What is a content marketing platform, and should you use one to propel your marketing efforts? We’ll get into the nuances of great content and the benefits of joining a content marketing platform. But first, there’s a fundamental question to consider.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing means getting your message to your target audience. The use of media has always been essential. But the current state of the digital age broadens the scope of factors and possibilities. Blogs, social media, email, and search engines can be a bottomless pit. So naturally, you don’t want to reach just anyone on the internet. You want to make sure your message reaches the right people. Your content needs to be topic-specific and provide added value for users through entertainment, information, or knowledge.
Why do we use content marketing?
Because it works! Content marketing provides a meaningful way for customers to engage with your brand positively. If you publish quality, relevant content, you serve people who want to learn more about your brand and work. As a result, the content analytics you track will improve. You’ll see more leads, followers, views, conversions, and more.
Content marketing is no secret in the industry. According to the Content Marketing Institute, over 91% of B2B companies use content marketing. An additional 54% of the 9% who aren’t using content marketing plan to implement content marketing in the future. From these statistics alone, it’s clear that content platforms are essential tools for brand management and strengthening an online presence.
What is a content marketing platform?
A content marketing platform (CMP) is a software solution that helps businesses and marketers streamline their content marketing processes. Ultimately, it aims to help clients drive awareness, leads, and revenue from their content to their brand.
Many software tools fall under the umbrella of “content marketing platforms.” Any utility or website that helps content marketers create, organize, optimize, and distribute content can be a content marketing platform. If an app or website enables you to brainstorm content ideas, implement a content strategy, or even monitor how your content performs, it’s a content marketing platform.
CMPs can provide functions ranging from keyword and topic ideation to content creation, social media management, and everything in between. Some marketing platforms offer marketing automation across various channels to streamline your workflow. Others support your efforts to devise a solid SEO strategy as a part of a larger content marketing strategy. Content marketers often use several platforms as part of their digital strategy since many offer complementary functionality.
Some tasks a good content platform can help with are:
- Identifying areas of high relevance for your target audience.
- Planning content through editorial calendars and a consistent content strategy.
- Providing a cohesive approach that brings together different aspects of an organization, including workflow management.
- Producing and sourcing content that’s already created or curated.
- Composing your own relevant and valuable content.
- Monitoring the performance of the content.
- Integrating digital marketing efforts, including email marketing campaigns, social media, and other marketing channels.
- Increasing web traffic through effective planning.
- Ensuring search engine optimization (SEO) and organized content distribution.
- Automating digital marketing project management.
- Facilitating quality lead generation.
- Optimizing conversions.
5 questions to ask before adopting a content marketing platform
Now that you have an overview of CMPs, it’s up to you to decide. Which ones will benefit your marketing efforts and help you achieve your goals? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to content marketing software. Social platforms might be crucial for a B2C company that handles lots of social media marketing, for example. However, the same top marketing platforms might not provide strong ROI for a B2B business targeting a specific niche.
Before you invest in a marketing platform for your content, here are a few questions to ask.
1. Who (and where) is my target audience?
Be as specific as possible. Consider standard attributes such as age, gender, income, and location. You also want to consider where your target audience shops and what they do in their free time. Do they spend more time online, on their phones, or on their desktop? The more specific you make your target audience, the more precisely you can target them with your content marketing platform.
Let’s say you’re a B2C company selling shoes to Gen-Z. You’ll probably want to look into marketing platforms that can boost your social media performance on platforms like Instagram. You’ll need a different approach if you’re a B2B company with a focused niche like industrial safety ladders. Creating high-fidelity evergreen articles might be much more integral to your strategy. Regardless of your target audience, the right CMP can help you create content they’ll want to engage with.
2. What are my goals?
How will your product help your consumer? Is your goal to generate more sales? Create more brand awareness? Establish yourself as a leader in your field? Make sure your goals are measurable by setting benchmarks. How will you know if you have met your goals? For example, are you trying to increase website traffic by 25%? Increase sales by 10%?
3. What is my budget?
It’s not the most glamorous question. But if you’re a small startup with limited resources, some content marketing platforms might be cost-prohibitive. At the same time, you get what you pay for when it comes to quality content. So you could get a better ROI from a more expensive, quality platform than a less expensive one. This concept is especially true when it comes to paying for ads on social media platforms or Google ads. You will see better engagement, more impressions, and stronger conversions from quality content that does well organically. But you can incorporate both paid and organic search in your marketing strategy.
4. What tools do I need to reach my audience?
Do you need engaging social content across multiple channels? Then invest in content platforms that will empower you to produce quality graphics. Additionally, find marketers who can ensure you’re using the right message across the proper channels. You probably would need scheduling functionality with a calendar planning tool to efficiently plan all your social media posts.
Do you need to improve engagement within your email marketing campaigns? The right tools will let you send quality emails and monitor their performance. Invest in a content performance platform if you need evergreen content that will result in high search engine results.
If you’re venturing into new territory with your marketing efforts, it’s crucial to ensure you’re using the right tools. If you need a content platform to help increase your visibility and improve your editorial content, contact the expert team at rellify. They can help you use the right tools and strategies to see measurable results from your content marketing efforts.
