Survey: 50% of Marketers Have a Strategy in Place to Produce Thought Leadership Content

New research shows that many marketers are strategizing to build thought leadership through content, but they still face several challenges along the way.

Ascend2 recently looked at how many marketers are producing content for thought leadership for its “Building Thought Leadership with Content” survey. Statistics showed that the majority of marketers (50%) have a strategy in place to produce thought leadership content.

However, this does not come without challenges, according to the survey results. Most respondents (52%) said that they have trouble producing the right content, while 40% are finding it difficult to produce enough content. About 31% are lacking budget, and the same percentage are facing difficulty aligning sales and marketing.

That being said, 65% of respondents said that they have been at least “somewhat successful” in their content marketing endeavors thus far. About 26% of the best-in-class marketers say that they have been “very successful.”

The Diminishing Gap Between Marketing and Sales

Marketing and sales have not always worked close together, even for initiatives such as building thought leadership through content. However, previous research suggests that the gap between these two teams is diminishing.

LinkedIn published its “State of Sales” ebook, and statistics showed that overall, the number of salespeople who work “very closely” or “closely” with marketing has grown by 35% since 2016.

On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the largest), top sales performers rated marketing’s importance in closing deals at an eight or above.