Over the last two decades the world of marketing has undergone a massive technical revolution. Marketers now have the ability to serve content directly to audiences as platforms that enable them to deliver targeted messages, buy media programmatically and automate distribution have dramatically changed the marketing landscape.
Because of this,content marketinghas become an industry of its own to aid and improve marketers' efforts to sell their brands.
根据内容营销学院，“内容营销的目的是通过始终创建和策划相关和有价值的内容来吸引和保留客户，以改变或增强消费者的行为。这是一个持续的过程，最好将其纳入您的整体营销策略中，并专注于拥有媒体，不租用它。”但是，随着市场的泛滥，营销人员将内容与各种分销选项相结合并迎合越来越大的购买者变得越来越困难。
这导致了创造Content Marketing Platforms, or CMPs, which has vastly influenced the way that marketers collaborate on, plan, and produce content.尽管CMP解决方案的种类繁多，并且具有数百种用于社交媒体管理，电子邮件，自动营销，内容管理和数字资产管理的专用解决方案，但找到正确的CMP以解决您的内容营销策略的过程可能是一项艰巨的任务。
在本文中,我们将逐步通过电动汽车erything you need to know about CMPs. From what exactly they are, to how they can help you to whether you even need one at all and finally, which vendor to choose.
How to Choose the Right Content Marketing Platform Vendor for your Business
什么是CMP？
CMP是软件解决方案，使营销组织能够从头到尾集中和简化其上游营销流程，包括计划和简报，并进行协作和批准。尽管不同的CMP具有不同的目的，但其主要目的是协助企业品牌解决困难的协调和管理挑战，并通过提高内容管理流程的效率，提高内容的有效性以及降低品牌风险，从而获得具体的业务成功。
In short, CMPs help marketers ensure that the content that gets targeted, served, and optimized in the distribution phase of their process is meaningful, engaging, on-brand and compliant with the ultimate aim of enabling marketers to drive awareness, leads and revenue from content. It also helps you save time in the creation and the promotion of content, while the measurement can focus on the wider business objectives, going beyond the social KPIs.
When it comes to CMPs, there are plentiful options. Choosing one of them is a major decision that will profoundly influence the efficiency of your organization and the satisfaction of your team. Doing thorough research and carefully considering your options before committing to a platform is crucial.
CMP不应与以下内容相混淆：
A Content Management System (CMS), which is software that lets you build websites and blogs without html. Where CMPs develop and deliver content to CMSs, they are not themselves content management systems. Examples of well-known CMSs areWordPressandWix.
CMPs are also not project management programmes that lets you plan, schedule, collaborate and communicate projects amongst teams and stakeholders. Examples of these includeTrelloand大本营.
Lastly, CMPs should not be confused with marketing automation platforms (MAPs) which automates repetitive marketing actions such as emails or social media posts. MAPs are focused on lead generation. While they can be very useful for content marketing, they are mainly geared towards distribution and not towards the content itself.
Do you need a CMP?
如今，随着品牌可以吸引消费者的各种方式，许多内容营销人员发现很难在整个销售周期中准确跟踪其内容的性能。许多人仍然依靠电子表格和电子邮件来管理其营销。但是这些手动工具几乎没有机会改善“上游”营销运营。这是CMP进来的地方。
The right CMP will empower you to have one, unified view of your content supply chain all the way from conceptualization to production to marketing. It will allow you to manage this supply chain on a data-driven, scalable way that adds to your business growth. It will also give you a bird's eye view of how your content is affecting lead and revenue generation, as well as on the marketing and sales process.
在决定是否需要这种类型的业务时，请考虑权衡利弊。
The cons are mostly cost-related as the roll-out of a new CMP will cost you time and money. CMPs can be quite expensive and range in price from $8,000 to more than $100,000 per year. Only you can determine what your business can afford, but if you don't produce that much content rather choose something less expensive that will be good value for your money. Your CMP should not be a financial drain on your business.
It will also take time to train your marketing team to use the system effectively, which might influence productivity for a while. This is something you should consider when deciding which CMP to choose as you might want to opt for something a bit less complicated to learn.
As for the pros, a CMP will undoubtedly increase your productivity as it will allow you to be more organized in all three stages of the marketing funnel. You'll be able to track your content production and distribution and will have access to detailed analytics to inform your strategy and business plan.
Which features are the most important?
A good CMP will add value throughout all stages of the content marketing process. This means there should be some level of support from strategy through to analytics. But which features are most important to you will be determined by your business strategy. Here is a list of important features to consider when considering a CMP.
