Another whitepaper, another survey, another yawn. A survey of more than 600 chief marketers released this week by the CMO Council and NetLine reveals that they are extremely dissatisfied with the direction and quality of the thought leadership content they distribute, leaving them with fewer quality leads than they’d like.
Only 12% of marketers believe that their internal content generation machines are strategically programmed to target the right prospects with relevant and persuasive content. The problems? Content processes are stakeholder-driven and ad hoc, sales and marketing teams are on different pages, and metrics lack strategic direction.
While three quarters of CMOs surveyed identified “number of views and downloads” as the key metric used to rate the quality of their content, they admitted they needed to find better yardsticks to help address the following issues:
- Not developing customized content for target audiences, named by 48%;
- lack of budget allocation to creating engaging, authoritative content (48%);
- not producing content relevant to different segments (44%);
- failure to reach decision-makers (43%); and
- not maximizing content distribution channels for maximum reach (39%).
“Syndication and distribution that targets audience groups and has measurable results is indispensable for a successful content strategy. The quantity and quality of audience-appropriate content directly correlates to the number of leads that will end up in the pipeline,” says NetLine CEO Robert Alvin.
On the positive side, 46% of those surveyed said they had made significant strides in realigning their marketing organizations to better support sales and improve selling cycles. A similar percentage said they will devote the biggest portion of their budgets in the coming year to lead generation and qualification.
