Study: Marketers Struggling to Align Content Strategy With Business Goals

A new study by Forbes Insights and PwC reveals many companies are struggling to align content strategies with overall business priorities.

The data shows that executives rank brand development (54 percent) as their number one priority, yet only 40 percent identify related content goals, such as differentiating the brand and creating brand advocates, as a priority. Similarly, 46 percent of respondents prioritize customer engagement, yet only 25 percent focus on personalized customer experiences in their content strategy.

However, the need for personalization of the customer experience is widely understood: 94 percent of the 369 marketing executives surveyed call it critical or important to reaching customers.

To build out personalization capabilities, 58 percent of companies say they are building strong data collection and analytics. Other methods include faster content creation and distribution (48 percent), better real-time targeting of content (43 percent) and moving to a real-time view of the customer (40 percent).

Key Practices To Content Personalization

Based on the survey results, as well as interviews, researchers identified a five-step process leading organizations are using to refine their content marketing strategies: (1) Develop a content strategy that focuses on business priorities, (2) appoint a content champion to drive the strategy, (3) leverage data to know customers better, (4) invest in content marketing capabilities and (5) continually measure, adapt and optimize content strategies.

“Content needs are exploding as we move to a world of precision marketing and 24/7 engagement,” says Alison Lewis, chief marketing officer at Johnson & Johnson, who took part in the study. “Getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time has never been easier, driven by digital and data.”

Personalization Offers Opportunity for B2B Marketers

Customer experience, personalization, and big data hold the most promise for B2B marketing over the next five years, according to a July 2015 study by Adobe and Econsultancy.

Nearly a quarter of B2B respondents (22 percent) named customer experience as the greatest opportunity; followed by personalization (16 percent) and big data (13 percent). These responses matched up with B2C marketers, indicating digital tactics for both segments are converging.