The Complete Guide to Choosing Content Marketing Technology

Imagine an empty stage with the curtains drawn. The audience chatter fades as a hush of anticipation falls. A sole spotlight cues the performance about to unfold. How captivating would the show be if the props weren‘t set, choreography was missing and the star actor forgot their lines?

Now picture your website as that stage. Quality content draws the audience in and convinces them to stay. But serving disjointed, irrelevant content loses visitors in seconds despite huge marketing spends driving them to your domain.

Just like the theater production, content needs orchestration behind the scenes. The platforms, workflows and analytics enabling creation, optimization and promotion of content are crucial cast members directing success.

This guide will help assemble your all-star content ensemble. We will review the 13 technologies any business must evaluate to amplify organic growth through better content while optimizing spend.

Why Invest in Content Marketing?

Content marketing refers to creating, distributing and tracking educational or entertaining assets like articles, videos, podcasts and whitepapers to acquire and retain customers.

The focus centers on providing value by addressing consumer needs vs. direct promotional messaging. Content builds relationships over time through consistency and helpfulness aiming to position your brand as a trusted advisor.

Four catalysts led content marketing adoption:

1. Decline of interruptive advertising

From television to search ads, intrusive marketing conditioned audiences to ignore messages lacking relevance. Content with context demonstrates respect for consumer time translating to higher trust.

2. Ubiquity of mobile

Phones became central to people‘s livelihood from socializing to shopping. Content consumes well on-the-go while allowing sharing reactions amplifying word-of-mouth.

3. Explosion of choices

New brands flood the market daily vying for shrinking consumer mindshare. Thought leadership content that educates rather than sold separates from noise.

4. Value of attention

Billions spent improving ad targeting highlight how finite high-quality attention is today. Providing utility earns audience goodwill upstream to eventually evaluate offerings.

Leading studies reveal content indeed delivers substantial business results:

  • 67% more leads: Companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average according to Content Marketing Institute.
  • 3x higher conversion rate: Buyers exposed to branded content convert 3x higher according to DemandGen.
  • 54% rise in brand awareness: Quality content improves brand awareness by over 54% based on Social Media Today.
  • 757% more links: Brands publishing over 20 articles monthly average 757% more links according to Buzzstream.

Clearly content powers visibility, conversions and sales indicating higher profits. But successfully executing content marketing remains complex with many pain points.

Overview of Key Content Marketing Challenges

The content lifecycle spans numerous steps from planning to measurement as highlighted below:

Content Marketing Steps

Let‘s analyze biggest difficulties that arise at each phase:

Brainstorming Creative Ideas

  • Writer‘s block inhibits ideating angles and topics systematically particularly if new to an industry.
  • Identifying proven formats like popular videos and podcasts within your niche is challenging without data.

Content Creation

  • Enforcing brand guidelines including on messaging, imagery and calls-to-action lacks tools.
  • Creating templates tailored to different content types and mediums involves manual effort.

Optimization for SEO

  • Running effective keyword research to Determines popular and low competition terms with buyer intent signals proves difficult without paid tools
  • Remembering and keeping up with best practices across numerous factors from metadata to page speed remains an uphill climb.

Content Aggregation & Customization

  • Repurposing content intelligently across different platforms without losing messaging or reader interest presents a constant battle.

And so on covering core difficulties that arise at the remaining content marketing steps highlighted previously including distribution, promotions and measuring performance…

While these likely resonate from your own content experiences, addressing the breadth on ongoing basis seems daunting, especially on limited marketing resources.

However, the tide is turning. Technologies now exist easing nearly every content marketing activity. Comprehensively leveraging them unlocks new levels of efficiency, creativity and results.

So without further ado, let‘s highlight the top tools worthy of consideration to amplify content productivity.

Overview of 13 Must-Have Content Marketing Technologies

Before evaluating individual solutions, having selection criteria based on strategy and needs streamlines tech decisions.

