Value Creation Strategies and Content Intelligence: Measuring Is Possible

Nowadays, faced with the quantity of investments that companies are making in content and user interaction strategies, it is becoming increasingly urgent to find effective monitoring and measurement tools. Content is an extraordinary way of developing a lasting relationship with people, but if it is not measurable, we are unable to understand the actual impact that it has on business objectives and know how much it contributes to the customer experience. On the contrary, being able to identify which texts, photos and videos are the most relevant for a certain target allows related investments to be optimized and customer satisfaction to be guaranteed. 

This is what was spoken about at the event organized by the Content Intelligence Network and AKQA, in a context that sees brands in difficulty when it comes to implementing activities to measure the ROI of marketing activities. 

Umberto Basso, Managing Director of AKQA Italy, opens the meeting by explaining that the CX is made even more complex by the proliferation of channels, means and methods with which the user relates to a brand. Therefore, companies can no longer do without artificial intelligence as valid support in designing constantly improving customer experiences. However, to enable these algorithms to be a real ace up marketers’ sleeves, it is essential to manage and train them: indeed, if left to act independently, they risk making mistakes and, therefore, ruining the perception that people have of the brand. 

It is precisely AI, placed at content’s service, that helps brands to develop increasingly close and long-lasting relationships with customers. Ryan Skinner from Forrester Research, special guest at the event, confirms this and introduces Content Intelligence as a useful tool to: 

• understand what users are like;
• improve experiences;
• measure content marketing.

In short, not just content, but also analyses and metrics. Understanding what works and what doesn’t, although not required, is, at the very least, a great advantage. This is what Angela Barison, Head of Strategy at AKQA Italy, talks about. Indeed, if perceived as relevant, content is a very strong driver for loyalty and conversions. How, therefore, do we create content that allows us to win over the customer’s trust and loyalty, while ensuring conversions at the same time?

By extending the brand experience to go beyond the offer of a single product or service and reaching the user with useful collateral materials, before they even decide to come to us. This is why measurement tools become fundamental to allow the brand to invest in something that exceeds its target’s expectations. To this end, Giuseppe Folonari, Head of Business Strategy at AKQA Italy, showed us the (Brand Experience Assessment) model structured by AKQA in collaboration with Milan’s Bocconi University. It helps companies to identify the areas of excellence with regard to the CX that we want to be sharing with the target and those on which we should be working.

Antonio Guarino, Head of Data Science and Consumer Insights at AKQA Italy, closes the event with a case study: through the use of a CI software, he shows that knowing your customer and their interests is the basis on which a brand can build its communication activities. Indeed, thanks to tracking by AI of the interactions effectively performed by users with content created by the brand, he showed us the kind of extraordinary data that can be obtained, in order to improve the content and contact strategy, as well as investment choices.

Measuring the ROI of marketing activities, also with the support of AI, enables the brand to succeed in personalizing the customer experience in a scalable way and at a low cost, strengthening the customer’s trust and loyalty, and having a direct impact on business performance.

Below, you can watch the showreel of the event, with unpublished interviews with speakers and participants. Over the next few days, we will publish the reports of the speeches and the most salient excerpts from Question Time.