If a Content Marketer is the Chef, Software is the Kitchen

“It’s hard to be great chef without a great kitchen.”

Rebecca Lieb, industry analyst, Altimeter, knows that brands hungry for effective content marketing need the right tools. Lieb participated in a webinar titled, "Arm Your Brand for Content Marketing Success," hosted by Thismoment, to discuss the content marketing challenges facing organizations, best practices on tool selection, and Altimeter’s latest report, “The Content Marketing Software Landscape: Marketer Needs & Vendor Solutions.” The report notes that 70 percent of marketers say they lack a consistent or integrated content strategy. I can see Chef Gordon Ramsay yelling now.

The Content Marketing Software Landscape 

Below are just a few recipes from the hour-long cooking lesson with Lieb: 

1. Feed the Beast

In a survey of over 50 content marketing platforms, Altimeter discovered that while the top brand needs are audience targeting and analytics, the top investment from brands is in content creation. Lieb noted that this is largely due to a “feed the beast” approach, where marketers are trying to create, curate or aggregate content quickly. Eventually, marketers “refine” their efforts and look to track, measure, and be smarter about their overall content marketing.

2. Train Staff

Who wants a kitchen staff that can’t cook or understand how to use the various appliances and cookware? Lieb noted that only 24% of a marketer’s staff are trained on the various content marketing tools. Marketers need to take the time to know the capabilities of the tools, the insights they generate, and how to best optimize their content marketing strategy.

3. The Stack Awaits

Unlike a pile of dishes, the content tool stack is something that content marketers should be excited about in the near future. There is a fragmented market of content marketing platforms, but there will be a continued growth in tool consolidation; resulting in solutions that offer a wider range of services – content creation, analytics, workflow, legal & compliance, and more. Think of it as pancakes on one plate. Yum!

So if you love to cook but are not sure if you are using the best ingredients –  measuring the right amounts or creating a recipe that tastes amazing –  you have another chance to hear Lieb talk about content marketing on June 4. And just as cooking takes practice and experience, content marketing requires a taste, ahem, test and learn approach. As the centuries-old saying goes, if you can’t stand the content marketing heat, get out of the kitchen.