7 Signs Your CMS is the Right Fit for Your Marketing Needs

Content management systems (CMSs) emerged with the birth of the internet, becoming an essential tool for marketers. Today, this mature market offers countless solutions to help businesses manage their online presence.

With every new CMS that enters the market, you may re-evaluate your existing solution. But when do you really need an upgrade?

Here are seven signs that your CMS is the right fit for your marketing needs – and will be for years to come.

Your CMS should store all of your content. This includes text (of any variety), images, gifs, videos, audio files, and the like. You should also be able to create content in your CMS. Rich text and markdown are both common features of a long-lasting CMS.

Your CMS should also help you bring in content from different sources. This can include your product information management system (PIM), your CRM, or any other databases or tools your teams use, such as Google Drive or OneDrive. This allows your team to store, manage, and share content all from one platform.

Your team manages many channels: your website, mobile applications, social media, listings, and more. When your CMS uses APIs to publish content across all these channels, you can rest easy — it's a CMS with longevity.

The reason this is a feature of a lasting platform is because it offers customization — and it improves your reach. Your team creates custom content to meet the needs of your business and your consumers. For example, they might manage your listing from your CMS. Or, they may create persona-specific content to power social posts that target buyers with precise messaging.

A modern CMS supports your team by supporting your content on any platform. You should be able to experiment with channels and messaging. A CMS that allows that kind of freedom is a CMS that is built to last for a long time.

Marketing teams use lots of tools to create, distribute, track, and measure content. A CMS that integrates with your team's favorite tools will easily support you well into the future.

This is important: your CMS should integrate with any tool your team wants to use, not just ones from the same vendor. An API-first platform (like a headless CMS) is the best way to do this. With a platform like this, you can connect any software to your CMS. Sometimes, those integrations are built-in. Other times, your team can create custom integrations (made using APIs). For instance, your CMS might not have a native customer data platform (or CDP) built in. But even if this is the case, your CMS should be able to integrate with one so your marketing team can improve targeting.

Your martech stack may shift over time. An adaptable CMS allows you to mix and match solutions from multiple vendors, so you can create a marketing tech stack full of best-of-breed solutions.

Marketing is a data-driven business. Marketers have key performance indicators (KPIs), and that's how they measure success. When your CMS helps track those metrics, it's unlikely your team will ask for an upgrade any time soon.

That's because analytics provides the information your strategists need to make decisions. Unfortunately, there are a lot of channels to manage: your website, listings, mobile applications, and more — and they start to add up. By consolidating information from many tools into one analytics platform, your strategists can make decisions with confidence.

That's exactly what a lasting CMS does. Your CMS should track analytics from across your online experiences. This is incredibly beneficial, especially if your CMS powers many different types of experiences.

Your information is on many different channels: your website, user portals, listings, social media and more. And with every new social media platform or search engine, the number of channels you manage increases. A CMS built for the age of omnichannel marketing sends updates to each channel automatically.

When your CMS manages all of these platforms via APIs, changes are simple. Your team simply updates one field (like the hours of operation field for a specific location). Then, that change cascades all across the digital ecosystem. With one click, your CMS automatically updates the information across all platforms.

As online experiences continue to grow, you need a CMS that helps your teams manage content across channels, at scale. It keeps your information accurate across channels and protects your team's bandwidth.

Your CMS is the central hub for storing, managing, and distributing your content. When your CMS streamlines workflows too, your CMS will support your team as its content demands grow.

One example of an automated workflow is system-suggested updates. This is different from the automatic updates sent to all channels mentioned above (though that's helpful after the suggested changes are accepted). System-suggested updates are exactly what they sound like: updates suggested by your CMS. These updates can be pulled into a workflow for your team to review, approve, or revise. Ultimately, system-suggested updates streamline the content review and maintenance process.

When your CMS automates your teams' workflows, you increase your team's productivity. This is a key feature of CMSs built for longevity. Even as processes evolve, your CMS will support you.

A CMS that your team finds easy to use is a sure sign it'll be around for a while. If it's easy to use, that means it's easy to store, manage, and share your content.

There's a simple way to tell if your CMS is easy to use and it helps people do their jobs well. Your content team appreciates its intuitive interface, which makes it easy to find and manage information. Your system administrators manage users and permissions, ensuring compliance and preventing security issues. Meanwhile, your developers build content-rich user experiences without technical constraints.

A CMS that provides a great user experience for every persona in your organization is one you can use for years to come.

You need a CMS that checks all the boxes today, and primes you for success tomorrow. It prioritizes efficiency and supports all your users' needs. It also stays flexible enough to evolve alongside your organization and your users' favorite channels.

Nobody knows what the future holds, or how content distribution will change over time. But as long as your CMS is built to last, you'll be prepared.