Digital lead generation through content marketing was once viewed as an expensive and unproven technique. As recently as 2010, surveys showed that up to a third of executives were unsure that the strategies were worth their time according to a recent article by Nicholas Kinports.
That’s not far from the results that we got when we surveyed 190 U.S. and Canadian marketers with the title CMO, Vice President, Sr. Vice President, or Director of Marketing several months ago. In our survey, 45% of the marketers surveyed said that they used content marketing as a lead generation tool, but 55% did not.
by a company blog.
Placing by-lined articles or subject-matter expert papers in the trade or general media ranked third – a surprise, since nearly all of the companies in our survey were large, public companies with both in-house and agency PR expertise available.
Among the marketing executives who said that they did not have a content marketing strategy, the biggest barrier to adoption was perceived cost in both time and dollars. Over a third of the marketers we surveyed said that they lacked in-house content marketing expertise, and would have to hire an outside resource to create appropriate content.
What about you? Do you have a content marketing strategy in place for 2012? If not, what barriers are preventing you from adopting this extension to your traditional marketing mix?