Acceptance of Content as a Core Business Strategy
Thoughts from the 2021 Content Management & Strategy Survey published by Content Marketing Institute and Content Tech
The growing need for privacy has forced marketers to take first-party data seriously. In other words, they will have to interact and engage with the consumer more. Thereby forcing marketers to look at content as a core business strategy rather than publishing a few blog posts or ebooks.
Content as a Strategic Approach
Content Marketing Institute says that more respondents this year reported that their business views content as a core business strategy (81% vs. 72% last year).
In addition:
The level of proficiency with using technology to manage content increased (31% reported that their organization is expert/advanced vs. 25% last year).
Fewer reported that having enough skilled staff is a challenge (53% vs. 63% last year).
About the same percentage reported that their organization is extremely/very successful with content management (22%), and fewer reported minimal/no success (13% vs. 21% last year).
The above data sets are from the fifth annual 2021 Content Management & Strategy Survey published by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Content Tech. CMI emailed the survey invitations on April 7, 2021, and sent a reminder email on April 21, 2021. By April 29, 2021, respondents had returned 263 surveys.
78% indicated their organization takes a strategic approach to managing content; of those, 99% indicated they are involved (directly or indirectly) with some aspect of strategic content management in their organization.
CMI defines a strategic approach to managing content as an approach that involves setting up processes, people, and technology to better scale and deliver content with the intent to improve the overall customer experience.
And a content management strategy—a strategy that addresses issues such as how your organization plans, develops, organizes, distributes, manages, and governs content.
Elaborating more respondents shared that Content Creation(91%) and Content Marketing Strategy(90%) were the top two areas of involvement. There is hardly any difference but I am sceptical about marketers giving importance to strategy than execution.
And the top two reasons being - “lack of process” and “leadership hasn’t made it a priority”. 41% say that leaders don’t view content as something that needs to be strategically managed. I am not at all surprised.
Content Management Technology
When it comes to technology - the top two are email marketing software and social media publishing/analytics.
However, 42% said their organization doesn’t use its technology to its full potential, which is nearly identical to last year’s finding. This year, the survey also asked what is standing in the way.
The top three answers were integration issues, lack of training, and lack of communication.
Additionally, CMI asked respondents who said their organization had not yet acquired the right technology to manage content across the organization (33%) -
“What capability is your organization most lacking that you feel technology would help with?”
These were some of the responses from the respondents:
A centralized view of content, related assets, and performance across different channels.
A project management tool to manage workflows.
Ability to see publishing across channels and project management.
Being able to measure content-influenced revenues and tracking content usage and effectiveness.
And orchestrate a digital customer journey per industry.
Strategic Content Management Challenges
This year the top two challenges were communication among teams and having enough skilled staff. However, the percentage of those who said the skilled staff was a challenge decreased to 53% from 63%.
In addition:
Far more cited content production workflow as a challenge this year compared with last year (45% vs. 27%).
The percentage of those challenged with using UX design to improve the customer’s overall experience increased to 50% from 43%.
Three new challenges were added to the list this year (understanding the customer journey, implementing the right technology(ies), and ensuring that content creators across the organization follow the same guidelines).
Communication as a challenge will never go and we know why. “Understanding the customer journey” is important if we continue to think of content as a strategic business need. So if this trend continues it will grow as a challenge and I think it is good for the industry too.
The other being that only 50% appreciating the importance of UX to improve the overall experience has a customer with the organization. Content consumption is directly proportional to UX. Today it is one of the deciding factors on the relationship the customer is going to have with the organization.
CMI also asked respondents a fill-in question: If there was one thing you could do to improve your organization's success with managing content across the entire organization, what would it be?
The top answer was: “An understanding of priorities and a comprehensive strategy, together with improved communication across all marketing activities (remove all silos).”
Some of the others which focussed on a singular dashboard, process and editorial process were:
Have a content platform to keep everything organized.
A singular content management system across the organization that would provide transparency and collaboration, and an editorial platform for planning.
Implement a content editorial process and ensure all content is archived/tagged in the Digital Asset Management for easier access across the organization.
Have a visible dashboard into our content queue that anyone across the organization could access. While we have a Google doc and asana to track it, these views are too in the weeds for people in different departments.
Repeatable content structures for repurposing existing content.
More automated publishing of content and integration between our work management tool and our content system of record. The ability to automatically port taxonomy tags from creation to cataloguing, to publishing would be amazing!
Listing down action steps at the end of the report, Robert Rose, Chief Strategy Advisor, Content Marketing Institute says to marketers to own their owned-media properties like the product.
“Your website, blog, resource centre, or digital magazine is as important to your customer’s journey as the products and services you put into the marketplace—treat it as such. Each owned property deserves a managing editor, and to be budgeted and measured as a digital product”
Only 50% of respondents said their current content operating model is focused on content products (e.g., owned content marketing platforms such as websites, blogs, magazines, and resource centres).