Editorial Calendar:良好的编辑日历使您可以跟踪重要日期并管理时间。这使发现商机变得容易，并帮助您提前计划重要的活动，假期或营销活动。例如，如果您拥有一家书店，那么知道全国书籍爱好者日在8月9日就会落下，从年初开始，您可以为您准备任何特殊的活动，促销或营销内容。在选择可以执行此操作的CMP之前，请确保了解如何通过编辑日历进行分类和分发。
专家提示：选择一个与您的良好集成的CMPsocial media content calendar.
Connect to Content Creators:此功能使您可以直接从CMP购物和雇用知名的内容创建者。cmp做得很好的一个示例是清晰, which does everything a regular CMP does, but is also a freelance marketplace where you can get the best freelance writers and editors suited to your needs. It allows you to search for journalists, influencers and bloggers within a certain budget and lets you request pitch ideas for articles, as well as see pitches for articles from freelancers.
Internal Communication:This feature allows teams to communicate and collaborate on content. A CMP that's particularly good at this is卡普斯特, which not only lets you manage your editorial processes from beginning to end, but gives you the ability to create and update workflows easily and let team members give each other feedback directly in the tool during all creation stages. With Kapost you can brainstorm content ideas, onboard and organize writers, run the content production process and calendar, distribute content, promote it, and measure the results.
Lead generation by tracking content:This feature is standard for most CMPs. Tracking leads generated by your content is integral to the success and development of most marketing strategies.
Distribution:Distribution capabilities vary across CMPs. Some CMPs allow you to distribute your social media platforms, your blog, website, email, ads and more, while others do not. For example,Cerosallows you to incorporate any content you've created into a website or blog as standalone web pages or embedded assets. It also lets you publish and distribute your content on Facebook and other landing pages. Published content can also be edited or updated easily. With the URL and embed code, Ceros lets you change an already published item and republish it.
实时分析：您的广告系列的实时结果和洞察力可以通过立即查看有效和无效并做出相应响应，从而为您带来优势。scribbleliveis a one such a CMP. Its all-in-one SaaS system combines predictive analytics with content planning, creation and distribution technologies to deliver optimized business results.
Asset library management:CMP houses content assets for you in one place. It helps if this is done in a cloud, so that it doesn't take up massive amounts of space on servers that you need to maintain and update.
内容模板：可自定义的模板有助于简化内容团队的创建。您很快就会弄清楚哪些模板最适合您所需的内容并相应地对其进行自定义。但是，要开始的模板使生活变得更加轻松。
Do the research
确定CMP中需要哪些功能后，您可以开始研究您的选项。您最了解您的业务需求，因此请首先回答这些问题。您的团队实际上会使用CMP吗？您可以训练您的团队吗？需要多长时间？您能负担得起的时间和金钱吗？是否有方法可以使其更具成本效益，例如在一个以上的部门中使用CMP？该软件会与您的公司缩放吗？
通过所有这些问题思考，并预测您可能会遇到新系统问题。如果您不能打勾所有盒子，那就不值得花钱。
Do some digging online. Check out the vendor's website. There are usually tons of information there, and although not objective, it's a good place to start. Also look for testimonials and case studies on the product websites. If you know exactly what you are looking for, contact their sales team to hear if they can assist.
下一个合乎逻辑的事情是在线寻找产品的评论。有许多网站会审查这种类型的软件，例如TechradarandCapterraand people are usually brutally honest about products' flaws.
If you've done all of this and you're still not satisfied, speak to someone who already uses the CMP you have in mind for more detailed information about what works and what doesn't. The fact is, as with most products, you will only truly know all its kinks once you start using it. The next best thing is to speak to someone who has been doing just that.
用演示测试
Once you've sifted through all the options, choose your preferred CMPs and ask the sales team for a demo. This is your chance to really test if a CMP will work for you so be thorough and ask questions, including: Does the CMP include training/onboarding? Will there be tech support after onboarding? Does the package they offer have a limit on the content/leads/customers/etc. you can get before having to pay more? What is the procedure for updating? Does the platform integrate with other software you might already be using? If you know you won’t always have online access, also remember to ask whether the system allows offline access.
Make alist of all the things you want to discussbefore going into the demo so that you don't forget anything.
选择一个CMP，然后全部进入
After you've done your due diligence it's probably a good idea to set down key goals and performance indicators for what you want the software to achieve. This will be a big help when the time comes to renew your subscription and you need to establish whether it has been successful in helping you achieve your marketing goals.
By now you'll have realised that a lot of research goes into picking the right content marketing platform. While it may seem daunting, doing the work will pay off in the long term when you start to see results from the use of your CMP. But first you need to have a clear understanding of what a CMP is, how it will improve your marketing efforts and ultimately, the bottom line. One of the most important things a good CMP will offer is detailed analytics that measure exactly how your content is performing.
