Survey reveals marketers are taking content marketing more seriously

More than half of Australian marketers claim their organisations have clarity on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like, a new survey the Content Marketing Institute found.

According to the 2016 Content Marketing Benchmark, Budgets and Trends for Australia, Australian marketers rated nearly all of the content marketing tactics, social media platforms, and paid methods of promotion as more effective compared to last year. In addition, the percentage with a documented content marketing strategy increased from 37 per cent to 46 per cent year-on-year.

In addition, 64 per cent of Australian marketers say their content marketing meetings are valuable, and 59 per cent of the least effective marketers say these meetings are valuable.

Despite these trends, the report revealed less than a third of Australian marketers believe their organisations are effective at content marketing, with the figure dipping to 28 per cent, down one per cent from

Meanwhile, 69 per cent of Australian marketers are challenged with producing engaging content, the top challenge cited in the report. Just over half of marketers surveyed cited producing content consistently as another challenge, while other issues include measuring the ROI of content marketing programs, measuring content effectiveness, and producing a variety of content.

Over the next year, the top priority for marketers will be creating more engaging content (84 per cent).

“Australian marketers made progress over the last year with documenting their content marketing strategy and appear to be doing several things well,” CMI founder, Joe Pulizzi, said.

“However, their overall effectiveness with content marketing is stagnant compared with last year. One of the keys to success moving forward will be to ensure that the content they create is consistently delivering value.”

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