Marketers drowning under too much content

Half of surveyed senior marketers say their marketing organization has more content than they can manage.

Accenture just released a new report called “Content: The H2O of Marketing” that polled 1,078 senior marketers from 17 countries who work in 15 different business disciplines, ranging from finance to consumer packaged goods and retail.

“Content is arguably a marketer’s most vital natural resource: it fuels and sustains the marketing activities that connect businesses with customers and drive business outcomes. Content is to business what water is to life: an essential element for health and growth. ” – Accenture

But overall, the main message from this report is clear: we are generating more content than most can manage. We’ve often talked about how the consumer is flooded with content coming from left and right, well it seems marketers are themselves drowning in their own content.

Organizations need to work in making sure content is managed properly with workflows and processes. Content agency partners can also be key in making sure that quality and relevance are maintained throughout the chain because in the end, business objectives are key. Currently, only 45% reported that they are very confident that their digital content investments will achieve these business objectives, and with so much focus on the operational side of digital content management, just 16% analyze how content contributes to customer lifetime value.

We must all work together, marketers, agencies, producers in making sure that the content that is produced is relevant, that it serves a business objective, and that it is generated through a sustainable content strategy.

Take some time to read the executive summary of this Accenture report. And if you want, don’t hesitate to download the full report, it is also worth the read.