Dive Brief:
- The Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) "B2B Enterprise Content Marketing 2016" report uncovered four common traits of effective content marketers: the team is clear on what success looks like, they regularly communicate through meetings, they have a documented content strategy in place, they continue to invest a larger portion of the budget to content marketing.
- In terms of having a strategy, 74% of respondents reported having a content marketing strategy in place although only 22% said their strategy was effective.
- For team clarity in what constitutes content marketing success, only 29% responded with a “yes,” and another 25% reporting “unsure.” Almost a majority at 45% reported not having team clarity about success.
Dive Insight:
CMI's Joe Pulizzi wrote about the report’s findings in a post on the group’s website, saying, "There are a lot of things that enterprise marketers are getting right. But, to be honest, there is so much potential for enterprises with the approach of content marketing."
Putting the results into a larger picture, B2B marketers have been told for a number of years now that everything essentially begins and ends with the content strategy. Achieving success is obtainable, but it does require more than just creating and distributing content. Marketing teams must make content marketing an integral part of day-to-activities through actions such as regular communication and documented process to become effective content marketers.
"It’s time that we start looking at this approach as critical to the organization and treating it that way, instead of something we do on the side. The numbers, as we see them above, still make it clear that content marketing has not risen to the top of the charts (at least not yet)," Pulizzi said.