No content marketing solution is an island. As we wait for the evolution of true end-to-end content marketing stacks, each individual solution acquired for creating, publishing, targeting, or optimizing content (just to mention a few of the use case scenarios) needs to plug into and play with the other tools in the content marketing toolbox.
And that’s just the beginning of integration needs. We’ve just published research on the content marketing vendor landscape (free download here). We asked marketers questions about their integration needs for content marketing solutions beyond content itself.
Integration considerations are essential when considering content solutions. Obviously, there’s enormous consolidation and convergence of paid, owned, and earned media, as well as the evolution of content stacks. Each of the eight content marketing use cases we identified come with a host of potential integration issues, yet only 10 percent of the marketers we surveyed say their content marketing technologies are “fully integrated across people, processes, and platforms.”
Identifying essential integrations can help refine a final list of prospective content marketing vendors. We found integration is tripartite.
Integration with systems
This includes legacy as well as future platforms, such as data and analytics, CRM, and inbound marketing. Petco’s former chief content officer, Greg Seremetis, emphasized his group’s voice is only one of many at the table when new content tools are discussed and vetted inside the company.
Integration with the organization, such as internal communications, corporate intelligence, and internal networks
“Why shouldn’t our call center agents have access to same information that guests have?” asks Marriott International’s senior director of digital strategy and distribution, Meg Walsh. An agency I’m currently working with would love if someday the content production process were linked to finance so clients could be appropriately (and less manually) invoiced.
Integration with processes, including workflow and organizational structure
This may include taking outside partners and/or agencies into account. “You can’t retrofit activities to the tool; you have to align the tool with your activities,” observes to Kristina Halvorson, CEO and founder of Brain Traffic. Our research found there are common integration points marketers leverage across each use case. While not universal to all marketers’ use case scenarios, these integrations fall into eight primary categories.
The figure below charts how these common points of integration typically map against use cases.
Did we leave anything out? In an ideal world, what would you connect to the content marketing tools suite?
This post originally published on iMedia