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C O N T E N T M A R K E T I N G I N S T I T U T E E x ecuti v e R esearc h S eries
The State of Content Marketing
Operations for the Enterprise:
Research on the Process, Team, Budget and
Content Marketing Effectiveness

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OVERVIEW
A
s more companies have adopted content
marketing, one challenge remains pronounced:
How should marketing leaders operationalize
and scale this nascent discipline? They need a structure
that will help them with everything from creating content
their audience truly values, to distributing it in places
where their customers and prospects are, to continually
measuring what works so they can refine their processes.
While organizations of every size need to figure this
out, this challenge is more complex for enterprise
organizations, as they are charged with collaborating and
proving value at so many different levels of the company.
Additionally, subject matter experts, whose input is so
critical to content creation, may be scattered throughout
the company.
While there is no one right way to structure a content
marketing team — and in fact we found substantial
variances in team structures as they exist today — a
hybrid structure appears to be emerging in which certain
aspects of content marketing are centralized (such as the
identification of key themes/topics and the production of
content), while other aspects are decentralized (such as
the execution of programs by the business unit that has
the subject matter expertise or the geography).
In short, while many leaders are making tangible progress
in these areas — and there are many who feel they are
effective — there is also palpable frustration as these
leaders struggle to truly transform their marketing, which
requires them to transform their cultures.
This report specifically looks at
the following areas:
 Organizational challenges
 Team composition and integration
 Budgets and distribution
 Content marketing effectiveness
Methodology: About the CMI
Executive Research Series
In Spring 2014, Content Marketing Institute
(CMI) embarked on a qualitative research
project to develop a deeper understanding
of how enterprise marketers are
approaching content marketing. Topics
addressed included operations/team
structure, international strategy, budgets,
effectiveness, challenges, successes, and
what the marketing department of the
future might look like.
CMI partnered with Market Dynamics
LLC, which conducted interviews with 27
senior-level enterprise (1,000+ employees)
marketers actively engaged in content
marketing strategy and/or content
marketing in their organizations. The
interviews took place between April and
May 2014 and comprised marketers from
both business-to-business (B2B) and
business-to-consumer (B2C) companies.
The State of Content Marketing Operations
for the Enterprise is the first of two reports
that will synthesize the information
gathered from those interviews, along
with insights gleaned during the inaugural
CMI Executive Forum 2014 — a two-day
gathering in May 2014 of 40 enterprise
marketing leaders (some of whom also
participated in the qualitative interviews).
Quotes that are included throughout are
those from participants.
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3.
CONTENT MARKETING
REQUIRES A DELIBERATE SHIFT
IN ORGANIZATIONAL MINDSET
The efforts of our interviewees suggested that to embrace content
marketing as a strategy, teams — and ultimately the whole
organization — must change the way they think and function. As
a result, these marketing leaders needed to address the following
challenges (among others) as they structured their organizations and
processes around content marketing:
Getting buy-in: More than one-third of the marketing leaders
interviewed mentioned a lack of buy-in around content marketing
from their management, which ultimately affected if and how they got
support from other teams. This was a substantial hindrance, as the
transition to content marketing can be difficult for companies to make.
Bridging silos: Despite a common interest in compelling content,
different groups still have different goals. A customer-facing team may
be generating content to increase revenue per client, while a separate
marketing group may be focused on driving overall traffic for lead
development. Add to this a classic lack of internal communication and
you’ve got the inevitable makings of cross-purposes, rework, and other
inefficiencies.
Closing the skills gap: Structuring a content marketing team
is a relatively new requirement in many organizations. There are many
skills needed to manage and measure an editorial process, such as the ability to create and manage
a calendar, to optimize content for various channels, and to efficiently repurpose content. These
are different skills than the ones that many traditional marketers possess, such as product-focused
marketing and media planning.
