Content marketing is a fundamental aspect of excellent consumer experiences and plays a major role in bringing “moving parts” together to satisfy audiences, a new study by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) has found.
The study, titled ‘Enterprise Content Marketing 2020: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America’, has discovered a direct link between the deployment of engaging content and the quality of customer experiences.
The majority of enterprises delivering “optimal” customer experiences, throughout the engagement cycle, rate their content marketing efforts as either “very” or “extremely” successful.
There is then a big drop-off in the quality of experiences when marketers say that the content they publish does not meet these high standards.
CMI’s general manager Stephanie Stahl believes that content is central to “great” experiences and that a mix of news, blogs and infographics, for example, demonstrates that a brand is truly focused on its audience.
Stahl also noted that content helps to build trust and credibility and serves the wants and needs of customers at specific points in their respective journeys.
She added: “In fact, content marketing plays a huge role in a process with many moving parts that all work together to provide a seamless customer experience from start to finish.”
Enterprises are also becoming more strategic as 46% of respondents said that they have a documented strategy in place, which is a 10% improvement from a year ago.
While the scale and quality of content marketing efforts are trending upwards year on year, challenges still persist.
Almost two-thirds say that they find it difficult to coordinate activities across a range of departments and brands, a bugbear that was similarly frustrating for marketers in 2019.
There is also a desire to deliver even better content-driven experiences to customers during the next 12 months.
Just four in 10 said that they are satisfied with the quality of campaigns and agree that their enterprise is capable of delivering “optimal” experiences at all stages of a customer’s journey.
