Aussie marketers keep spending on content marketing despite creation constraints

Nearly half of all Australian marketers plan to spend more on content marketing activities next year, but less than one in five have a dedicated content chief working in their organisation today, a new report reveals.

According to the Content Marketing Survey May 2014 survey of Australia and New Zealand marketers and senior business executives conducted by content marketing agency, Castleford, 93 per cent of organisations will either maintain or increase resources allocated to content marketing in the next financial year.

In addition, 75 per cent of c-level executives viewed content-based activities as either ‘quite positive’ or ‘very positive’.

However, only 18 per cent of those surveyed have someone in their organisation with ‘content’ or content marketing’ in their job title, and just under two-thirds have internal marketing experts. One-quarter of respondents are relying on a content agency to fuel content marketing activities, and 60 per cent are using in-house resources.

Related: 7 CMOs share their content marketing dos and don’ts

Time was the biggest inhibitor to content marketing activity for 39 per cent of respondents, followed by money.

The type of content gaining the most investment is video (48 per cent), followed by case studies (40 per cent), infographics (28 per cent) and whitepapers (26 per cent). Over the next year, blogging came up trumps as the most popular tactic for further investment (44 per cent), followed by video (36 per cent) and thought leadership (35 per cent).

In a statement, Castleford commercial director, Kate Davidson, said she expected to see significant change across the market over the next 12 months as more brands invest in their own content.

“It’s really encouraging that c-level execs are getting on board,” she said. “I’ve seen previous surveys where resistance from upstairs was a significant limiting factor, but as content marketing goes mainstream that’s much less of an issue.

“A lot of verticals are already getting crowded, so the big challenge will be creating regular, relevant content and being really smart about how you share, promote and leverage it.”

The report also found 60 per cent of total respondents are investing in at least five online marketing tactics, the most common being social media, email and AdWords.

The most popular metrics for measuring the return in investment on content marketing is website traffic (63 per cent), followed by conversion metrics such as leads (54 per cent), sales (41 per cent), social shares (40 per cent) and comments (41 per cent).

Related: How to make your content marketing more effective

The Castleford report was based on a survey of 133 marketers and senior decision makers from Australian and New Zealand organisations undertaken in March and April 2014.

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Castleford