Followers of Ascend2 can’t help but notice the staggering amount of research the company produces about all things marketing. It’s a practice-what-you-preach approach, as Ascend2 is a leading marketing solutions company; no doubt the research it produces adds to the company’s legitimacy among clients, increases the share ability of its content and gets it plenty of coverage in marketing trade journals.

The latest piece of research, Content Marketing Trends, is no exception, and is full of insights that will help marketing professionals better understand the industry. It was based on interviews with 290 marketing, sales and business professionals from around the world.

Although it’s worth reading the report in full, here are three key points it makes (illustrations taken from original report):

1. Half of companies don’t plan to increase content marketing budget

The challenge with a budget constraint, then, is to work out how to ‘rise above the noise’ when so many companies are creating content

2.  Lack of content creation resource is the most challenging obstacle

Too few content creators and the lack of an efficient strategy are major obstacles in content creation success, more so than money:

 

3. Written articles are far more valuable than they are difficult to create

Facebook and Twitter might be taking on the likes of YouTube in video, but in content marketing, the written word is seen as both easy and effective. Compare these two graphs made from the survey data.

 

 

 

 

Notice a difference? The most effective types of content are generally the most difficult to create – with one exception: articles (including blog posts).

Perhaps this isn’t surprising; articles can be written in-house (admittedly, to varying quality), and should be in-depth enough to draw readers’ interests – perhaps a shared enterprise between a company’s marketing team and topic specialist.

To download the full report, click here.