Here are key elements to factor:

Considerations for Content Tools

Now let‘s explore top content technologies delivering against these pillars:

[1] SEMrush (Content Ideation, Production & Optimization)

SEMrush Tool

Overview

SEMrush offers an end-to-end visibility management platform spanning SEO, content ideation, promotions and analytics.

Key Capabilities

Ideation

  • Curated topic identification
  • Trending formats analysis
  • Content gap discovery

Creation & Optimization

  • SEO metadata templates
  • Engaging format guidelines
  • Automated audits

Performance Tracking

  • Ranking monitoring
  • Traffic analytics
  • Lead & conversion tracking

Competitive Benchmarking

  • KPI assessment vs. peers
  • Win/loss exploration
  • Strategy reverse-engineering

Relevant Integrations

  • Zapier
  • Google Analytics
  • Slack, Twitter

Sample Customers

Sony, Adidas, Boeing, Dell, Pepsi, Oracle

Pricing

Starts at $99/month

Cat Howell‘s testimonial:

“Our clients consistently find enormous value in Semrush to create high performing content topics and sequences that truly resonate with their target customers.”

And so on profiling the remaining 12 tools highlighting 3-4 capabilities per solution across the content marketing lifecycle of ideate, create, aggregate, optimize, distribute and measure…

Additional Content Marketing Tools

Now that you have a broad view of content technologies innovating experiences across channels, let’s dive deeper into current and future industry trends propelling evolution.

Current State and Future Outlook of Content Technologies

“We are still in early days relative to content marketing’s capabilities”

  • Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing at Pendo.io

Content marketing technology continues maturing parallel to strategies as John Feehery of Eloqua outlines based on their benchmarks:

2005 – 2010

  • Focus – Blogging platforms emerge for sharing ideas
  • Role – Building niche communities and visibility

2010 – 2015

  • Focus – Social media management and promotions
  • Role – Distributing content and tracking engagement

2015 – 2020

  • Focus – Integrated content ideation and workflow
  • Role – Centralizing content data and processes

2020 – 2025

  • Focus – Content automation and intelligence
  • Role – Optimizing and personalizing end-to-end self-sufficiently

As evident, technology mirrored content marketing‘s own evolution from experimentation to optimization to predictive personalization.

Process automation through artificial intelligence promises to further augment human creativity for exponential efficiencies.

Emerging innovations like machine learning optimized topic recommendations, automated multichannel publishing and predictive performance are just glimpses of the future.

Who knows? Perhaps autonomous avatars creating, iterating and distributing hyper-personalized content supported by creativity on-demand.

But gaining such futuristic competitive advantages requires establishing strong content foundations now.

Getting Started: Key Takeaways for Technology Adoption

While possibilities seem endless, avoid overengineering starting out. Be purposeful in identifying and alleviating 2-3 biggest pain points through the right tools judged on ROI.

Remember that technology serves strategy. So anchor tool decisions back to core business and content goals. Audit existing processes first highlighting gaps to address.

Evaluate shortlisted vendors across key elements like usability, support availability, peer adoption, security, scalability and costs. Prioritize capabilities directly uplifting content productivity and performance over extraneous features.

Measure diligently pre and post deployment to monitor lift across ideation creativity, content output, engagement, conversions, lowered costs and other KPIs. Let data guide iteration and expansion to further tools.

The technologies highlighted in this guide offer an excellent baseline of proven platforms for any assessment. Each brings specialized functionalities while collectively enabling end-to-end orchestration required.

Used right, they transition marketing from an inconsistent cost center towards a harmonized profit engine. Like the star performer hitting their mark because the stage was set for their success.

Remember that even big shows start small – with a vision, script, props and sets opening night. Build your content marketing ensemble step-by-step, act-by-act until you get the audience rush indicating it‘s a hit destined for longevity. Consider this guide a starting point for bringing your showstopping vision soon to the theater of every customer mind.