Research by integrated communications agency Waggener Edstrom found that expectations from content marketing by businesses in EMEA have been surpassed, with 90 percent noting a measurable impact from adopting a strategic approach to content marketing.
The survey of over 150 marketing and communication professionals responsible for decision-making across the EMEA gauged the respondents’ affirmation of the impact of strategic content marketing on increasing web traffic and sales leads.
As per research findings, the primary objective of employing a content marketing strategy currently involves proliferating brand awareness (85 percent), followed closely by driving customer engagement (79 percent) and generating sales leads (77 percent). However, there appear to be some misgivings among marketing professionals, with 38 percent still questioning whether content marketing can deliver measurable ROI and 18 percent expressing no intention of implementing a strategy of this variety.
The latter is owing to a number of barriers faced by effective implementation, including a lack of staff resources (63 percent), budgeting constraints (48 percent) and a deficiency of expertise in content creation (41 percent).
Chris Talago, Executive Vice President and General Manager EMEA at Waggener Edstrom, stated: “Content marketing offers a way to engage your audiences and proves your business’ worth as a trusted source of information. It has had a transformative effect on the way brands reach and retain their customers, but with so many voices, getting to grips with content marketing best practice is not easy. Our research suggests that businesses are starting to understand the potential ROI content marketing can generate, but before this impact is fully realized, factors including budget and staffing need to be addressed.”
As measurability continues to drive marketing decision-making, over three-quarters (83 percent) of survey respondents disclose their utilisation of web traffic statistics to assess the effectiveness of content, followed by media coverage (67 percent) and click analysis (56 percent).
Ricardo Adame, Corporate Vice President of global communications at AVG Technologies, commented: “Measurement has always been key to demonstrating success of communications and marketing programmes, but I would argue that particularly for content marketing there is an opportunity to be even more accurate. By defining our metrics carefully and building in additional measures to provide context, a detailed picture is created that enables us to measure the ROI after a campaign has completed and adjust our approach during its lifespan to achieve maximum impact.”
