Ready to Pair: CMOs and Content Management Systems

Who is your CMO? What do they do? The answer, more and more, is something approaching everything. Along with brand strategizing and lead generating, Chief Marketing Officers are redefining themselves to accommodate nearly every facet of a digital agency’s operation. Their role has been ever-evolving and expanding to the world of analytics and providing support for the sales team, along with delegating responsibilities, meta-marketing internally and helping to create a culture where everyone can thrive autonomously. And they need help to do all of this. 

Enter an open-source CMS.

A Content Marketing System + Machine

Which one of your teams is more important? They all are, as they’re working in tandem towards the same goal. Instead of being siloed tangentially, all your multi-disciplinary experts are now becoming part of your marketing machine and the CMOs that run it are increasingly dictating the choice of technology for your organization. This overlap has evidenced itself in marketers driving the change and charge in terms of growth and one of the top tools for any marketer has always been an open-source Content Management System  (one maintained by a community of developers) such as Drupal or WordPress. 

Marketing informs technology while technology empowers marketing.

This caliber of Content Marketing System or Machine answers the call for tools that cater to the needs of omnichannel marketing, brand campaigns, dynamic content, assets, and custom UX. Whether your organization is managing editorial calendars, maximizing Social shareability, or transferring user data directly into your CRM for automated marketing, Drupal and WordPress provide the necessities. These platforms reduce costs and add value to your digital operation, ultimately providing your developer, sales and marketing teams with an egalitarian platform that affords scalability, agility and autonomy internally.

The Digital CMO

As your organization pivots for the next decade, CMOs are poised to orchestrate a balancing act of catering to the needs of both their audiences and teammates with a through-line of team efficiency, audience loyalty and consistent workflow. These new, macro CMO goals coincide with the capabilities of WordPress and Drupal, which are designed to leverage user data and create quantifiable results:

• Gather and interpret insights from audience data
• Illustrate a statistical impact
• Enrich teammates’ digital capabilities
• Build an interconnected digital experience

Unplugged

While Drupal is ideal for enterprise-level, expansive sites where security is a top priority, WordPress remains the most marketer-friendly CMS — not only due to its ease-of-use but also in large part because of all the plugins. The following WP plugins can be employed for an easy, effective boost to your site’s marketing efforts while becoming an integral part of your CMO’s digital toolkit.

• Google XML Sitemap Generator: keeps track of your indexed pages and notifies Google to re-crawl your site whenever you’ve made any updates, spiking your search results rankings in the process
• Nelio AB Testing: an ideal tool if you’re new to the A/B testing process, featuring heat mapping to show you exactly where your page(s) can be improved
• Leadin: a marketing automation plugin that converts any website contacts into your CRM, while also tracking user behavior for new conversion opportunities — think of it as a marketing bot intern scouring your site for opportunities all the time
• Editorial Calendar: this literally-named plugin allows you to view, publish and manage all posts from one dashboard
• Site Origin’s Page Builder: if you’re launching a new product or service, you’re going to need a landing page, which this plugin provides with a drag-and-drop UI, pre-built templates and the capacity to customize

Your Favorite Marketer

The purpose of any piece of technology is to simplify a task and ideally, that’s what the right Content Management System will do for your marketing. While some digital tools further distance the worlds of developers and marketers, Drupal and WordPress bring your teams together on a platform to better serve each other and your audiences. Your CMS doesn’t just help your marketing team, it’s part of your marketing team — and like any team member, you need it to be flexible, collaborative and effective.

Platform for Change

During the current crisis, every CMO is looking to cut marketing budgets — with the expensive licenses of Adobe Experience Manager, Sitefinity and other proprietary systems, the open-source community will rise once again. Marketing teams are already looking at ways to save money and with thousands of dollars spent in licensing software, the post-COVID-19 world will look to benefit the likes of WordPress, Drupal and other free-to-use platforms.