Fewer than half (46%) of content marketers at for-profit and non-profit organizations (primarily B2B-focused) have a documented strategy for managing content as a business assets, according to the Content Marketing Institute’s inaugural 2017 Content Management & Strategy Survey [pdf]. While content management structures such as style guidelines and workflow processes are fairly prevalent, very few report a scalable approach to their content efforts.
As such, only a minority of respondents say that their content always or frequently can be repurposed without a great deal of human intervention (25%) or can be published to multiple channels in appropriate formats without needing to handcraft each piece (35%).
Given the time-intensive nature (research contained in our B2B Marketing Insights Report suggests that it can take 4 weeks to produce an e-book) involved with content efforts, it’s perhaps not too surprising that content marketers are interested in how to build a scalable strategy.
Indeed, when asked their greatest educational needs regarding content management, almost two-thirds (64%) indicated this to be an area of need.
That was a close second only to the desire to learn how to better use technology to manage content as a business asset (66%). Separately, just 1 in 5 (18%) said they have the right technology in place to manage content marketing efforts, while 45% said they had tools but weren’t using them to their potential.
The technologies most commonly used to manage content marketing efforts are email marketing technology (76%) and a content management system (57%). While a sizable share (37%) of respondents want to learn how to use artificial intelligence, only 2% are using AI to manage their content efforts.
About the Data: The results are based on a survey of 411 marketers from the Content Marketing Institute audience, 91% of whom use content marketing.
Respondents come from a mix of organization sizes. Some 59% work at for-profit B2B organizations, with another 21% at for-profit B2B+B2C organizations. The remainder work at for-profit B2C organizations (10%) and non-profit organizations (10%).
