Are You Caught in the Content Marketing Efficiency Gap?

What it is and why you must plug it

Let’s face it. Technical and scientific content have become the bedrock of your marketing programs. We’re not breaking any glass here. The use of content as the fuel to drive the lead-generation engine is widely accepted. In a recent study, 82% of the marketing leaders surveyed believe content is important to achieve their marketing objectives.

So, here’s the breaking news. In the same study, only 1 in 2 respondents called their content either somewhat effective or not effective at all.¹ Imagine, half the marketing leaders thought their own content was either partially or totally worthless.

The pundits call this disparity between content importance and effectiveness the “content marketing efficiency gap.” The wider the gap, the lower the efficiency in the company’s content marketing program.

The study showed that while the size of the gap varied by industry (See table 1), it existed across all sectors. Marketing leaders in the technology industry really slammed their content, reporting the largest efficiency gap at -43.1 points. The financial services, health, and manufacturing industries had smaller efficiency gaps. But they still admitted that a significant disparity existed between the importance and effectiveness of their content.

Table 1: Content Efficiency Gap. Source: The New Marketing Standard: How Today’s Successful B2B Marketers Accelerate the Buyer’s Journey with Content, Heinz Marketing, November 2019.

This data should be sounding alarms across B2B land about the effectiveness of most lead-generation programs. To drive home the point, in another survey marketers cited the improvement of content quality and engagement as their number one challenge for improving sales lead quality.²