Content Management Software: what is it and how do you pick the best one for your website? The best CMS for marketing is the one that best suits the needs of your company, making it easier for it to publish, update and create content for web pages.
There are plenty of options in the market that fit that bill. Today, you will find out everything you need to know to make the right choice and get the CMS that compliments your business needs.
In this article you will understand:
- What is a CMS?
- How do Content Marketing Systems work?
- What features the best CMS for Marketing should have?
- How to choose a CMS for Marketing?
- The 4 best Content Management Systems for Marketing
Ready to learn? Keep reading!
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What is a CMS (Content Management System)?
First of all, before you get to know more about the best Content Management Systems available on the market, we must define what is considered a CMS for Marketing purposes.
A CMS is designed to help you create, update, modify and manage all the content on a website, whether it is a simple blog or a complex page packed with information about your company and interactive visual content for customers.
The main goal of a CMS is to make sure that any user can update content using a simplified editor, that’s usually visual, instead of learning how to code in the given language the website was developed with.
Popular Content Management Systems, like WordPress, can help anyone create a successful website with just as few clicks, as opposed to the traditional way of coding a page, which demands knowledge in HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and other programming languages.
But Content Management Systems have a dual purpose. They can also be used internally by companies to manage documents and files on their own servers — most Intranets work best when combined with a CMS software.
How do Content Management Systems work?
A CMS works as an interface to interact with your website. Using it, you get a visual editor for your content, where you can update pictures and text, develop forms and insert intent pop-ups, or any other kind of content that can help generate better results for your Content Marketing strategy.
A Content Management System is composed, generally, of two core parts: the Content Management Application and the Content Delivery Application.
The Content Management Application is the part you interact with, that allows you to add and edit content to a website with no coding required.
The Content Delivery Application, on the other hand, is the backbone of your site — everything that happens automatically and behind the scenes. This is the tool that turns your visual content into properly formatted code, stored in the best way to guarantee good performance both with Search Engine tools and when your page is loaded in a client’s web browser.
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What features the best CMS for Marketing should have?
Now that you know what a CMS is, it’s time to understand what separates a good CMS from a bad one. The features we will talk about next are what you should be looking for when picking the best CMS for Marketing.
A good CMS tool must excel in helping you create new content, like blog posts, infographics or video content. It should make the publishing of this type of content easier and guide you towards optimizing SEO and readability of content.
Another important feature of a complete CMS tool is to have the ability to customize your content with pre-loaded ‘one-click’ themes and templates. This is what most users are looking for in a Content Management System: customizing interfaces that will speak in the tone and colors of your brand without needing to code them from scratch.
To make sure you get the best CMS, you will want to look into the options with a large community of users, plenty of plugins and widgets, and Search Engine Optimization tools that will help your content be reached through Google and Bing.
Before deciding on a given solution you might also want to check if it’s regularly updated, how much it costs for your business to host and maintain and how long does it take to learn how to operate the tool properly (i.e. learning curve).
How to choose a CMS for Marketing?
So, before you can choose the best CMS for marketing you must be able to answer 7 important questions:
- What is the purpose of the content?
- What are my technical requirements?
- What are my business requirements?
- What level of technical expertise do I have available?
- What is the cost of the CMS?
- How safe is this Content Management System?
- Can I find online support for my CMS?
Those questions will help you figure out your priorities and compare the tools at hand.
The 4 Best Content Management Systems for Marketing
The following Content Management Systems for Marketing are among the most popular in the world. Below, you will understand why and get to know a bit more about each tool and its benefits and challenges. Check it out!
1. WordPress
WordPress (.org, not .com) is the most popular CMS in the world and with that comes many benefits — such as a large community of users that can help you power up your blog with tips, tools and plugins built for WordPress — and with some downsides.
Because WordPress is the powerhouse behind most sites on the web (with over 30% of the internet built using it), the solution lacks in the safety department. Hackers, aware that most websites use unsafe or outdated WordPress versions, prey on that to gain access to company’s pages.
That’s why having a good redundant backup in place and network monitoring to detect access from third parties is a must if you plan on using WordPress securely on your blog.
WordPress is simple to use and install, and most hosting providers will feature a ‘one-click’ install on your hosting dashboard to make the process easier for less tech savvy users.
Another major benefit of the tool is the many free resources available, such as themes, plugins, forms, and live blogging tools that will help you build a kickass Digital Marketing strategy for your blog or website.
Another great thing about WordPress is that tools like Stage can help you leverage this CMS and customize it perfectly to your needs, with no need to learn how to code.
2. Drupal
Drupal is also a very popular tool, but it is only used by 2.1% of websites on the internet, which makes it safer from the attacks of hackers when compared with pages built with WordPress.
Those 2,1% of sites that use it, though, guarantee enough popularity for that tool so that most providers will also feature auto-installers for Drupal, which is a free open source tool like its competitor.
With an active community and online support from peers around the world, Drupal is especially useful for those who plan on managing a lot of content with the tool. While a WordPress install might lag after a few gigs of data if not properly managed, Drupal’s lightweight solution doesn’t suffer from the same problem.
The major problem with this tool is the lack of an interface to create and publish content. This means that Drupal is best suited for more tech-savvy users, while WordPress can be easily learned by watching a few tutorials or just following the steps indicated by the tool on when you first install it.
3. Joomla
Joomla is also an open-source CMS that comes packed full of features to help marketers build better websites and blogs. Its main disadvantage is that most extensions that power Joomla require a purchase, while with WordPress and Drupal you can find most of them for free.
The interface is harder to use than the one found on WordPress, but Joomla features many security add ons that make it the safest option for company blogs. While this CMS can be pretty intuitive and straightforward when it comes to its protection, it requires an understanding of web page structures to really show its prowess and has very few communities and forums online that support it.
4. Magento
Another option to fulfill your CMS needs is Magento, which is also an open-source tool to power websites and blogs. Magento excels in helping build online stores, being much more comparable to tools like WooCommerce, OpenCart, and Shopify than to WordPress itself.
While it requires no coding to set up, Magento is much easier to use once you know the basics of HTML and PHP.
The learning curve of this tool is much more accentuated, but there’s a big community to support you, not only on the official website but also on forums dedicated solely to e-commerce tools.
Ready to choose the best CMS for marketing? While the content management system you use to power your website plays a great part in how well it performs there are other factors that can greatly influence your Digital Marketing results. One of them is the speed of your website.
Want to understand how speed influences lead generation and sales? Check out our infographic on the subject!
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