In 2007, I wrote the cover story for the premiere edition of Content, a magazine produced by the Custom Publishing Council, surveying the state of the industry. Eight years isn't that long ago culturally - both "Mad Men" and the iPhone had made their debuts - but this sentence I used to sum up the disruption that was clearly on the content horizon seems as dated as the BlackBerry "device" you were probably using then: "It won't be long before consumers are using cell phones to scan a barcode that will instantly yield both a recipe for the product and …

In this era of preference marketing, buyers are in control. When online information became ubiquitous, the customer suddenly didn't have to simply accept what marketing delivered; she now had choices. To win her business, we need to create a connection that goes well beyond a transactional relationship. To me, that's the rationale behind content marketing: instead of an organization broadcasting inward-focused messages, it must deliver value to the marketplace in order to create the customer connection.

Just about everyone has embraced content marketing. And some people are even succeeding with it. However, a shockingly high percentage of B2B content marketers report that it really isn't going all that well. According to a recent Content Marketing Institute study, just 38% of content marketers say their efforts are effective. Which means that almost two-thirds of content marketers are coming up short. Why is that?

How many million marketing dollars will Coca Cola have to spend to make us believe it's in the business of promoting good health, instead of pushing a constant craving for its sugar- and chemical-laden drinks?