Is Drupal The Answer To What Marketers Want?

At this year’s DrupalCon in Pittsburgh, I not only had the pleasure of attending, but I also had the opportunity to speak on a panel: “Marketers Are Our Future; How To Get Them To Choose Drupal.” Kelly Delaney from the Drupal Association, myself, Rosie Gladden from ImageX, and Jenna Van Oort from Aten, discussed how we can make Drupal more marketer-friendly. 

Drupal has long been known as being a CMS for developers, but increasingly, marketing and business leaders are becoming the technology budget owners and decision makers within their organizations. In response to this trend, digital experience tools and platforms are positioning themselves for this target audience with business-outcome-led product positioning and features like user-friendly admin UI’s, martech integration partnerships, and personalization capabilities.  

As an open source project, Drupal first and foremost will always serve the community that contributes to it, (read mostly developers). However, adoption, and use of the platform is critical for sustainable growth and relevance — and it is currently at risk.

There is no question of Drupal’s inherent value as a CMS, but with Drupal Association’s competing priorities at odds with the current digital technology market landscape, it begs the question…how can Drupal better position itself to marketers to ensure its future relevance in the market? 

To answer that question, we first need to consider marketer’s motivations, challenges, and digital strategy needs.

What Do Marketers Want?

Data-Driven Marketing 

Marketers need to inspire and activate their customers, and build brand loyalty, while driving business results. To achieve this, marketers are looking for ways to effectively analyze their marketing efforts across their martech ecosystem to understand where to invest and where to optimize. Martech interoperability, data dashboards, and attribution models are crucial for marketers to prove their value and impact to topline business goals.  

Speed-to-Market and Flexibility

In the current economy, there is even more pressure for marketing performance while increasing efficiency and productivity for speed to market. With ever-evolving consumer behaviors, preferences, and market pressures, marketers need the flexibility in their tool stack to pivot and evolve their digital strategy swiftly and seamlessly. 

Why Drupal for Marketers?

Despite the lack of awareness of Drupal, it often checks all the boxes when it comes to marketer’s CMS needs. 

At Phase2 we help marketers align their digital strategy to their business objectives. Part of that consulting is assessing the right technology stack based on their business objectives and technical requirements. 

We often recommend Drupal as the CMS of choice for the following attributes:

• A scalable solution that can accommodate their business use cases
• A system that they can maintain and evolve as requirements and strategies evolve
• A user-friendly editorial experience
• A system that can easily integrate with their martech tools of choice to deliver engaging, interactive, and personalized customer experiences. 
• A system that makes it easy to provide their customers with the privacy and security they deserve

A content management system is a keystone element of any marketer’s digital customer experience. Drupal can deliver a digital experience that grows with a brand, spurs customer engagement, and drives conversions. 

So How Do We Grow Awareness and Adoption?

It’s not just on the Drupal Association to get the word out about Drupal for marketers.

Being a part of a community means we all have a responsibility to ensure the future success of Drupal. Projects like the Promote Drupal Initiative bring together marketers to collaborate to improve the market positioning of Drupal. Let’s work together to fill the current product marketing gaps:

• How might we increase visibility and awareness with a stronger SEO strategy? 
• How might we better compete with CMS competitors with improved product positioning content on Drupal.org? 
• How might we improve conversions on the Drupal marketplace with UX, content, and design?

In my experience, Drupal is an excellent choice for marketers to achieve their goals. Let’s work together to make this clear to the market, and ensure the future of Drupal and our beloved community!