Digital Platforms for Marketing

Marketing is, and has always been, a way to gather the attention of your intended audience and position a solution for their pain points. Of course, this is both an art and a science - requiring trial and error to get everything right and get quality leads into the door.

With the onset of digital marketing, consumers are continuously bombarded with various images, videos, and information. This causes "banner blindness," which makes them gloss over anything that doesn't immediately grab their attention.

The question becomes, "How can I get quality leads during those few seconds of attention?"

Digital experiences rapidly become one of the most important motivating factors for the buyer's journey. People may not always remember what they saw, but they will remember how it made them feel.

This post will cover the digital experience from end to end, including the best Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) and DXP technologies and how they differ from other solutions, such as content management systems (CMS).

What Are Digital Experience Platforms?

Digital experience platforms are software solutions representing a technological marvel in moving the needle forward in creating and tailoring "digital experiences." This is useful for potential and existing customers and your staff, channel partners, and vendors.

The best DXP platforms have various tools and features to help you build and store effective ways of reaching your customers. DXPs like Lumavate are highly user-friendly, making constructing front-end designs for digital experiences much easier without technical knowledge, deep coding environments, or complicated programming topology.

Integrating a proper digital experience platform into your organization has the added benefit of managing and seamlessly streamlining the creation, repurposing, and administration of many different content types, including text, videos, images, and crucial documents that can help make data-driven decisions.

Some DXPs integrate with content management systems to be more effective, and others, such as Lumavate, include full-fledged Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Product Information Management (PIM) tools.

What Are Examples of Digital Experience?

The digital experience and the essence and soul behind it are often driven and wholly owned by the marketing team. Digital experiences are tools that help convey the messaging in your organization, break it down into a meaningful way that can be fully understood by the prospect, and move them down the "funnel" of the buyer's journey in an effective and informed way.

Customers are always searching for a way to reduce their pain points, even if they don't know they are doing so. A customer will navigate the buyer's journey if you help them. For example, an expected benefit of a digital experience is the ability to create stunning digital catalogs that complement and transcend more traditional product catalogs.

This is especially important for a manufacturing company that wants to display its products in a way that sets it apart from its competitors through competitive DXP technologies.

The digital experience does not always have to stay only online, as it can help improve physical offerings in a brick-and-mortar setting. For example, a great digital experience in a store aisle can differentiate products, allowing them to make a quicker (and better) choice. Suppose they have already seen the product mentioned in other digital experiences, such as microsites, interactive web elements, and other online services. In that case, the customer is more likely to select your product from the crowd.

In short, digital experiences are part of a comprehensive marketing strategy designed to help the team make better decisions based on customer preferences and behaviors.

What Is a Digital Experience Company?

A digital experience company, sometimes called a digital platform company, is a third-party solution that builds a helpful tool set within its platforms and offerings to help your marketing team enhance its digital experience solutions. A digital experience company provides the product and ongoing support with its platform so that your teams can focus on what they do best.

The DXP company will provide the technical resources necessary to educate teams, such as marketing and sales, to create customer touchpoints and follow-ups via spectacular digital experiences without knowing programming languages or a complicated coding structure.

What Is the Purpose of a DXP?

The digital experience platform is the primary offering of DXP companies, but it can be integrated with other solutions to take full advantage of their features. For instance, the primary purpose of a digital experience platform is to provide a way to create beautiful and meaningful digital experiences by facilitating a better way to combine all the resources you have available.

This usually means the marketing team must create or use already-made assets to take full advantage of a DXP.

Some companies will elect to do this through a content management system, which we will explore in detail further in this guide. Lumavate employs a fully integrated DAM, which helps create and store creative assets in a centralized place to be used and repurposed further.

The DAM will synchronize with the DXP to deliver these assets to where they need most: microsites, interactive web design, app environments, well-converting landing pages, and digital catalogs - all great digital experience examples that leverage creative assets.

The DXP also fully uses a Customer Data Platform (CDP), PIM, and e-commerce capabilities, which helps the marketing team collect valuable customer data for specific use cases, educate them thoroughly, and deliver products, solutions, services, and information via the proper distribution channels.

DXP Functionality: Key Benefits

Digital experiences don't have a precise definition, as they are both an art and a science. Perhaps you have already identified exactly what makes your customers tick - and need the proper toolset to enable your team to use this data.

The opposite is also true. You can use a DXP before having the answer ready to go, as the creative process begins and ends with analyzing, hypothesizing, and testing out different points in your marketing campaigns.

