How to accelerate speed to market and increase content velocity

Moving fast is no longer a nice-to-have — it's a necessity. In this rapidly changing environment, companies that embrace new technology are pulling ahead fast. McKinsey & Company found that the spread in digital and AI maturity between leaders and laggards increased by 60% between 2019 and 2022. Developing a speed-to-market strategy is critical for marketing leaders who want to stay relevant and beat the competition.

Speed to market is about content velocity

Speed to market is the time it takes for a brand to launch new content, products, or campaigns. Because content is the core of every customer experience, speed to market means getting content out as quickly as possible. More content velocity shows that you're relevant and exciting as a brand. It fuels personalized experiences that show you understand your customers and their world and are responding in real time.

Marketing teams are struggling to balance a fast speed with quality content

Speed used to be a function of how quickly marketing teams could create and publish content. Now, the challenge is managing the sheer volume of content needed for multiple channels, different regions, personalization, and optimization. 

Generating exponentially more content introduces new challenges. Too much content, too fast — without management — equals chaos in the form of:

• Inconsistencies across channels. 

• Superficial personalization.

• Inaccurately personalized experiences. 

• Redundant experiences.

• Publishing too late to be relevant.

Successful companies are streamlining processes to improve time to market without hurting customer satisfaction.

Siloed content slows teams down

Content management has historically been very siloed. Many companies are still creating, storing, and managing content in different repositories across the organization. Manually reformatting, copying and pasting, figuring out where content is used and if it needs to be updated, and passing files around for translation all slow teams down.

It’s not only content that suffers from a siloed approach. We see this lack of efficient workflows within individual teams and across organizations. I spoke with one company where the web, ecommerce, shop, and marketing teams were all separate from each other and from the team that manages digital screens in physical locations. How are they supposed to collaborate efficiently on the multichannel experiences customers expect?

Breaking down silos helps teams gain speed

Centralizing content and connecting siloed teams increases speed by improving three key factors:

Collaboration: How well your teams work together directly impacts your speed. When information flows smoothly and everyone's on the same page, you get work done with fewer meetings, misunderstandings, and mistakes.

Autonomy: The more autonomous your teams can be, the faster you can move. Imagine if, instead of running every change through layers of approval, you could write, press a button, and it's done. That kind of autonomy cuts down turnaround time from weeks to an afternoon.

Using new technologies: New technologies are a game-changer for speed to market, drastically improving efficiency and reducing costs. 

See how TELUS Digital unified content operations and beat the competition

TELUS Digital faced challenges with content silos, managing over 30 digital properties across seven different CMS platforms. By consolidating their content operations into a single hub with Contentful, TELUS enabled seamless collaboration across the business. Engineers developed structured content models for easy reuse, allowing marketing teams to launch campaigns across multiple channels faster. With a faster go-to-market time, they were able to offer the iPhone X within 15 minutes of its release, beating the competition. Read the story.

This speed-to-market strategy focuses on three steps: embrace the power of structured content, remove bottlenecks, and use technology that empowers teams.

Embrace the power of structured content

I frequently talk to customers about moving out of Google Docs and email and building content in one place that facilitates collaboration. When everything is centralized, creating efficient workflows that bring in the right teams at the right time is easier — without the back-and-forth of comments, approvals, and manual copying.

A structured content model gives you a single source of truth, so updates don’t get lost across brands or platforms, and teams aren’t duplicating efforts. By tagging and connecting content in a meaningful way, you make it easier to manage, scale, and move faster. With Contentful, you can use APIs to connect the different tools you need and structure content and workflows across your entire tech ecosystem.

Remove bottlenecks and increase autonomy

Once you embrace structured content, it becomes easier to maintain it and build good content governance and management processes across your teams. Workflows and governance are like guardrails that help reduce errors and keep everyone focused on what they do best. With good governance, you can give marketers more autonomy and break common bottlenecks, like needing developers for every little change. 

See how Contentful Studio removes bottlenecks and empowers marketers to produce more engaging experiences autonomously and at speed.

Support teams with future-ready technology

The beauty of structured content is that it can be used with any platform or new technology. This means teams can experiment with new tools they want to use now, build on existing workflows to reach customers on different channels or in new markets, and react to market changes faster. 

With an extensible platform, App Framework, and App Marketplace, Contentful allows you to connect the best tools and latest technology, including AI features so that you can jump ahead of the competition.

Speed to market isn’t just about going faster; it’s about doing more

A good speed-to-market strategy offers many immediate and long-term benefits. When I talk with customers, we often focus on beating the competition and delivering content, experiences, and products faster. Those are exciting and promise a good return on investment, but that’s just the beginning. 

When marketing teams improve speed to market by working smarter, they get time back. Think about that. What would you do if you had hours, days, or weeks of time back? What else would you be doing if you weren't copying and pasting content and fighting with outdated technology? 

When I ask this question, most customers have a long list of high-value initiatives on their wish list. I bet you do too, and I’d love to help you achieve them.

Schedule some time to chat with our team. Tell us what’s slowing you down, and let us show you how Contentful can help you move faster and do more.

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