Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms (CMPs) reflects marketing’s urgent need for tools that help develop, produce and deliver branded content.
As audiences demand relevant and personalized content from brand engagements across channels and devices, marketing leaders are growing their content marketing operations as a result. According to Gartner research, marketing leaders report allocating only 5.9% of the marketing budget to content creation in 2018, forcing marketers to be more efficient in their efforts.
CMPs support B2C, B2B and complex, distributed use cases, with vendors offering value in different ways. Understanding your needs will help you to identify ‘must have’ features. Many CMPs have expanded beyond core technology offerings to include talent sourcing and client services. These offerings can support the full content lifecycle.
What’s a Content Marketing Platform (CMP)?
Gartner defines content marketing platforms (CMPs) as software solutions that support the practice of content marketing. Many CMP vendors complement their solutions with optional services. However, most CMPs include, at a minimum:
- Capabilities to support ideation, editorial planning, collaboration and workflow
- Tools and services to create, curate and publish content of all types
- Analytics and insights to measure and optimize content performance
- Integrations to connect CMPs to existing marketing technologies (i.e., marketing automation)
But how can it help me?
The answer is never the same, it depends on your current marketing technology stack and business objectives. But, we can help you to identify solutions for you to consider. Understand your content marketing strategy and objectives before searching for a CMP. A CMP is only as strong as the strategy, messaging and narrative that your team provides.
How is that different than my work management, web content management (WCM), digital asset management (DAM) or sales enablement system?
The landscape is becoming more complex, with many capabilities converging. Consider if your use case is centered around content marketing. Examine your existing martech stack to determine if any of your current vendors have capabilities that your team is not currently using that may your needs. Many of these technologies have overlapping capabilities, and we expect this trend to continue.
What else should I know about CMPs?
Gartner clients can read the newly published Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms or give us a call to help determine if a CMP is the right solution for your team (subscription required).
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