Top Challenges You Will Face in B2B Content and Search Engine Marketing
According to the 6th edition of the B2B Content Marketing – 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America, the top twelve challenges of B2B marketers are:
- Producing Engaging Content (60%)
- Measuring Content Effectiveness (57%)
- Producing Content Consistently (57%)
- Measuring the ROI of Content Marketing Programs (52%)
- Lack of Budget (35%)
- Producing a Variety of Content (35%)
- Gaps in Knowledge and Skills of Internal Teams (25%)
- Understanding / Choosing Technology (24%)
- Lack of Integration Across Marketing (23%)
- Finding or Training Skilled Content Marketing / Content Creation Professionals (21%)
- Lack of Buy-in / Vision from Higher-Ups (19%)
- "Implementing the technology that we already have." (18%)
Practical Ways to Address Each Challenge
Each challenge has the potential to reduce, or completely eliminate, the ROI of your online brand strategy. However, this is where using a professional service agency, one that can provide consulting, training and coaching, at least for the short term, can be highly beneficial.
Where this data may be very real, maybe even daunting, in terms of the challenges, there are factors of success also provided by the report. This is what the most successful content marketers report as effective practices:
- 48% of B2B marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are effective
- 49% of B2B marketers with a documented editorial mission statement are effective
- 55% of B2B marketers with organizational clarity on what content marketing success looks like are effective
- 41% of B2B marketers that meet daily or weekly are effective
It's tempting to use this data to say "we told you so." As a brand strategy and integrated digital marketing agency we have been helping clients with documentation and clarity on strategy for years. This has translated this to online ROI. But regardless of whether you use an agency or not, this data will point you in the right direction.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments. We will be happy to respond.