A new survey has revealed how marketing professionals are struggling to convince decision makers about the worth of content marketing, thanks to a mixture of high expectations and a lack of focus in terms of clear ROI.
In the second edition of Zazzle Media’s State of Content Marketing Survey, marketers shared their frustrations of not being able to prove the effectiveness of content marketing, with only 1 in 5 of those polled confident that they were carrying out their campaigns using “best practice”.
These knowledge gaps combined with a wide range of objectives to achieve increases the potential for poor perceived performance, fortunately there is a way to ease these frustrations.
A strong strategy
Setting out focused objectives and spreading the spend and skills could allow marketers to prove a campaign’s success. To see developments in content marketing maturity, marketers should:
- Set clearly defined marketing goals
- Plan content to achieve certain goals, instead of expecting it to fulfil a range of aims
- Realistically plan skills and resources to be spread effectively across the project
- Be consistent in measuring the initial objectives
Managing director of Zazzle Media, Simon Penson, commented on the statistics: “Having asked hundreds of key marketing decision makers in what is now the second annual poll of their content marketing plans it is clear that while budgets are growing it is getting harder and harder to deliver the results now demanded of those purse string holders.
“It’s not stopping you spending more (yet) but it is abundantly clear now that those at the execution end of those plans have never been under more scrutiny than they are now, or pressure to improve output to achieve the desired result.”
The results of The State of Content Marketing survey have been turned into an eBook which is available to view here.
