Your client center plays a huge role in customer relations and impacts sales closure. Hence, it goes without saying that your client center should offer your customers an extremely special and memorable experience. Unfortunately, many businesses undermine the success of their client center by relying on outdated content which reflects directly on their brand. Showcasing your latest marketing assets isn’t easy as it involves optimizing your content (which is usually produced for the web or print) for your client center’s various presentation methods, which can range from digital endpoints to large-scale media walls, flat screens, tablets, and much more. In this article, we’ll show you how to keep the content at your client center fresh and up-to-date so that you always display your company’s latest and strongest brand messages, customer success stories, or product features. Get Aligned with Your Internal Content Teams Whether it’s a marketing team, product team, your branding team, or even an outside agency that produces your content, getting aligned with your content teams is key to making sure your client center content is up-to-date. Get in touch with all the teams involved and make sure you get all their latest material hot off the press. Don’t rely on having to proactively check in with them and ask for new content; this needs to be an automated process with assets provided to you on a regular cadence. Once you get them involved, work with your vendor to make sure you clearly pass on specific details about deliverables to your content team. These specifications can be as simple as requesting different image resolutions to match your flat screens, but these small details help streamline the process. Pro tip: Once you’re in contact with all the teams involved, invite them to your client center for a tour. Showing them your uniquely sized media walls and displays helps them get an idea of how their content is being surfaced and ultimately drives up their motivation as they see just how impactful their content can be on these displays. Update Your Content Regularly Remember to keep your client center content fresh, always. You want to make sure you’re only displaying your latest and greatest material. You may have experienced client centers that haven’t rotated their content for several years. This can be due to a number of reasons; sometimes it can be hard to source content internally, while other times it can be a budget issue. Sometimes companies can just get too busy to stay on top of their content programs for the center. While this last reason is understandable, center staff should prioritize reviewing content on a regular basis. Doing so will help you figure out what content is expired, what needs updating, and what areas may need to change. Remember, some centers may host the same visitors on a regular basis. If this is the case for you, you need to be more diligent about updating your content regularly. You may be able to slip outdated content by less frequent visitors, but your regulars will soon take notice. Ultimately, you want your visitors to be excited to see what you have to offer each time they visit. Pro tip: During an ABPM (Association of Briefing Program Managers) workshop, we polled attendees on this topic and the general consensus was that client center content should be updated every 6-12 months. Some managers even suggested 3 months. Hence, make sure you do your best to review your content every 6 months, and start expiring content after a maximum of 12 months. Establish a Content Service A final tip for keeping your client center content fresh is to set up a content service with one of your vendors. Make sure to work with vendors who are familiar with you brand, your content distribution system, and details like digital endpoints, content sizes, formats and resolutions. These vendors may also be able to help you identify new content solutions and marketing campaigns as well as source assets for you. They’ll also be able to coordinate with your internal teams and help take some of the load off your shoulders. Working with a content vendor is often more efficient and cost-effective than coordinating an internal team. These vendors are usually heavily involved in the entire process, especially specific tasks like uploading, tagging and placing the new content into your system. Pro tip: Consider having your vendor present new content ideas every quarter. This process will help prompt your team to be thinking about fresh content and may help you build a backlog of future content ideas to work from. Step Up Your Content Game Today Remember, constantly updating your client center content is key to maximize your customer’s experience. It also helps you showcase your best marketing material and ultimately ensures your branding strategy is 100% up-to-date. While it’s easy to forget about the content on display at your center, make sure you force yourself to review this content at least every 6 months and discard outdated content every year. Finally, remember to leverage your vendor to help take some of the load off your shoulders and manage some of the process. After all, your client center is a key part of your business strategy, and so is the content it presents.
