Branded content has undoubtedly changed the game for marketers. Using professionally generated content to engage your consumers is one of the most effective ways to deliver a message to your audience. However, anyone that has been involved in the creation of content knows that it is not without its challenges.

Getting access to the right creator or the right idea isn’t the issue, it’s the inefficiency of creating the content itself. The added complexity of multiple stakeholders, approvals and objectives means that more often than not your content is delayed from being published.

According to research completed by Gleanster, having an inefficient content production and management process is resulting in as much as $958M each year (in the US) in wasted spending. These funds could be better deployed, ensuring greater return to your overall marketing investment.

The 3,408 B2B companies that were surveyed indicated that the most significant challenge was managing the overall content production process.

What Are The Top Three Overall Challenges That Cause You To Struggle With Content Marketing Activities?

Source: Gleanster 2016

This results in $0.25 of every dollar that is spent on content marketing in the average B2B company being wasted on inefficient content operations. Can you imagine what would be possible if you were to free up an additional 25% of your content marketing budget or resources?

Delving deeper below the surface, the study also explored the most common reasons for inefficiencies and delays. It found that 52% of companies undertaking content marketing initiatives frequently missed deadlines due to approval delays, collaboration breakdowns and ‘general chaos’ in the production process.

When You Miss Deadlines, What Are The Top Reasons You Miss Them?

Source: Gleanster 2016

When all of this is taken into consideration, it means that as much as two thirds of internal marketing resources are consumed by day-to-day content production processes. Whilst technology lacks the skills and nuances to be able to create content, it can help mediate the process and make the operation easier for teams.

This creates two options for companies:

  • Using Workflow Management Tools Such As Trello, Asana etc.

These will get you part of the way, but are not purpose built and will still leave you exposed and require you to fall back on word processing software. Worst of all, these tools still leave you reliant on email (content marketing’s worst enemy) for feedback and approvals.

Fabulate’s own research has uncovered that as many as 7-15 people are involved in any content marketing campaign. These people will make more than 20 telephone calls and send an average of 140 emails throughout the production process. Ironically, more is written in the content creation process than is produced in the actual content piece itself.

Layering workflow management tools on to existing technology creates additional complexity and only further slows down the process.

  • Using Content Marketing Platforms Such as Fabulate, Contently and NewsCred

These are advanced, cloud based solutions that manage the end-to-end content process from pitch through to publish. All platforms make collaboration possible, whilst keeping each member of the content creation process accountable.

Gleanster found that through the use of content marketing operations and platforms, companies were able to produce 300% more content per year and deliver 240% faster content cycles. This also meant that using technology to mediate the process resulted in a single human resource being able to produce twice as much as those who do not use these platforms.

The challenge with most of these platforms is they are bloated with excess features that will never be used in order to justify the high upfront SaaS (Software as a Service) subscription cost. In some instances you could be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, before you actually produce any content.

The Fabulate platform has been created to be a PAYG (pay as you go) service. Fabulate offers the same core features as the other platforms, without the expensive monthly subscription cost. This means that every dollar spent is on the creation of content.

In order for content marketing to be effective you need the right balance of talent, content and an efficient process. Think of what you could do with 25% more resources, or what you could achieve if you could produce more content more quickly? Getting the right technology solution can deliver real tangible results and give you the edge on your competitors.

Contact the team at Fabulate to understand how we can start helping solve your content marketing challenges.