth for your agency?
With Kentico's 4 pillars in mind, here’s a few things that create opportunities for your agency:
Strengthen our strengths
The seamless updates for Xperience by Kentico will prevent massive updates like we have had in the past. That leaves time and resources to be leveraged for shifting focus towards other areas. Take that budget to start creating and realizing their digital roadmap.
Same goes for the migration toolkit. It will help you to save time and resources bringing your clients to the new Xperience by Kentico platform. It can even be used to migrate from other software vendors. Will you see that as a loss of income and accept it? Or will you leverage that budget towards actually increasing their digital maturity? Same amount of money, difference is that your client will end up with a better customer experience and a higher level of digital maturity. Repurposing that ‘lost’ budget as steps in the digital marketing roadmap helps your client to have a clear path on their digital growth.
Embracing the multi-experience
Remember how we talked about omnichannel strategies earlier? And that a dxp like Kentico Xperience 13 was the answer of all of these challenges? How many of you have actually launched true omnichannel experiences for their clients using a dxp? Its pretty hard because your site content is stored in the content tree, your email content is stored in the email app and so on.
With the introduction of the Content hub however, true multi-experience is now an actual option for every client. With the content stripped from its visual presentation, it can now be used in any form in any channel. Imagine the possibilities for your clients. Instead of selling the omnichannel strategy dream to never fulfil it, you are now able to actually help your clients move forward. This however requires that you obtain a firm grip on your clients business and their marketing processes. Without the proper guidance from you as a partner, it will turn into a hot mess. But, if you are able to guide your client with the architecture and strategy for the Content hub, and support their content editors in adopting to this new mindset together with your client then eternal gratitude awaits you, I am sure.
Kentico produces a lot of great content to help you acquire the knowledge you need to help your clients.
Personalization across all of your channels is another big thing. Everybody wants to personalize content. Loads of businesses have it at their disposal but don’t leverage it yet. Helping your clients to identify buyer personas or target audiences across all of their channels, and personalizing content for these segments is a great step forward. Remember the maturity model? Start small. Like start identifying if visitors are subscribed to a newsletter. If so, replace the newsletter widget for something else. Is it a returning visitor that visited specific pages before? Change the header image to tap into that previous visit. Then start inserting personalization updates into their digital marketing roadmap.
If we take another look at the current roadmap, there’s two choices. One of them is to get disappointed that Xperience by Kentico is not as mature as what your clients are asking for. The other one is to look at this chart as your landmarks for your own digital growth. If Kentico Xperience is a Town mid 2024, are you actually able to help your clients leverage the features to their full potential? Or at City 6 months later? If not, use the upcoming period to dive into the things you need to improve in order to grow your customers parallel to the increasing capabilities of Xperience by Kentico.
Need help to get your agency ready for Xperience by Kentico? Just send me a message!