Ironically, I first met Tommy Walker at a Cocktail Hour in Boston.
Later this month, we’ll release a podcast episode with him as the guest on … The Content Cocktail Hour (like and subscribe!).
We don’t have a drinking problem. We do have a content problem.
Tommy and The Content Studio dug into that with their most recent report: The State of (Dis)Content.
Tommy felt a rising sense of discomfort with content marketers. More than just sitting with it, he wanted to quantify it and help marketers (and marketing teams) take action on fixing it. When he first reached out to me, I remember feeling a weight being lifted from my shoulders.
"It’s not just me,” I remember thinking. It was a real problem that we were all feeling and finally, somebody would make it real.
But it’s not an easy process or a light project. To do this right, The Content Studio needed to:
- Carefully craft a survey
- Distribute the survey (This is where The Juice helped!)
- Get enough responses to be statistically significant
- Evaluate the responses
- Make sense of the responses
- Craft the narrative
- Bring the report together
- Distribute the results (This is where we’re helping again)
If you’re interested in learning more about the process of creating this content, stay tuned! That’s at the core of our upcoming podcast episode.
Tommy sent me a draft of the report before it’s release. Admittedly, my first reaction was not good. The report was 200 slides long. There’s no way anybody would want to read 200 slides worth of B2B Content. Alas, I opened the report and started clicking through slides.
Before I knew it, I was on slide 218, wondering why there wasn’t more?! Along the way, there several data points and themes that caught my attention. These are these are the learnings that were highlighted, scribbled on, dog-eared, and shared with the team.
My 6 learnings from The State of (Dis)Content Report:
- 67.2% of respondents had a positive sentiment towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) [slide 15]
- 12 months ago, I suspect this number would have been much lower. When generative AI first became broadly available, many marketers feared it would replace our jobs. Now, we’ve learned tha AI can be an operational efficiency and allow more time for human creativity.
- 12 months ago, I suspect this number would have been much lower. When generative AI first became broadly available, many marketers feared it would replace our jobs. Now, we’ve learned tha AI can be an operational efficiency and allow more time for human creativity.
- The second biggest problem content marketers are facing is content and audience matching [slide 24]
- It is absolutely wild to me that B2B marketers are still facing this challenge. In every other medium, there’s an engine that pairs buyer and seller or creator and consumer. Yet, in content marketing we’re creating and praying. This is a big reason why we created The Juice. Our recommendation engine automatically pairs your content with the right consumer.
- 72% of company management is, at least, mostly bought in [slide 26]
- At first glance, this is a great number. But then you realize it’s a bit of a sliding scale. As company size grows, management is less bought in. It’s counterintuitive…In the early days, we all know content is important to help us grow into a big company. But then once the company is big, it’s less important?! C’mon leadership.
- Customer interviews are the 2nd most popular research technique [slide 100] …
- ...and that’s one spot too low. A big theme from this report is that audience research is critical for performance and satisfaction. I am convinced that the absolute best research method is talking and listening to customers. There’s no excuse not to. Listen to recordings, collaborate with customers, create content for customers. Marketers should be spending a lot of time with customers. Make it happen.
- Leadership that “doesn’t see the point of content” focuses on volume and velocity [slide 152]
- No surprise here. Leaders that don’t understand content just focus on vanity metrics like how much content is being created. Marketers, if you’re in this position you have to find ways to show your impact that isn’t quantity or honestly…look for a new company.
- Larger companies have less creative content, worse goals, but more compensation [slide 171]
- I’ve connected a few dots here. But I think it’s important for marketers making career decisions. There are tradeoffs with working in smaller, perhaps more chaotic environments, and tradeoffs with working at larger, perhaps more bureaucratic organizations. This report does a great job of displaying that with real data. Plan accordingly.
These are just six data points that stood out to me from the report. I’d encourage you to check it out for yourself. It’s full of data points that can help you build your strategy, lead your team, grow your business, and become a little less (dis)content along the way.
