20 Minute

Complimentary DAM Assessment

Andrew Lomas

Andrew Lomas

Andrew is co-founder and CEO of Creative Folks, a Sydney-based consultancy that has been enabling brands and marketers since 2001. He frequently presents and writes on the topics of Digital Asset Management, content workflow, and the Composable Enterprise.

As an expert in Digital Asset Management and content production workflows, he helps solve the content crisis of planning, management and distribution of content across all marketing and distribution channels.

Andrew has spent his career helping marketers and content creators solve problems using technology. He and the Creative Folks team work with creative agencies, publishing houses, and corporate marketing teams to optimise marketing and content operations through technology and process re-engineering.

Find me on:
By Andrew Lomas on Mar 27, 2024 04:17 PM

How modular content creates the building blocks of personalisation

Hubspot's latest State of Marketing report found that 73% of marketers acknowledge personalisation as important. Yet, only 35% believe they successfully deliver a truly personalised experience to their customers. 

Time-consuming, wasteful processes in creating and adjusting content have contributed to this gap and made it difficult for teams to personalise content at scale. If you see this problem within your organisation, you need a new approach to content creation. Modular content offers a solution to dynamically adjust and tailor content to meet customer preferences and behaviours. 

A modular approach to creating and managing content offers more than improved processes. That same Hubspot report found that 94% of marketers believe personalisation generates increased sales, and 96% see it leading to repeat business. So, personalisation is not only good for your internal team, but it also supports your bottom line.

By Andrew Lomas on Jan 31, 2024 09:28 AM

5 ways a headless CMS supports omnichannel delivery

You know that omnichannel delivery is a must-have to compete today. But can your marketing team keep up with these demands? A 2021 Forrester Study commissioned by Sitecore found that 73% of marketers use traditional web CMS for channel-specific content, with 43% creating content for just one channel.

A headless approach to content management reshapes how teams distribute digital content by decoupling content authoring and storage from the display and delivery platforms to offer the flexibility and scalability needed when distributing omnichannel content.

Separating content creation from the presentation layer provides much-needed flexibility and scalability for omnichannel distribution. A headless CMS enables today’s organisations to dynamically deliver content across websites, apps, e-commerce platforms, and other digital mediums supporting customer experiences.

It’s important to note that a headless CMS approach is not always the right solution for every business. I primarily see this benefiting businesses with complex websites, content and data feeds that require an alternative to the rigidity of traditional Web CMS platforms.

By Andrew Lomas on Nov 30, 2023 11:51 AM

What elements define omnichannel content management?

Thirty years ago, marketing content primarily existed on printed materials like magazines and billboards. Today, we see it just about everywhere in our daily lives. Ads on social media serve up relevant advertisements, storefronts flaunt the latest products, and our email inboxes receive a healthy flow of promotional material linked to offers and personalised suggestions of what we might like to consume that suit our interests and choices.

When you think about it, you expect consistent, engaging and personalised experiences across all these mediums, and so do your customers. But, curating and delivering content for each platform, tailored to each individual personal preference, is no easy undertaking. Too often, the management processes include copying and pasting information or making small changes to images and text to suit each channel. Hubspot’s State of Marketing report found that the average marketer spends 6 hours daily manually completing administrative or operational tasks similar to these.

To meet customer expectations and overcome time-wasting challenges, you need a new approach to content management. This is where an omnichannel content platform (OCP) comes into play. With it, teams can plan, curate, manage, localise, and distribute content across multiple channels from a centralised location. This is referred to as headless content delivery. What elements define this solution?

By Andrew Lomas on Jul 25, 2023 10:30 AM

Headless Content Delivery: A game changer for scaling personalised content

Today, we live in a multichannel world where there are more ways to share content online and offline. You have likely seen a campaign printed on the side of a bus that you later saw in the sidebar of a website, recognisable due to the consistency of the advertisements and messaging. Perhaps the ad even mentioned the name of your city.

For a team to achieve this level of consistency and personalisation, they need full visibility of all content over online and offline channels. Yet, these systems are often disconnected from the content operations mechanics and require manual coordination between the marketing team, third-party providers and digital content creators.

