B2B content marketers are hiding behind false excuses for their content marketing challenges.

According to Curata’s survey, now nearly a year old, B2B content marketers’ biggest challenges are limited budget (27%), limited staff (25%) and creating enough new content (21%). (source)

In the Content Marketing Institute’s 2013 benchmarks (released in October 2012, in addition to content they mastered time travel), the top challenges are producing enough content (64%), producing the kind of content that engages the audience (52%) and producing a variety of content (45%).

Only 39% report a lack of budget. At the very bottom of the list are lack of buy-in/vision (22%) and finding trained content marketers (14%). (source) Similarly, the Curata survey shows only 7% say senior level buy-in is their biggest challenge.

The content marketing community is misleading itself. The real root problems aren’t producing enough content, limited budgets or staff, particularly as only 14% have problems hiring!

Here is the real problem: organizations are not on board with content marketing as a core B2B marketing initiative. All of the other content marketing challenges research continues to point to are merely symptoms.

When push comes to shove, a little bit of a national advertising budget can fund a lot of content marketing, but it isn’t a priority. If they did, simply creating content wouldn’t be the top challenge. Instead, challenges like integration, measurement or keeping up with changes in the market would rise to the top.

How did we get here?

1. We said content marketing was cheap. I’ve said before, if content marketing is really that cost effective today, it will become more expensive in the future. Your organization was on board when it was cheap, when you could drive results with thoughtless blog posts slammed out in 10 minutes or created by an offshore SEO company. Now that cheap content doesn’t work, the real lack of commitment is shining through.
2. Content was a supporting element only. Content was part of SEO, social or a crazy skunkworks company blog experiment. It was necessary to feed your newsletter or nurture programs through your marketing automation platform. It supported your sales team. You never had to justify the investment in content for content marketing’s sake.

Addressing the challenges content marketing faces today will require addressing the underlying issue that content, all rhetoric from bloggers and trade publications aside (notably people in the content business), isn’t really the priority they claim it is.

Your Turn

Why do you think content marketing landed in this position? Share your view in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

B2B Content Marketing Challenges is from CMI’s 2013 Benchmark Report