Report: 99% of Companies Now Use Data to Produce Marketing Content

New research suggests that data is becoming more critical to the content marketing strategies of enterprises. The “2016 State of Digital Content” report from Altimeter revealed that 99 percent of companies use some form of data to produce relevant content.

Social media metrics (65 percent) and website analytics (63 percent) were the most used by businesses for content marketing.

In general, 38 percent of enterprises agree that they create marketing content based on data from a wide variety of sources. The researchers believe this is making it challenging for marketers to understand their target audience.

“Unifying data to create an accurate picture of the customer and their needs continues to be a challenge, not just for content strategy, but for teams that are focused on the entire, unified customer experience,” the authors wrote in the report.

However, about 39 percent of companies agree they can now tie their content marketing efforts to revenue generation. Furthermore, 41 percent have a content strategy that spans across their organization.

Proving the Value of B2B Marketing Initiatives

At the beginning of 2016, B2B marketers made it an objective to show how their efforts are contributing to their companies as a whole. The “Assessment of Excellence in Marketing” report from Fanatics Media found that 35 percent of medium-sized B2B organizations made it a priority to improve their marketing ROI earlier this year.

At the time, the majority of B2B marketers (61 percent) claimed that their company was putting less than 10 percent of annual revenue toward marketing initiatives. Forty percent of mid-sized B2B marketers said they need email marketing to be more successful, while 41 percent of enterprise B2B marketers stated the same.