Cision : How to Kick Off 2019 With the Best Marketing Tools

Every modern communicator aims to have the perfect tech stack to help them unify technology, data, processes and analysis for a better view of efforts and outcomes. With the right tools, comms pros and content marketers alike can find synergy between paid, earned and owned media to optimize their team's efforts and amplify the success of their programs. Such insights can result in better campaign management leading to successful marketing efforts. As technological tools become more sophisticated and continue to work better together, communicators and content marketers will have better insight into content performance, improved campaign management and a better grasp on the concept of earned media management as part of the larger strategy.

How to Invest in the Right Tools

Selecting the appropriate tech tools doesn't have to be a daunting experience. The process should begin with thorough research to determine what tools best fit your team's needs. By doing so, you will ensure the right investment is made in the best array of tools and technologies with the power to increase productivity. Strategically reviewing your options can provide you with the right campaign support while helping maintain an overall steady workflow. Today, having the appropriate selection of tech tools can make or break a campaign's success and drastically impact end results. According to CMI's 2019 B2B research, 67 percent of the most successful content marketers rated their organization's content tech proficiency as expert or advanced. Therefore, campaign success is clearly dependent upon the ability to recognize patterns and making informed decisions about the data through the use of sophisticated technological tools.

Industry Favorites

With so many Martech products on the market today, it can be challenging to know which ones to choose. Although there are many available options, it's important to select the tech tools that best fit your team's needs. Selecting the right technology that addresses those needs involves assessing a tool's main function and varying features. Ultimately, the end goal is to choose systems that optimize your campaign management and bring together all of your efforts into one place, so that your brand narrative reaches its intended targeted audience and influences consumer purchasing behavior.

Luckily, The Content Marketing Institute recently shared, '100+ Tools Content Marketers Really Love,' providing a list of the favorite content technologies selected by the Content Marketing Institute community. About 700 members of the community were surveyed providing their favorite technologies across 34 different categories. Cision is proud to have made the list having been named as a tech tool favorite three times ranking number one for public relations, and fifth for social media monitoringand Help a Reporter Out(HARO). And with Cision's recent acquisition of Falcon.io, we're excited to help communicators better manage their social media marketing efforts as part of their larger earned media management strategy.

The Content Marketing Institute, whose mission is to advance the practice of content marketing, shared the list of favorite tools as a guide and starting point for industry professionals. The institute provides practical, how-to guidance, insight and advice from experts, and has an active community discussing the latest news and information that moves the industry forward.

'For anyone looking to be a better content marketer, you can't overlook the importance of technology,' says Kim Moutsos, vice president of editorial, Content Marketing Institute. 'We were curious what tools and technologies content marketers use to build their programs and we knew that information would be helpful for other content marketers looking for new content tech. We created Fan Favorites to help content marketers navigate the myriad of content technologies options out there so they can find the one that works best for their program.'

Priceless Benefits

There may be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using a new tech tool in the very beginning. However, taking some extra time to get familiar with the varying features and determining how it will fit in with the tech ecosystem your department has created will lead to a highly beneficial payoff down the road. Overcoming the initial learning period will result as time well spent since the right tech tools that meet your team's needs can bring many benefits. This situation can result in a positive domino effect in other areas of your campaign management process, as detailed below.

Automation and Integration: Having automation through an integrated tech stack can drastically streamline marketing efforts and also better inform how your programs are performing and influencing other areas of the business. This will speed up the campaign management process and lead to a better global overview of all of the goals that your team's programs are achieving.

Reinvesting Spare Time: Time-consuming processes will be eliminated through the automation and integration provided by your tech stack. This will free up precious time to reinvest in other areas such as focusing more on the creative process of campaign planning, and multichannel promotion of content. Additionally, the right tech tools can help you capture and utilize data for insights to make quicker decisions and find additional ways to collaborate with your teams.

Strategy Influence: Lastly, they can be helpful in revealing trends to adjust your marketing efforts in real time. These readjustments can be applied to future campaigns, which influences the strategic planning process for all marketing efforts. Your paid, earned and owned efforts should come together into one tech ecosystem, and your team can then make decisions about how to complement programs and campaigns based on the insights that your tools are providing. Using your tech stack in this way provides a competitive edge to stand out above the rest.

Assessing your potential tech stack and the specific functions they serve will help get you closer to achieving marketing goals. Some may be used more than others depending on what your needs are. However, they should all serve the same main purpose by optimizing your overall marketing efforts, driving revenue and increasing team efficiency. Ultimately, understanding which tech tools work best for you involves knowing your needs and doing proper research. From there, you can be sure to invest in the right technology. Understanding how technology can help you and how to use it is critical. Embracing tech tools in 2019 can provide a strong competitive edge needed in today's fast-paced, digital world.

Tags : Content Marketing