Find a content strategy partner with no horse in the race

Schedule a workshop with cross-functional groups: The best workshop facilitators take time to understand your specific business objectives, aligned content mission, and where your organization sits along the content maturity life cycle. Conversation at the workshop should focus on executing the overarching content strategy and dissecting what the organization needs for a high-functioning publishing competency. 

Match the buyer's journey to the Stack: Wrapping the buyer's journey around the tech stack creates a more contextual view and allows the team to visualize requirements to deliver content strategically and ultimately to scale. It illustrates why it’s so important to first understand the journey (or multiple journeys) and what is required to distribute content experiences in a relevant way along the journey. It also helps to eliminate or turn off unnecessary functionality.

See if there are internal solutions: Optimizing what you own before adding more components or complexity increases performance and allows better resource allocation. One of the biggest problems cited by CMOs in the Forbes study was their desire to eliminate the redundancy and carrying cost of too many platforms.

When the bright shiny object makes sense: Once you know how to optimize the platforms you own, you can start strategically backfilling. Use your blueprint as a guide for reviewing new tools.