Since marketing is our business – be it content, automation or inbound – we always like to see some positive statistics regarding the sector, and content marketing is definitely on the rise.
A staggering 91% of companies are planning to produce more content in 2014 and 88% planning to produce even more in 2015, according to a recent study by MSL Group.
Researchers from the study attribute this supposed confidence in content marketing to the growing support of senior management, which seems to have developed thanks to increasing digital content budgets.Compared to the previous year, for example, the number of companies that plan to devote more than 50% of their marketing budget to content has tripled – rising to 6%, compared to 2% in 2013. Similar increases can be seen across the board, but for one exception – while in 2013, 24% of companies planned to spend less than 5% of their budgets on content marketing, this year such companies are practically non-existent. There are, however, obstacles in the way of this so-called
“Content Rush”; it seems that companies aren’t quite ready to meet the new consumer expectations created by a real-time, multichannel environment.
Overcoming the obstacles
According to the study, most companies in the UK are still in the process of laying the groundwork or creating and filling jobs to meet such expectations. Analysing the statistics, MSL Group stumbled upon some worrying signs: only 25% of companies have produced a content audit, just 19% currently employ a large enough team to engage, create and distribute digital content and only one quarter have the internal talent and skill sets to measure the impact of their digital content. As well as companies not employing proper content creation strategies, it also looks like there are some serious organisational obstacles when it comes to creating and managing content.
Only 17% of organisations say content can be easily retrieved within their enterprise – meaning chief information officers, intranet managers and social collaboration software vendors have a lot of work ahead of them. When it comes to making the most of already available content within a company, only 21% believe they have the right internal organisation to utilise it properly and effectively. It seems that companies focussed on content production and distribution have four major challenges to overcome in 2014 – the main issue, as 51% of companies stated, is to create a large enough internal team to cope with the demands of content marketing.
Internal limitations
Meanwhile, for 49% of companies, things again boil down to internal challenges – this time retrieving the great content they have already produced. Over one third (35%) say the biggest challenge they face is obtaining the budget to achieve what they need and 33% state the hardest part is proving the business value of investing in content creation and management. However, there are some optimistic signs that these growing pains are being addressed.Around half of the companies asked (51%) claim they have more expertise in the field than a year ago and 38% say they now have more staff dedicated to creating and distributing content for the company.If you are part of the 91% of companies expanding their content marketing strategies in 2014, but feel daunted by some of the challenges mentioned above.