Content Marketing Effective for Lead Gen But Most Difficult Tactic to Execute [Study]

A recent study shows that content marketing and email marketing have emerged as two of the most effective lead generation tactics — while social media is getting left in the dust.

Effective doesn’t necessarily mean easy, though. While email marketing is relatively straightforward, marketers feel the time and resources needed to make content marketing work make it the most difficult tactic to execute.

Ascend2’s Lead Generation Strategy Research Report asked 375 marketing, sales and business professionals about the tactics they use to generate demand from their increasingly sophisticated audience. It highlights interesting trends about the lead generation strategies they use and the challenges they run into.

What marketing tactics work?

Paid search and online ads don’t work well but, in addition to email and content marketing, the survey shows that company websites and SEO hold their weight.

There isn’t much here that we didn’t already know about. The real surprise is how the pros rank these tactics according to difficulty.

Tactics marketers struggle with

Nearly half (48%) of the surveyed professionals ranked content marketing as the most difficult to employ effectively. Social media marketing came a close second at 43% — ahead of SEO, which is generally viewed as a more specialized task.

What’s driving these results?

You can see right away what makes the company website and email marketing so popular: strong results without too much effort.

Could this be due to the fact that email and website marketing are more often outsourced? I’m not sure I agree at all that email and website marketing are easy – in fact, I think that a lot of marketers are doing a lousy job of email marketing in general, which is why they might think it’s easy. Done correctly, email these days is a science and extremely sophisticated. And the payoff when treating it this way, and as an integral part of lead generation efforts, can be huge. Ascend2’s report doesn’t delve into the whys on this topic, but it would be interesting to know more.

Here’s some additional interesting data:

• More than half (56%) of companies surveyed said they outsource at least part of their lead generation tactics.
• A quarter of respondents said that their cost per lead (CPL) is increasing; just one in five said the CPL is decreasing.
• 85% of respondents said that they already use marketing software for lead generation, or plan to use it in the future.

Meanwhile, social media marketing doesn’t appear to be worth the bother for many — and I think that’s a big mistake.

Content marketing is a vital element of any marketing strategy, and it goes hand in hand with social media marketing — both putting your great content in front of your target audience and boosting your SEO. Smart marketers know that SEO, user experience, content, and social media all work together.

It’s a real shame that they’re both seen as difficult concepts to execute by so many; changing that mindset could prove to be profitable for those who take steps to correct the situation.

The smart option, of course is to realize you might not be able to do it all yourself and outsource some of your content needs. I’d be remiss if I didn’t raise my hand here and say “this is what we do, people, and we can help you if you want it.” Content operations are hard, and sometimes finding the right people to work with who can augment your team and your overall efforts can fast track you to some terrific results.

The other thing that outsourcing for awhile can do is to teach your team by example. Letting them work alongside a vendor or consultant is a great way to effect hands on learning, and you can accomplish two things at once going that route.

Another thing you can do is to learn how to integrate Agile into your content planning and development efforts. Agile is a way to streamline your processes and make them more manageable, even for smaller teams with fewer resources. We’re big fans of Agile as part of the content process and I think that the more you learn about it and how it could potentially help you, you might be, too. It’s certainly given me food for thought as a positive way to reduce the difficulty of producing content while also maintaining its lead generating effectiveness.

You can find more details about Ascend2’s survey by downloading the full Lead Generation Strategy Research Summary Report. (Registration required.)

Where do you stand on lead generation tactics? Do you agree that content and social media marketing are difficult strategies to execute? Do you prefer to outsource or are you learning to implement an Agile approach? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Graphics attribution – Ascend2 and research partners.

Other resources on this topic:

A Guide to Getting Started with Agile in Your Content Marketing Efforts

Is Content Marketing Worth the Squeeze? 61% of Consumers Prefer It

10 Ways To Create Contagious Content for Your Social Media Marketing

Photo Credit: Live Contact Leads via Compfight cc

This article was originally published on LinkedIn

Content Marketing Effective for Lead Gen But Most Difficult Tactic to Execute [Study] is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency