3 Harsh Realities Every Marketer Faces When it Comes to Content… and How to Solve Them

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Content is king… or so they say. But the hardest part is effectively measuring it’s return on investment. Whether you are in manufacturing, technology, healthcare, banking, or another industry, the problem is apparent. A recent study from Sirius Decisions states companies are spending tons of money on content; small companies – $175,000, medium companies – $4 million and large companies – $8.2 million.

Here’s a question to ask yourself: Is that content getting used? Beyond marketing, is sales using it?

While we know that you and your teams are already well underway on your content strategy for 2017, here are 3 harsh realities that many businesses need to recognize they face and find a solution to fix them.

      1. Content is Scattered Everywhere.

        In our discussions with clients across various industries, the biggest and most simple (yet complex) problem is content is everywhere. From your Sharepoint site, Dropbox, local computers, hard drives and more… it’s long lost most of the time. On top of that, how do you know if the content you have in hand is the most up to date? More than 60% of marketing collateral goes unused by B2B sales reps, at a cost of nearly $2.3M per year for 3 reasons:

        1. They don’t know it exists
        2. They can’t find it
        3. It’s not relevant to their buyer


        Lesson:         A single easy-to-access location (for BOTH sales and marketing) is key.

      2. Content Tagging is Time Consuming.

        Oh, the dreaded task of content tagging – you hate doing it but you know you have to as it allows for your sales team to be able to filter and find the right content for each buyer conversation. It’s a time intensive process and in addition, who knows if the tags you decide to use are really the right ones?

        Lesson: Take the time to tag your content but keep it down to the most relevant tags for filtration – whether it’s categorizing against buyer journey, product family, vertical, or content type. By allowing sales to filter and find the right content in each buyer decision they in turn help potential customers make decisions at a faster pace.

      3. Content Performance is Hard to Measure.

        Many marketing teams have little to no visibility into which content performs best (or worst) to improve their processes. And when it comes to the content creation, the question you constantly ask is “is my content spend appropriate?” You know 50% of your content is useless, the problem is, you don’t know which 50%.

        Lesson: Understand how your sales team, prospects and customers are accessing and using your content. Know which content is being viewed and how often. All of this will help you decide which content to reuse or change to ultimately reduce costs and see increased ROI.