Content Marketing Management Using Zoho Apps
Originally published Apr 10, 2023
Executing a strong content marketing strategy means having unified messaging, which requires a connected team using connected marketing apps or platforms.
Marketers use content marketing platforms (sometimes called a CMP) to centralize planning, creation, measurement, and implementation of their marketing. Using the right CMP gives your team the ability to collaborate. Whether it is about content development, strategy, measuring KPIs, or the distribution of marketing assets, the CMP streamlines the overall process.
As a marketing consulting team, Beckmann Collaborative's primary goal in content marketing is to drive engagement at every touchpoint using an easily managed process. Let us emphasize this part - having an Easily Managed Process is key to being successful. You can write the best copy and make cool images, but if it is too complicated to publish or share, then it's a useless effort.
We often recommend the highly integrated technology suite of Zoho One for a content marketing platform. Zoho's suite of apps make it easy to create and manage all of your marketing without cluttering up email inboxes, Slack channels etc. And beyond marketing, teams can leverage the other integrated apps to stay organized, automated processes, and ultimately grow the business.
Key Areas for Managing Your Content Marketing
What are the common tasks that a content marketing platform is used for?
The goal of software is always about efficient without negatively impacting the content quality. Content is King after all.
Content Creation
For so many business owners and marketers, starting from a blank page can be a huge challenge.
Content Templates
One way to fight writer's block is using a template. You can create campaign templates, social media posting templates, email templates, SMS text message templates, and even blog templates. Having outlines to provide direction is both a time saver and brand consistency tool. We can overcome the barrier to content creation success by getting organized.
A/B Testing
Being a data-driven company, we often run A/B tests on different pieces of content. From emails to landing pages and more. The focus of A/B testing is to increase conversions and improve user experience. Testing can help guide your future content writing based on what you learn.
Collaboration on Content
Our team communicates in multiple ways about client content. Key to this overall collaboration is a simple, yet robust content calendar that holds our ideas, deadlines and activities - blog posts, social media posts, emails, events, etc. A good content calendar provides a snapshot of your marketing campaigns and the details of tactics such as deadlines. Creating this as a shared document in an accessible place for the team makes it efficient.
Beyond the content calendar, our team depends on dedicated communication channels through an instant messaging system and project management platform.
Zoho Apps for Content Marketing Management
The main apps we use for ourselves and with clients for content marketing management are: Zoho Social, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Survey, Zoho Forms, and Zoho CRM.
Zoho CRM is the heart of this system - as the primary database. The CRM helps us track leads from all sources, see their progress, build relationships, and convert them.
In addition, we leverage the CRM as a customer nurturing center to see what content they are engaging with.
Your Zoho CRM can show the social media and email interactions you've had with a Lead or a Contact throughout their lifecycle. In turn, this can guide your future content marketing strategy.
Zoho Social is the robust social media management tool we use for scheduling posts, monitoring mentions or comments, responding to them, and social inboxes. We also use it to track social media performance with a variety of reports. This app helps us stay connected to our customers and drive them back to our website or blog posts.
Zoho Campaigns lets us manage both broadcast and automated drip email campaigns. It includes workflow creation, segmentation of lists based on topics and fields, and sending out emails with personalized content from contact profiles. Campaigns has helped us reach both prospects and customers with relevant information in a timely manner.
We use this email marketing tool to send out emails at the right time with relevant information, which is important for building relationships with customers - especially if they are looking for specific information such as pricing or product features before deciding to work with us.
Zoho Forms is a simple and powerful way to capture leads. This form builder allows for tracking lead sources that map into your CRM and Google Analytics tracking with UTM codes. We have used it for resource downloads on websites, newsletter sign-ups, webinar registration, and much more. The ability to redirect someone to a landing page or resource is helpful, as is the use a pre-fill URLS and triggering workflow rules in Zoho CRM.
Zoho Survey can do more than collect customer feedback and market research. We get creative and use it to deliver fun quizzes or polls. This helps us identify the needs, pain points, and interests of our prospects and customers. It also helps our business understand how we can improve based on the feedback given by our customers.
Here is an example:
Using Zoho Survey, create a simple "personality quiz" and publish that link using Zoho Social to your social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
When a prospect fills out the quiz, he or she is automatically added to your contacts list in Zoho Social and created as a new Lead in Zoho CRM.
With an engaging marketing strategy, you can guide this Lead through your process of converting them into a sale. Invite him/her to opt into your newsletter (with a link to your Zoho Campaigns form). Perhaps you will send a direct message within a social platform. Using Lead Scoring in your CRM can help you identify the highest quality leads, then automations can deliver customized messages based on lead interests.
Apps for Marketing Operations and Productivity
In addition to the marketing apps from Zoho, we also use productivity and collaboration tools to keep the team connected - Zoho Workdrive, Zoho Cliq, and Zoho Projects. These tools help with our marketing operations to keep us all up to date while managing our individual tasks.
Zoho Workdrive is very similar to Google Drive or OneDrive. This platform enables us to create and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other files across our organization. We have templates set up for different types of documents that we use often use such as meeting notes, content calendars, and blog posts. You can track progress and campaigns among your team and securely share it with the clients too. Following our internal processes as we use Workdrive helps us stay organized.
Zoho Cliq is like a more unified version of Slack or Microsoft Teams. This app allows us to chat in real-time so that we can collaborate internally, with outside agencies assisting us, and with clients. Even non-Zoho users can have a free Cliq account to chat with us, which makes it easier for everyone to communicate. All parties involved in a project can access important updates relevant to them, share files, and set reminders without having to rely on emails or text messages for communication purposes.
Zoho Projects is highly useful for managing our daily tasks for each project. In our case, each client is set up as a project. However, you may want to create separate projects for different kinds of work you do. Perhaps there is a separate project for each marketing campaign that you're running or project that requires a unique set of tasks. While getting started with Zoho Projects can be daunting to setup, the long-term use can be quite powerful.
Zoho Analytics pulls all of our data together. After all, marketing data from different apps must be connected for actionable reporting and consistent user experience. The good news is that it is no longer expensive to have an all-in-one connected analytics solution for tracking your marketing KPIs. So you're not stuck managing siloed marketing platforms and exporting into spreadsheets.
We Have a Passion for Efficiency and Processes
Though it is fun to be creative and write content, so much of what offer clients is marketing operations. Often, we work with clients to create systems, processes, and workflows to ensure all of the cool marketing ideas come to fruition. This may also come in the form of a communications strategy, detailed process document, or workflow diagrams.
If you're curious about how we work with clients using Zoho tools to improve marketing operations, then please feel free to reach out.
