• by Ray Schultz , June 8, 2018

Email continues to dominate content marketing. But brands are having trouble measuring success, and only a fifth grasp best practices, according to a new study by Zazzle Media, a UK service provider.  

This finding is troubling, given that content is now comprising 23% of the average marketing budget. 

Of the hundreds of decision makers polled, 52% say it’s a challenge to produce engage content. In addition, 43% cite lack of budget as an obstacle and 42% complain that it's difficult to measure the ROI of content marketing campaigns.

Only 20% rate themselves as advanced in content marketing, and 52% as mid-level. And 28% say they have basic skills. Only 45% link their content program to all other parts of the business.  

The top channel is written content , which presumably means print — it is used by 88%. Email, in second place, is relied on by 80%. Organic social is next at 78%, and SEO comes in fourth at 75%.

At the same time, 59% use video. But only 6% are using virtual reality and 3% are using voice search, a relatively new technology.

Of those polled, 75% use increased website traffic as a metric. In addition, 45% measure improved SEO rankings and  33% brand lift.

But they’re spending on content — 85% expect to allocate more in the next year, with 52% expecting a significant rise.  And 60% see content as a key part of their marketing strategy.

In social media, Twitter is used by 91%, Facebook by 87%. In addition, LinkedIn is utilized by 78% and YouTube by 60%.