The Climb to Content Marketing Software [Infographic]

2 minute read

Upland Admin

climbtocontentmarketing_thumbBig news like today’s announcement that Oracle is snapping up Compendium doesn’t come out of nowhere. Tech moves fast and new industries seem to pop up overnight.

But the adoption of content marketing as central discipline in the enterprise, and the arrival of content marketing software as a bona fide segment, was the result of a long climb. Advancements in technology changed buyer behaviors, which in turn led to innovators creating new solutions to address those shifts, which led to more changes.

We wanted to chart the key movements that have made content marketing software an industry. While the content marketing movement might have started long before the birth of the web (see Content Marketing Institute’s exhaustive history), the path towards solutions is the result of many base camps, crests and summits. We call it The Climb to Content Marketing Software, detailed in the below infographic.

Really, the climb to content marketing software is an advancement of several key technologies and market-making products. But we found five key (and often overlapping) sections of the mountain range.

1. Camp Connectivity

This is the period when the Internet exploded, giving buyers unprecedented access to information. It birthed many key marketing products such as Google AdWords, blog platforms and email marketing providers.

2. Sales Force Automation Summit

The movement from simple contact management to CRM, which would eventually become an $18 billion industry and lead to cloud pioneers like Salesforce.com.

3. Social Marketing Slope

Corresponding with the rise of online access was the fast maturation of social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. All of which meant buyers could easily lean on peers and less on vendors.

4. Mount Marketing Automation

As CRM became the norm, marketers needed solutions for nurturing leads and reading their “digital body language.” Pioneers like Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot created marketing automation to meet those needs, and the space was ripe for acquisitions.

5. Crest Content Marketing

As marketers wised up and adopted CRM, marketing automation and social marketing solutions, the need to produce high-quality content marketing became too difficult to ignore. That led to the birth of content marketing software. Companies like ours arrived to meet those needs. The purchase of Compendium by Oracle is just one more flag in this fast-growing, nascent market.

Where do you see the content marketing industry going next? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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