Regardless of where your brand is on its journey, DXPs have many functionalities that aim to make life just that much easier. One of the hallmark designs of a DXP is providing a proper space for business users to refine and construct digital experiences using the appropriate assets, channels, and brand-approved materials that your organization has aligned with.

DXPs have a robust analytics tool that offers built-in integrations to monitor digital experiences once deployed and monitor trends. As part of an effective process, the job doesn't end once a digital experience is created. Reviewing feedback, refining features, and implementing fundamental changes will optimize outcomes and make them more engaging.

Lumavate integrates personalization features into the platform to tailor digital experiences dynamically. For example, integrating with a DAM tool allows a quick pivot into a marketing campaign by ensuring that only the latest version of an asset is used, and this is then synchronized directly to where it needs to go- digital catalog, website, or product sheet.

What Is the Role of a Digital Experience Manager?

At the heart of a digital experience team is the digital experience manager, who manages the comprehensive process and ensures the success of all digital experiences created and managed by the organization.

While this team may not feel necessary initially, the best digital experience platform companies in USA have digital experience managers as the ultimate delegate for this role. While brands could forego this and assign the responsibility to a third party, this may not always work. Third-party solutions can provide the toolset and specific brand portals, but a liaison must be appointed to ensure its success and champion the process.

The digital experience manager spearheads the creation, management, and ultimate delivery of all digital experiences within the company by acting as the connection between all departments. The digital experience manager and their team are not only responsible for creating the assets and channels associated with the digital experience. Still, they must know when to bring on subject-matter experts to fill in the gaps and gain a competitive edge.

For example, a digital experience manager will know when to speak to the manufacturing and design departments to gain critical insights on what to share with their audience. A successful digital experience manager will create a healthy project plan and employ strong leadership to make them successful in their daily role.

The Role of a Digital Experience Team

The digital experience team, sometimes called the digital team or the "web" team, is the central focal point in managing all digital experiences. This can be a subsection of the marketing team assigned specialized responsibilities for smaller organizations. This may be an entire task force created for all larger organizations' digital channels.

The top digital experience platform companies in USA will provide the team with everything they need to succeed. Still, their hard work, innovation, ingenuity, and personal touch will make current and future projects successful. The digital experience team will own the DXP platform and must work closely with channel partners, vendors, and third-party solutions to guarantee the going concern of the experience.

The digital team is more than just mere custodians of the DXP solution. Digital experience teams will manage other tools necessary for success, such as social media management, email templates, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and all analytics and reporting tools that facilitate better success.

The digital experience manager and their team will ensure a strong brand presence and continuity while creating dynamic interactions that resonate with customers at every step in the buyer's journey.

DXP vs CMS

The creatives that your brand purchases or creates, such as videos, high-quality pictures, audio files, logos, and other brand-approved content, need to be stored somewhere. A CMS plays a significant role in the digital sphere, mainly as a cache to properly store and retrieve these assets. A CMS cannot build holistic digital experiences.

Characteristics of a CMS include:

A strong focus on creative and digital assets and their associated elements, providing organizations with the building blocks they need for content management.
A back end for facilitating content management, with the flexibility to customize a "head" (front-end)
The ability for highly-specialized firms to create and implement their coding structure - however technically charged the topology may be.

A DXP is a comprehensive solution that helps to create and integrate digital experiences and make them a seamless addition to your team's daily operations while being part of a larger marketing strategy that enables higher rates of conversion and personalization.

Key attributes of a DXP include:

A powerful front-end builder that helps shape how users can design digital experiences with minimal struggles.
The ability to create and store impactful digital experiences and upload them to landing pages, websites, and extensive product guides.
Depending on the provider, allow-code and no-code environments eliminate the need for highly specialized resources that reduce the red tape around having campaigns approved or built out.
Lumavate combines and transcends the need for a CMS through its built-in DAM.

What Are Examples of a Digital Experience Platform?

Digital experience platform examples are plentiful on the market and have a global reach. Some of the best digital experience platforms in the United States have dedicated development teams that allow them to grow and prosper in a highly competitive market. With so many solutions, selecting one during your due diligence checks can be difficult.

To make your search easier, here is a highly curated list of digital experience platform companies in USA and their main features:

Adobe Experience Platform

Front-End Design and Integration: Adobe Experience Platform provides a robust front-end design interface, allowing users to shape digital experiences as they see fit. Integration is limited to the Adobe suite.
Great Analytic Tools: As part of their Adobe suite, a powerful analytics tool provides the feedback necessary to make better decisions.
Long Implementation Times: Adobe Experience Platform excels in delivering personalized experiences but often requires the help of an external consultant or account manager to optimize the process thoroughly.

