Göttingen. Companies certify a great future potential for content marketing, however, they are not yet satisfied with the implementation of campaigns and internal processes. The success measurement is also still in its infancy. These are among the results of a new study by Prof. Dr. Hans-Christian Riekhof and Teresa Jacobi from the PFH Private University of Göttingen.
Content marketing, the way to address target groups with informative, advisory or entertaining content, is being intensively discussed across industries. However, the study situation in Germany is still quite thin. The study “Content Marketing Strategies in Corporate Practice” now provides insights.
165 companies participated in the present study of PFH Göttingen. The authors surveyed these in the period from November 2015 to January 2016. “About half of the companies surveyed make content marketing a fixed part of marketing communication. One can say with some justification: Content marketing has arrived in practice”, says Prof. Dr. Hans-Christian Riekhof, Professor of International Marketing at PFH.
The most important findings
In more than half of the companies surveyed, content marketing has already become a fixed part of corporate communication – for 16 percent of large companies it is even one of the central elements of marketing communication. 52 percent of large companies state that content marketing has a very high future potential. However: Only every fifth of the large companies has a written, adopted strategy concept for this.
Only a small part of the companies have separate budgets for content marketing today. 80 percent of large companies and more than half of medium/small companies say, however, that the budget for this will be much higher or higher in the future.
Where do the ideas for the stories that content marketing lives on come from? The most important idea supplier today is the marketing/sales area with 80 percent of the mentions. Customers as well as research and development are mentioned by 37 percent of companies each – presumably there are untapped potentials for exciting stories here. Thematically, products most often determine content marketing. They are in first place with 71 percent of the mentions. “This is obvious on the one hand, on the other hand, other topic areas such as events, employees, customers or even corporate values may have a high potential to develop good and attention-grabbing stories”, says Riekhof.
Success measurement is new territory
The success measurement for content marketing is still in its infancy, and the cross-channel efficiency comparison only takes place regularly and standardized in a few companies. The media performance of content marketing campaigns is not evaluated in the vast majority of companies, neither in the form of the key figure thousand-contact-price nor in the form of saved media services. The great economic advantage of content marketing is therefore not systematically recorded.
Whether content marketing will actually become a new paradigm for all marketing theory and practice, as some responsible people predict, will have to be seen in the coming years. “It apparently has a considerable potential to do so, as our study shows”, Riekhof concludes.
The study is available for download at www.pfh.de/studien.
Methodological background of the study
The authors conducted the empirical investigation using a questionnaire that addresses the five mentioned building blocks of the content marketing process. This includes 24 substantive questions as well as eight further questions about the responding person and the company surveyed. The survey took place in the period from November 24, 2015 to January 31, 2016. 1,850 company representatives received the questionnaire, 165 companies participated in the survey. The response rate is thus 8.9 percent. This study cannot and does not want to claim representativeness. Nevertheless, when looking at the results, it becomes apparent that a good cross-section of industries was achieved in the responses. Furthermore, companies of various sizes were also included, so that initial insights can also be gained here.
