Despite the effectiveness of documenting a content marketing strategy, many marketers opt to do without.
Content marketing has become an online marketing strategy that almost every company employs. Data has shown time and time again how effective content marketing is, and search engines such as Google make use of algorithms that reward webpages with high quality content. However, even though the use of content marketing is increasing, very few companies actually document their strategies.
In fact, out of the 83 percent of companies that responded that they were using a content marketing strategy in a recent survey, only 35 percent responded that they documented their strategy. This is unfortunate because it’s been shown that companies that do document their content marketing strategies tend to run a much more effective campaign.
Confidence in Content Marketing
There are a lot of reasons why you should be documenting your content marketing strategy. One of those reasons is confidence. Companies that document their content marketing strategy tend to be way more confident in their strategy than those that don’t. Just take the following for example:
- Companies that document their strategy are more likely to consider themselves as effective content marketers than companies that don’t.
- Companies that document their strategy find content marketing to be a much less challenging task – in every aspect of content marketing – than companies that don’t.
- Companies that document their strategy consider themselves more effective at all content marketing tactics, including the use of social media.
- Companies that document their strategy have an easier time justifying the allocation of a higher percentage of their total marketing budget towards their content marketing strategy.
Organization Leads to Stronger Marketing
One of the main benefits of documenting your content marketing strategy is that you’ll be much more organized. The better organized your strategy is, the more you can do. The following data supports this:
- 60 percent of companies that documented their strategy reported that they believed organization was effective for content marketing. Only 32 percent of companies with a verbal strategy and 7 percent of companies of companies with no strategy believed this.
- 62 percent of companies that documented their strategy responded that their strategy very closely guided their efforts. Only 28 percent of companies with a verbal strategy reported to have closely followed their strategy. In fact, 62 percent of companies with a verbal strategy responded that their content marketing strategy only somewhat guided their content marketing efforts.
- 69 percent of companies that documented their strategy make use of a dedicated content marketing group compared to 40 percent of companies using a verbal strategy and 15 percent of companies that have no strategy at all.
- Companies that documented their strategy used 14 different content marketing tactics, while companies using verbal strategies only used 12 tactics and companies with no strategy used only 11 tactics.
- 55 percent of companies that documented their strategy release new content every day or multiple times a week. Only 37 percent of companies with a verbal strategy do this, while only 16 percent of companies with no strategy do this.
Improved Effectiveness in Tracking Results
It’s much harder to track how your content is performing if your strategy isn’t documented. Knowing how your content marketing strategies are working are vital to success. Without a clear idea of what is and what isn’t working, you are just wasting resources. Not to mention that being able to see what isn’t working about your strategy allows you to adjust it on the fly.
- 35 percent of companies that documented their content marketing strategy responded that they were successful at tracking their ROI (return on investment). This may not seem like a large percentage, but it’s a huge improvement over the 26 percent of companies using only a verbal content marketing strategy and the 5 percent of companies that had no strategy that reported any success in tracking their ROI.
- Only 38 percent of companies that documented their strategy responded that they were challenged with measuring the effectiveness of their strategy, whereas 51 percent of companies using a verbal strategy and 67 percent of companies with no strategy struggled with this issue.
Content Marketing Has Broadened
Content marketing goes beyond just releasing content on a blog stuffed with keywords. There are so many tactics that can be employed in your content marketing strategy that documenting your strategy just makes too much sense to ignore. Consider the fact that 92 percent of companies use social media, 83 percent create newsletters, 81 percent produce articles for their website and 80 percent produce blogs. These are just a few of the tactics available – keeping track of your content marketing strategy is vital and the best way to do that is to document it.