Sitecore

Multichannel Management: Sitecore excels at offering its solutions on multiple channels, which provides a strong distribution network.
Robust Content Management: Sitecore integrates with its own CMS to provide a practical management toolkit with its DXP solutions.

Liferay

Open-Source Flexibility: Liferay stands out as an open-source DXP, offering the flexibility to customize the solution thoroughly with other open-source software.
Community Support: The Liferay community provides ongoing support and resources, giving it a healthy amount of user collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
Non-Technical Contribution: The community is not limited to experts, and non-technical users may provide feedback that unintentionally misguides or misleads new users and readers.

Acquia

Cloud-Based Deployment: Acquia offers cloud-based deployment options, which allow small to medium-sized businesses to scale at an unparalleled speed.
Integrated Marketing Tools: With integrated marketing tools, Acquia DXP executes effective marketing campaigns along with the digital experiences it creates.

Lumavate

Fast Implementation: Lumavate stands out for its remarkable speed of implementation, often allowing businesses to set up and deploy the platform within a single day.
Expansive Functionality: Offering a comprehensive suite, Lumavate combines DXP, DAM, PIM, form builder, text messaging, and over 40 integrations, which ensure businesses have all-encompassing digital capabilities when they need them most.
Cost-Effectiveness: Lumavate prides itself on transparent pricing, 75 percent more cost-effective than competitors, making robust digital experiences accessible without breaking the bank.
No Technical Resources Required: With a fully no-code environment, Lumavate democratizes the digital experience for everyone, eliminating the need for technical expertise in implementing and maintaining creative assets and experience.
Purpose-Built for Manufacturing: Tailored to the needs of manufacturing companies, Lumavate's platform centralizes product data, manages digital assets, and executes solutions with you in mind.

Digital Experience Platform Gartner Magic Quadrant

Before you look at pertinent features and standout benefits from a DXP, Gartner's Magic Quadrant can help visualize your ideas before identifying your needs with critical questions.

The Magic Quadrant is a research methodology that provides a graphical representation of the direction of your competitive market, the players vying for market share, and the overall maturity of the industry in which you find yourself.

This is further broken down into four quadrants: visionaries, leaders, challengers, and niche players. First, you must categorize yourself in one or more of these quadrants and identify the key players. For example, suppose you serve a niche segment within your market. In that case, you may have many different requirements than a market leader and still different requirements from a new market entrant, providing a fresh, innovative vision as a visionary.

Who Has the Best Digital Experience?

As your search begins, the list of digital platforms is a great starting point, but the information will not help you choose if you and your team have not identified the most pressing pain points and the solution you are searching for.

A common need is for agile development, allowing your business to build and improve on iterations of digital experiences swiftly. Lumavate offers a unique no-code environment, which lets your marketing team focus on creativity and less on liaising with technical resources to construct the necessary tools.

Integrating with a DXP should be seamless, especially for your tech stack - which is vital for streamlined operations. Built-in integrations are an essential question to ask yourself when looking for a DXP, and think about "What key software do we need to integrate our DXP with?"

Perhaps the most critical question to brainstorm with your team is about an industry-specific DXP that can do it all. Lumavate is explicitly designed for product-focused companies like manufacturing and healthcare to align with your desired needs.

Lumavate: Your Comprehensive DXP Partner

Much thought and effort goes into digital experiences, but making them accessible to all potential customers and customizing them along the way makes them an extremely personal and relevant experience. Digital experiences help you to identify all aspects of Gartner's Magic Quadrant and help you select the experiences that allow you to stand out as a leader, visionary, niche player, and industry challenger.

Lumavate is your all-in-one solution that combines all aspects of DXP, PIM, and DAM in its Product Experience Management (PXM) platform. Having a centralized source of truth in your organization helps your workforce align their goals and interests more effectively and meaningfully.

Lumavate gives your marketing team the support they need to create beautiful digital experiences and synchronize them with your organization's creative assets and information. With bi-weekly platform updates and a growing list of integrations, Lumavate takes pride in its ability to help you get things done.

Demo Lumavate free today to take your first step in making the digital experience more efficient for your staff, customers, and decision-makers.

Lumavate gives you the toolset to do more while redistributing your resources where they are needed most.