And yet, content marketing is still a relatively new field. Luckily, with everyone focusing on its development, trends and patterns are starting to emerge. Business bloggers claim that their top priorities are creating a strategy, immediately followed by finding the means to measure the impact of their work efficiently. However, adults still tend to favor email and traditional marketing strategies over social media or other content sharing platforms. But this can also be an effect of the fact that marketers still tend to favor young people when it comes to online content marketing campaigns. B2B marketers still focus a lot on sales as well, placing this immediately behind lead generations when it comes to their priorities. It seems they are much more effective than writing at driving customer engagement. For companies with documented content marketing strategies, 36 percent declared their strategies were “very effective” and even “extremely effective,” while 49 percent deemed them “moderately effective.” Yet, in spite of this, 70 percent of companies still lack an integrated content marketing strategy. Difficult doesn’t mean impossible, but if you want to create a solid content marketing team and prepare for the future, you’d better start soon. Soon, blogging and infographics will become part of the “traditional” marketing tools, and marketers will be pressed to find new and innovative solutions to driving customer engagement and lead generation.
Content marketing has become an integral part of any marketing strategy. It’s no longer an option, but rather one of many tools marketers need to use to make the most out of their strategies. It makes sense: There are over three billion people with internet access, and about a third have at least one social media account. The possibilities are endless. And yet, content marketing is still a relatively new field. Luckily, with everyone focusing on its development, trends and patterns are starting to emerge.
1. Bandwidth and Time Are the Two Major Obstacles
There are many different things that have to come together for a content marketing strategy to work. As anyone who’s ever come into contact with content marketing knows, implementing a successful strategy is rarely as easy as it looks on paper. By far the greatest obstacles are bandwidth and time allocation.
In this Slideshare report, over 50 percent of companies interviewed cited bandwidth and time as their primary issues. The second greatest obstacle, producing enough content variety and volume, is likely linked to the first. Creating engaging content came in only after that.
It seems odd that, given how popular this strategy is, something as basic as bandwidth or time would be a major obstacle. It’s very easy to fix. Most internet providers have different offers to suit a business’ needs. Take for instance Brighthouse internet plans, which offer three tiers, each suited for a different type of business. It’s likely that companies don’t consider these aspects precisely because they seem so trivial at first.
2. Content Marketing Matters
In spite of its popularity, many companies are still somewhat skeptical if content marketing is really worth it. And in a way, it does make sense: The effects of content marketing are difficult to measure, and if it does benefit a company, it usually does so in an indirect way.
But stats show that online content does matter for consumers—quite a lot, actually. Over 60 percent of the consumers polled in this questionnaire claimed they would be influenced by a positive online review of a business. It seems consumers tend to trust Instagram more than any other social media platform, likely due to its focus on images, rather than text.
Pictures tend to feel more trustworthy than text, as well. This is supported by the fact that Snapchat users are the most likely to be influenced by positive reviews.
Furthermore, when it comes to B2B marketing, 95 percent of buyers believe vendor-related content can be trusted, which definitely shows we are finally getting used to content.
3. Everyone Loves It, but Few Know What to Do with It
About 70 percent of businesses are currently using some form of content marketing. Writing and blogging are generally the preferred mediums. Almost every company has learned that there’s value in content marketing and has set aside their skepticism.
However, many still don’t know how to use this tool precisely. What it all boils down to is metrics—specifically, a lack thereof. Among the top challenges faced by businesses when it comes to this field, measuring ROI tends to come up among the top concerns.
Business bloggers claim that their top priorities are creating a strategy, immediately followed by finding the means to measure the impact of their work efficiently. Both issues could be resolved with some clear metrics in place, but there’s a lot of disagreement when it comes to the actual figures that prove a content marketing strategy is successful. Marketing does not translate immediately into sales.
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