It struck us the other day that many sites still do not have, nor do they realize the importance of, a content management system. So in no uncertain terms we will outline the strategic reasons for getting a content management system as well as some of the potential pitfalls you need to think about from a digital marketing perspective.

What is a Content Management System?

So lets start with the basics. A content management system, or CMS for short, allows you to manage content on your website from a sort of repository if you will. Typically you use this CMS tool to create/edit the content on your website instead of having single HTML (or other) files on some sort of server. You will typically log in to a CMS tool and then navigate to where the content lives, edit it, click save, and BOOM, content changed.

Why should I use a Content Management System?

Here are just a few reasons why we recommend a CMS tool to everyone:

• Quickly create/edit website content
• Add new landing pages on the fly
• Keep a consistent look to your entire site
• Manage global site elements in one location
• Keep page titles and meta descriptions consistent

There are certainly many other reasons, but those are the biggies.

A Content Management System in Action

Here is a pretty common example we run into. When running any kind of digital marketing campaign we want to always have a landing page that speaks to our marketing message in the medium (eg: PPC, Display, Email). What if we see that a particular search query is getting searched but we do not have a page that discusses it?
Scenario 1 : No Content Management System

• We need to outline the content and select a similar page on our site to mirror
• Then develop the content (the easy part)
• Have the developers build the page with the created content
• The page is pushed to a staging or dev environment for review
• Page is pushed live, often times as part of a larger push

How long did that take? I’ve very rarely seen this process take place in under 3 days honestly.
Scenario 2 : We have a Content Management System

• We log into our CMS
• We create the new page and enter the content
• We click save/publish
• The page is live

Depending how long it takes you to create the content this process can take as little as 30-minutes!

It’s all about timing when it comes to marketing. The ability to be agile and create and edit content on the fly is crucial to a digital marketer. Make sure you have a system in place that allows you to make quick pivots or don’t… But your digital marketing will surely suffer without it!