5. What are my company’s market challenges?
Not all CMPs are created equal. Your business or brand will likely need a content marketing solution that caters to your unique needs. To make the right decision, you must understand what CMPs can do. If a CMP is what your business needs, identify your specific needs. Then research which CMP will work best for you.
Here are examples of marketing challenges you may be facing:
- Producing and sourcing content that’s already created or curated.
- Composing your own relevant and valuable content.
- Quality lead generation.
- Optimizing conversions.
- Organizing your digital asset management or auditing.
- Distributing your marketing assets.
- Measuring analytics.
Which content marketing tool should I choose?
You’ve taken an in-depth look at your challenges and answered some crucial questions. Now you’re ready to check out some of the best content marketing software and services. These can help you produce, organize, optimize, and streamline your marketing workflow across various platforms. Here’s a comprehensive (but not exhaustive) list of content marketing platforms and tools that may best address your marketing challenges.
What is the best content performance platform?
rellify
One of the most valuable services you can use is rellify. rellify is an AI-powered service that helps create optimized content written by real people. Machine learning is the foundation of its algorithm, so it naturally ranks well in search engines. But you want your content to be catered to the person most likely to benefit from it. rellify ensures precisely that.
Search marketing is the backbone of relevance in the digital world. rellify makes sure to optimize content that ranks naturally without paid promotion. rellify also helps organizations to establish a sustainable content performance strategy to support corporate goals. Besides the advanced tools it uses, rellify stands out because it is a full-service performance platform. This not only helps you develop valuable content, but it also monitors its performance with composable architecture.
The content performance functionality developed by rellify can boost your effectiveness and efficiency. Not only that, it can improve your Google ranking and enhance your overall marketing performance. Their intuitive platform uses AI-powered technology to drive an end-to-end digital marketing service. rellify does this with a six-pronged approach:
- Explores topics that will be highly relevant to your target audience.
- Plans a content strategy.
- Bundles all relevant information from your topic discovery for your editorial team.
- Creates content honed by our Augmented Intelligence SEO tools.
- Sends reviewed and approved articles directly to your CMS or exports them as HTML.
- Measures the success of your content based on pages and topics and compares it with your competition.
What is it best for? Producing and monitoring content that has been optimized using machine learning.
Best CMPs for finding collaborators
ClearVoice
ClearVoice is a content marketing agency and platform. It allows you to search for freelancers, editors, journalists, influencers, and bloggers within your budget. With ClearVoice, you can request and receive pitch ideas for articles from freelancers. Freelancers submit their level of experience and qualifications. Then, the site recommends them to marketers according to their needs. ClearVoice is a perfect fit for online media companies but is also used in sales and marketing.
What is it best for? Producing and sourcing content from freelancers.
Best CMPs for scheduling and organizing on a team
CoSchedule
If you love a good calendar, this is the platform for you. It’s more of an editorial calendar and social media marketing tool. With CoSchedule, you can create a calendar that helps you see, schedule, and share your marketing across social networks. You can also create a marketing suite to coordinate your team, projects, and process.
What is it best for? Planning, organizing, and executing all things content marketing.
Wrike
Are you looking for a platform that you can easily customize to your team’s needs and workflow? Wrike’s extensive features maximize performance, expedite growth, and improve customer experience. With Wrike, you can fine-tune your team’s exact needs. You can also collaborate and get all-around visibility on effort and outcomes.
What is it best for? Team project collaboration and management.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing tool as well as a content marketing platform. It can help you with sales and customer relationship management. HubSpot can also assist marketers in creating quality content, targeting customers, and managing contact lists efficiently. Its full-funnel marketing system helps marketers build, administer, and distribute emails with marketing tools and applications.
What is it best for? Customer relationship management and distributing marketing automation via email, especially for small businesses.
Best content marketing platform for influencer marketing
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a cloud-based platform for discovering engagement, content, and outreach opportunities across social media and search engines. With BuzzSumo, you can generate ideas, create high-performing content, and monitor your performance. Most importantly, you can identify influencers who will help promote your content more effectively. You can also identify topics and questions your audience is asking about solutions like yours.
What is it best for? Distributing influencer marketing.
Best CMPs for sourcing and creating content
Contently
Contently combines strategies, technology, and talent on one platform. With Contently, you can document your current goals and audience personas. You can also track your most important SEO keywords and stay ahead with its content intelligence tool.
What is it best for? Producing and sourcing content from freelancers.
Canva
One of the challenges for content marketers is producing professional-looking images quickly and efficiently. That’s where Canva comes in. This easy-to-use platform is perfect for small businesses looking to step up their content marketing game. With millions of stock images and thousands of templates to choose from, you won’t need any other content creation program. If you have a marketing team of creatives, Canva makes it easy for them to collaborate.
What is it best for? Producing and composing graphics.
Uberflip
Uberflip allows marketers to scale how they incorporate content every step of the way. And you can make sure customers get the right content at the right time. Centralize, organize, and distribute your content, and get ready to generate results. It’s built for marketers, not web developers. Marketers can self-publish campaign destinations in minutes.
What is it best for? Content production and composition via eBooks.
Revolutionize your marketing with a content marketing platform
Now that you’ve examined your company’s needs and explored some content marketing tools, you’re ready to decide on a platform. No matter your company’s unique challenges and needs, the right content marketing platform is out there. If you’re still unsure, head over to rellify to learn what its content platform can do for you.
