Less than half of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy, but as their enterprises begin to demand a return on investment from content marketing initiatives, that number should begin to rise.
The difficulties in measuring the ROI of content marketing, however, is that B2B content marketers use an average of 13 content marketing tactics (and rising). The question becomes: How do marketers put a combined value on social media, website articles, e-newsletters, blogs, in-person events, videos, case studies, whitepapers and more under a single "content" umbrella? Answering this question begins and ends with the content management system in use.
Today's pure-play content management systems (CMSs) - think WordPress, Drupal and Joomla! - are all terrific choices for websites who need to create and manage content. Future-proof CMSs, however, are those that make it easy to analyze the business value of content, take into account the myriad content types and networks available for distribution, provide a single view of a customer, produce data and help marketers act on that data and, of course, have personalization elements to speak to a consumer 1:1 - not to mention tie in a brand's ecommerce business. Check out 10 future-proof content management systems below that fit the bill. Then, check out, "Experts Speak: Tips for Switching Your Content Management System" to see how eight Internet professionals made the transition from one CMS to another with ease.
Originally built as a CMS, Sitecore has evolved to a Web experience platform that combines content management with email, analytics, marketing automation, ecommerce, optimization, cross-channel personalization and social media, so enterprises can manage the complete customer experience on a single-connected platform. This allows brands to quickly adapt to a user to provide relevant content to the user in the moment. What's more, Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction a customer or prospect has in any part of its system to create constantly "learning" profiles of each individual, from email marketing and social media to online shopping and content interaction - to, of course, increase conversion and brand loyalty.
As a content management system, website builder and ecommerce platform, LightCMS lowers the barrier to entry for selling physical and digital goods online, as well as producing and managing both content and Web design. In addition to website analytics, LightCMS provides retailers with hosting, security and SEO functionality.
As for looking to the future in their own organizations, retailers should know that while LightCMS is easy to use, it's powerful enough to scale and grow as a business's needs change. Additionally, LightCMS is owned by NetSuite, so it's positioned to meet the needs of its customers now and in the future.
With NetSuite's cloud-based software suite for ERP, CRM and ecommerce, brands can leverage NetSuite for practically everything - from ecommerce, point-of-sale, order management, marketing (and content), merchandising, inventory, financials and more.
At the content management level, retailers or manufacturers can design a professional-looking website and manage all of its content quickly and easily (without any programming skills). Also, where other CMSs fail, NetSuite flourishes with multi-lingual capabilities, product list management, the ability to create personalized content and pricing for each customer (display different items, pricing and content to different customers based on their price level, customer grouping or purchase history), powerful in-site search, online forms, built-in SEO tools, the ability to sell in multiple currencies from a single Web store, the automation of local sales tax for multiple regions and comprehensive Web analytics (like tying Web metrics with transaction data and specific customer activities) - all to provide a single view of the customer, to enhance the user experience.
A mainstay in the CMS industry, DNN is future-proofing its offerings with some impending updates (expected this November), which streamline content management (and distribution) and analytics. For starters, DNN's upcoming update empowers marketers to do more with their CMS, rather than relying on IT. In addition to many drag-and-drop elements (which eliminate the need for coding knowledge), DNN's updated solution provides website analytics to measure site performance and on-page analytics to measure content's performance. In-context analytics allows marketers to see analytics that are relevant to a particular page, without having to visit different dashboards.
For the unfamiliar, DNN's solutions are Evoq Content (its Web CMS) and Evoq Social (its online community solution).
Along with the ability to publish and manage content, HubSpot considers itself a "full-funnel" marketing platform...and it truly is. Using HubSpot, not only can brands give its customers a seamless experience from email to social to Web, but HubSpot also comes with Smart Content, a feature that enables marketers to personalize their content to different visitors.
HubSpot is a future-proof CMS for many reasons, but its website traffic reports is high on the list. HubSpot shows users how their customers first discovered them, what emails and social messages they've engaged with and what ultimately led them to purchase. How's that for putting a business value on content?
Where Drupal falls short, Acquia picks up, as it provides a Drupal-optimized platform (companies using Drupal shown in the graphic below) for digital marketers. Acquia is poised for current and future content marketing initiatives, as it gives brands the ability to optimize and personalize rich digital experiences across Web, mobile and social channels. More specifically, these cross-channel experiences can also be measured, as Acquia captures all the data points and interactions across channels to reflect the context of the customer (like where they are in their buying cycle) at all times.
Trusted by more than 15,000 brands, Sitefinity offers personalization, content targeting, persona profiling and segmentation that marketing teams can begin using immediately. Plus, its built-in ecommerce, email marketing, landing page management and cross-channel delivery tools make it a CMS that is future-worthy, as it gives brands flexibility and consumers fresh and relevant content along their customer journey.
It should come as no surprise that Adobe enables brands to create, manage and deliver personalized online experiences. After all, Adobe suite of Web and data analysis tools is certainly one of the most popular offerings on the market today, which can make its CMS all that much more the wiser. Adobe Experience Manager also gives brands a unified Web CMS for delivering digital content across every channel, including Web, mobile and social. What's more, it's intuitive workflow and advanced capabilities provides the ability to connect sites, boost audience engagement (like with social communities) and build customer loyalty (through personalized media).
Enterprises must manage a boatload of digital assets. Oracle Enterprise Content Management, makes storing, finding, accessing and modifying brand assets much quicker - while providing workflow, version control, security, archiving, subscriptions, content conversion collaboration and record disposition with Oracle WebCenter Content (which offers multi-site Web publishing integrated with an enterprise content management platform). The image shown shows Oracle's easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to browse folders and view files with Oracle WebCenter.
Offering many product editions (like Enterprise, Starter Pack, iSeries and z/OS), IBM's content management helps manage various types of digitized content across multiple platforms, databases and applications. Its content management "family" offers digital imaging, digital asset management, content analytics, Web content management and content integration capabilities. IBM Content Manager also hangs its hat on the ability to offer more productive collaboration, improved customer service and easier regulatory compliance.
More specifically, the Starter Pack provides embedded workflow features to simplify business processes and improve efficiency, in-house. While social content management makes it easier to create and manage high-value content.