Almost three-quarters of enterprise marketers feel that their marketing team is extremely (34%) or very (39%) effective at telling their brand story, reports Skyword in a recent study [download page]. Based on a survey of 190 marketers at organizations with more than 500+ employees (78% B2C), the study indicates that many marketers are confident in the storytelling effectiveness not only of their own teams, but also of their executive teams and customers.
Indeed, almost two-thirds (65%) feel that their executive team is extremely or very effective at telling their brand story, and a majority share that sentiment with regards to their customers (58%), prospects (54%) and employees in general (54%).
The study argues that “content marketing is key to becoming successful at telling the brand story,” noting that effective storytellers are more than twice as likely as ineffective storytellers to believe their content marketing is successful (75% vs. 35%).
When it comes to content marketing, brand awareness is easily the most-cited goal for created content (68%), ahead of building and engaging audiences (47% each). This is likely a reflection of the B2C sample bias, as B2B marketers tend to focus more on lead generation for their content efforts.
Videos – which have become increasingly popular in content marketing – are the most common type of content produced by enterprise respondents (49%), followed by blog posts (45%), mobile applications (41%) and infographics (37%).
As with their storytelling ability, marketers appear to be quite confident in their overall marketing effectiveness, with almost two-thirds calling it extremely (16%) or very (48%) successful. Interestingly, despite indications that few B2C marketers feel that they are effective at content marketing, the Skyword research finds 57% feeling that their content marketing is very or extremely successful.
Meanwhile, other aspects of their organization’s marketing that respondents feel are extremely or very successful include public relations (67%), earned social media (63%), paid social media (60%), and advertising (58%). Surprisingly, the fewest respondents (52%) feel that their email marketing is successful, an interesting result given the extent to which marketers feel that email is effective as a digital marketing tactic.
About the Data: The survey was fielded from May to July 2015 by Researchscape International among 190 marketers from enterprise-level organizations, 51% of whom come from organizations with more than 1,000 employees. The consumer goods (13%) and retail (12%) industries were the most heavily represented.
