By Frank Strong, Author of the blog, Sword and The ScriptMarketers are reporting better results stemming from content marketing. That’s according to a recent survey published by Ascend2 titled 2016 State of Content Marketing Survey Summary Report. The study found the vast majority of the 219 respondents to the June 2016 survey were fairly upbeat on content marketing effectiveness.While content marketing “is a time-consuming tactic that requires a commitment” a majority (66%) “consider their content marketing successful” when compared with the competition. More importantly, not only are businesses saying content marketing is effective, but that effectiveness is also improving:“A noteworthy share of companies (89%) say the effectiveness of their content marketing program is increasing, with more than one-third (35%) describing it as ‘increasing significantly.’”The survey demographics suggest the respondents were fairly senior with 57% holding director titles or above. In addition, responses were heavily weighted in the B2B segment with 69% of survey takers identifying as business-to-business.Ascend2 makes a range of studies from conversion rate optimization to marketing automation trends freely available in an online research library with registration.While this content marketing survey appears to be more of a flash or pulse survey, rather than a comprehensive investigation into the state of content marketing, it does identify an important shift in optimism.For example, at the tail end of 2015, the detailed B2B Content Marketing 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends found just 30% of respondents classify their content marketing efforts as effective or very effective. Since that figure was down eight percent from the previous year, the content marketing effectiveness found by the Ascend2 survey is noteworthy.

What’s Working in Content Marketing

It’s important to understand what marketing departments are trying to achieve with content marketing – to grasp why they think it’s effective. Marketing allegedly having success with lead generation (58%), customer engagement (55%) and brand awareness (46%) – the top three goals for content marketing in the Ascend2 study.When asked what is working in content marketing, respondents pointed to research reports (46%), blog posts (45%), and videos/podcasts (40%).I suspect we’d see slightly different results if survey broke out videos and podcast as separate answers. This is because mobile users will substitute short video over text on smaller screens while podcasting is filing “new found time” such as workouts, commutes and even routine chores.[author]About the Author: Frank Strong is a communications director with more than 15 years of experience in the high-tech sector. He previously served as director of public relations for Vocus, which developed marketing, PR and media monitoring software. He has held multiple roles both in-house with corporations, ranging from startups to global organizations, and with PR firms including the top 10 global firm Hill & Knowlton.[/author]