adobeAccording to Elliot Sedegah’s post on Adobe’s Digital Marketing blog, 43% of consumers ignore companies that deliver irrelevant content, which is scary considering the prediction that more than a third of companies will cease to exist when failing to meet changing customer needs in the next decade.

To no surprise, companies try to adapt to the new requirements of creating highly engaging and relevant content. In fact, Elliot Sedegah predicts that by 2017 more than half of all companies will have an appointed executive — like a chief content officer or VP of content — whose work is dedicated solely to the brand’s content marketing strategy, since creating a great “culture of content’ will become the determinant for success.

To support companies in their endeavor, Adobe’s expert came up with a handful of useful tips, suggesting:

1. Make customer experience a core part of company culture: Infect the entire company with a “customer-obsessed” attitude. Collect and analyze data to obtain leadership buy-in and make it a strategic imperative. Company transformation takes time, so it’s normal to expect at least a five-year commitment to the process. To make the journey more sustainable, plan and think of the overall long-term strategy and celebrate the smallest wins.

2. Sharpen content strategies: Define a content marketing strategy to better understand the content’s direction, actionable steps, and how to measure success. The strategy should include audience personas, tactics to develop the brand story, and content placement plans. Create a master document that justifies the budget to help meet target audience needs and add organizational value.

3. Place customer preference front and center: Customers want businesses to deliver relevant, meaningful content whenever and however they want it. In response, companies can start gathering all customer data under one umbrella, across devices and channels, to create a single view of customers. Then, monitor their behaviors and offer personalized messages to customer segments.

4. Track customers closely: Companies can test and troubleshoot to deliver highly relevant content exactly when the customer needs it. They can streamline customer experiences by enabling teams to create, test, publish, and analyze content without having to rely on other business units.

5. Encourage cross-functional collaboration: For maximum customer experience, the entire company must efficiently exchange information and share insights to create a complete strategy. Knock down organizational silos by providing a real-time environment for coordinating project schedules and details. Give teams access to a shared dashboard with metrics and goals and ensure everyone knows which part of the journey they are accountable for.

6. Deliver content at lightning speed: Create powerful content by developing a process that’s agile, ensuring brand consistency across channels and leaning on data to deliver relevance at scale. Processes and systems should allow creative teams to produce high volumes of assets quickly and empower marketers to publish and update without having to wait for approvals.

7. Align business goals with customer experiences: Identify areas that are most relevant to teams and develop appropriate metrics for employees to work toward. Then, use refined reporting to allow teams to see what’s working and what’s not at every customer touchpoint to optimize for best results.

8. Make meeting customer needs fun: A happy workforce leads to higher profits, increased productivity, and greater customer experiences. Find innovative ways to show employees that what they do contributes to the overall goals of the company. Encourage customer-centric behaviors by empowering employees with whatever they need to improve the customer experience and arm them with essential training and tools.

For more information on creating a "Culture of Content", please read Adobe’s blog post.