Headless content delivery is one solution to this persistent problem. So, how does it work? And why is it a game-changer for scaling personalised content?

By Andrew Lomas on May 26, 2023 09:00 AM

What role does content management play in business process transformation?

The business landscape feels like it’s constantly changing around us. We have more functional, specific platforms at our fingertips; integration and automation are necessary, and AI tools have saturated the market. All of this creates the expectation that a business should be able to do more with less without sacrificing the quality of operations. As such, many leaders have one or many business transformations high on their priority list.

If you're among these leaders, it's important to consider the role of content in achieving process transformation. Whilst your marketing teams must efficiently produce reusable content that can be personalised for different audiences and channels for customer experience, it's also important to realise that content supports staff experiences in various business processes. Across sales, customer service, product support and maintenance, your business needs content to effectively function and to continue delivering the experience that the marketing team started at the inspiration stage.

Content management tools can help achieve these objectives by reducing manual steps and sharing content across systems, which help reduce operational costs, and ensure consistent and fast delivery of information to all teams, making it an essential consideration for any organisation undertaking process transformation.

By Andrew Lomas on Mar 29, 2023 11:30 AM

From chaos to clarity: How to define your content production process

With digital channels becoming the key platform to reach your target audience, creating high-quality content for omnichannel content delivery is more important than ever. Yet, managing content across these channels is challenging, especially without transparency and a centralised, overarching view of all the content at that stage.

Many content teams struggle with disjointed and chaotic processes. Different teams and individuals might work in isolation, using various tools and methods and lacking clear roles, responsibilities, and communication channels — the result is duplicated efforts, inconsistent quality, misaligned messaging, and wasted resources.

What’s the solution to problems like these? You need a transparent and standardised approach to content creation, distribution, and measurement to streamline workflows, improve collaboration, enhance relevance, and ultimately drive better results for your business.

By Andrew Lomas on Feb 28, 2023 03:33 PM

Comparing PIM vs PCM: A closer look at the distinctions

Think for a moment about how you go about shopping online. You likely analyse product images and rely on descriptions to gain a clear understanding of the brand and product you might want to purchase. If you visit two e-commerce sites to compare prices, you might have noticed that occasionally the same branded product has different images on different e-commerce sites, and perhaps the product description is different too, or there is more information. One site might also contain more supporting content, such as ‘How to use guides’ or technical manuals, and others don’t.

By Andrew Lomas on Jan 30, 2023 03:12 PM

What are the benefits of Product Content Management for Manufacturing?

A recent Deloitte report listed ‘Investing in advanced technologies to help mitigate risk’ as a key priority for the US manufacturing industry. Though this insight came from the US market, case studies from WoodWing have also revealed that European manufacturers have focused on digitalisation in recent years. As such, this priority should also be a key focus for the APAC region's manufacturing sector.

By Andrew Lomas on Nov 09, 2022 02:00 PM

3 ways PCM supports the digital content supply chain

Whether a customer makes a purchase relies heavily on the product content. Images and descriptions without ample information can make people second guess their decision and may result in them not proceeding with the sale.

When shopping, we can often choose from different options for a particular product. A phone case might come in ten different colours, or a pair of shoes might have three designs; marketers must account for all this content and ensure its consistency. They also have the difficult job of not only ensuring consistency but enriching it to suit the channel or campaign.

The digital content supply chain is a process that connects product content across its lifecycle and eases distribution. It starts upstream with digital assets created by manufacturers and other primary content creators. These digital assets must then be sent downstream and stored in a repository for retailers and distribution partners. These companies can then enrich the content to suit each channel, overlay it with campaign-specific content, and publish it for consumers to view in print or digital media.

A Product Content Management (PCM) platform supports the digital content supply chain in the following ways:

By Andrew Lomas on Jun 15, 2022 10:16 AM

Omnichannel retail trends driving personalisation

Personalised content has become imperative for retail companies to compete and stay relevant to their customers. In response, I have seen two trends emerge: omnichannel content delivery and first-party customer data collection. What exactly do these encapsulate, why do they need to be considered collectively, and what do they mean for your retail business?

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