As many of you already know, you should never start a new online project by discussing which system is best suited for your new online solutions. Nevertheless, in this blog post, that’s exactly what I am going to do!
In earlier blog posts, I wrote about how a Marketing Automation System works and why you should use a Web Content Management System. If you aren’t familiar with these systems, I recommend that you read those blog posts first. And if you would like to deep dive in how you set up an organisation for an inbound project, I can recommend you to read my colleague, Martin Olausson’s blog post, ‘How to get your organisation on board with Inbound’.
Are you interested in knowing more?
Do I need two systems, really?
Like most things in marketing and technology, it really just depends on what kind of business you have and what your purpose and goals are with your .com and/or .xx sites.
Combining these two systems gives you the opportunity to get the best of two worlds. By thinking of your marketing system as a whole ecosystem, rather than separate silos, you can ensure that you gain the best possible results.
Here are some key benefits you will get from combining your web content management system with your marketing automation platform:
- an increased number of qualified leads
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improved forecasting and reporting
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a platform that delivers real-time personalisation
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workflows that will increase your efficiency
What is the strength of each system? Let’s take a look at what this integrated marketing system should look like.
Content Management System
Most businesses understand that your content management system should make it easier for you to edit and post content in a good user interface. But that’s not all it should be doing.
In addition, a good content management system should:
- offer the ability to do A/B testing to ensures that the most effective content is presented to visitors.
- provide useful audience insights
- handle multi-language sites for multiple markets
- workflow for content approval
- internal search with autocomplete, related queries and behavioural ranking
Marketing Automation System
A good marketing automation system should:
- analyse site visitor behaviour and activity and use predictive lead scoring to determine their value
- assist you with moving prospects along the sales funnel by delivering tailored marketing messages based on their stage in the buying process
- track and measure the performance of your social media efforts
- collect and store all relevant background info on each individual contact —such as first interaction and all their activities on your site
- smart CTA’s that adapt the message depending on what the visitor are viewing
- track which users receive, open, read, and click on your marketing emails
The bottom line
There are of course marketing automation platforms (such as e.g. HubSpot) that also offers a WCMS module. And there are WCMS tools (such as e.g. Episerver) that offer some feature of a marketing automation system.
If you’re still doing mostly traditional marketing (i.e. primarily using your website as a shopping window for your products or services), it may make sense to focus on just getting a robust WCMS. Likewise, if you only have operations in one or a handful markets, and aim to boost your lead generation using an inbound strategy, it may make more sense to focus on getting a good marketing automation platform up and running.
However, if your goal is to execute an inbound strategy in multiple languages in multiple markets, you’ll need to deploy both systems. At least for the next couple of years or so. These two systems are increasingly overlapping and in a few years’ time, we’d expect that one or several systems will have emerged that offers all the needed features of both a WCMS and a marketing automation platform.
For the time being, however, when these two platforms are combined, you’ll have a seamless process in place to manage your online sales and marketing activities across your entire footprint. This will give you a clearer overview of your customer journey from start to finish and put efficient actions in place to increase conversions and boost your lead generating.
Zooma has done several online projects where we have built solutions based on different WCMS and a Marketing Automation System. So if you need help to evaluate and strategy around which solution is best for your organisation—just get in touch!
Want to learn more about marketing automation? Our marketing automation guide covers all the key aspects of this technology, including what it is, why it's useful, when to use it, and how to get started. It's a great resource for anyone looking to improve their marketing efforts and drive better results for their business.