Developing subject matter expertise: Those with the first-hand knowledge
necessary to create unique, relevant content are scattered throughout the company and attending
to — and measured on — the distinct goals of their day jobs. Many subject matter experts are not
writers, and because of this, it can be difficult to get help in developing content.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES
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4.
CONTENT MARKETING INHERENTLY DEMANDS MORE
COLLABORATION THAN TRADITIONAL MARKETING
Unlike advertising or other traditional approaches,
content marketing simply isn’t a function that
organizations can relegate to and contain within the
marketing department.
In most cases, the responsibility for content marketing
— regardless of whether there is a formal team —
sits within marketing. However, content marketing
inevitably involves significant participation by many
parts of the organization, especially when looking for
subject matter expertise, sourcing brand stories, or
supplying company channels with the content itself.
Create cross-functional teams:
More than two-thirds of participants said they
receive content from product marketing, but they
also collectively catalogued a whole host of other
contributors throughout their organizations, including:
 Website team
 Creative team
 Engineering
 Product development
 R&D
 Customer relations/
education
 Sales
 PR
 Field marketing
 Communications
 Legal
 HR
CENTRALIZE
 Overall content
marketing strategy
 Key themes/topics
 Brand guidelines
 Some distribution
Handle at local level
 Translation
 Localization
 Specific distribution
Create a global view, with local execution:
The majority of people we interviewed are managing
content across the world, balancing the need for global
consistency with the need for local relevance. While various
models exist, there is a clearer trend on what types of
activities are managed by a central team compared with
those handled at the local level. In short, these executives:
A look at managing content
marketing in a global organization
“We don’t produce all the content for all of our
offices around the entire world, but we do develop
a body of corporate content that the countries
will, in turn, either translate or use in a content
marketing sort of a way. They will merchandise it
or do different things with it to fit their local market
needs. The country offices also create a lot of their
own content, as well. That’s why I would say we
technically aren’t a centralized content marketing
organization, because we have offices all over the
world that operate independently based on what
their local markets need.”
“We create content both centrally and at the regional
levels; it’s being translated into different languages,
but we’re not localizing it yet. We’re considering a
model where maybe we create 80 percent of the core
content, and the local offices complete the remaining
20 percent. This way, those who are closest to their
customers can customize the content for their
particular audience.”
“We’ve prioritized five or six topics as a company.
All of our marketing programs are driven around
these key topics globally. Within these big buckets
of topics, messages may differ slightly based on
competitive situations. Certain messages might be
emphasized more than others, depending on what
tweaking is needed at the local market level.”
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5.
TEAM COMPOSITION REMAINS
UNIQUE TO THE ORGANIZATION
TEAM COMPOSITION AND INTEGRATION
Marketing leaders ponder two key questions when
deciding how to approach content marketing:
 How should the team be organized to manage
content creation, distribution, and promotion?
 How can we best involve other appropriate
groups in content marketing—especially subject
matter experts?
We found no definitive right way to structure
a content marketing team. In fact, there was
substantial variation in team structures as they exist
today, even among those who reported their efforts
to be highly effective. If there was any common
thread it was the reminder that, regardless of the
model used, it’s crucial to align the goals for different
departments so that everyone is working toward —
and measured against — the same outcomes.
Given the other themes we heard — including
content marketing demanding significant
organizational change and inherently deeper
collaboration — we found some of the most
compelling content marketing structures to be
those that walked the line between centralized and
decentralized responsibilities. The delineation of
these “hybrid” structures was often this:
 Centralized: The identification of key themes/
topics and content production functions are
centralized.
 Decentralized: The process of getting all the right
people involved and customizing content is done
by business unit or geography.
Here are a few more interesting models shared
during our interviews:
All-in, ad hoc models work well within
organizations that are “beginning the shift”:
This model carves out different content-oriented
functions and roles that make sense within existing
marketing units, distributing the responsibilities
throughout the marketing organization.
“Content marketing is everyone’s job, at least in
marketing. There are groups that have content
responsibilities, and so we are getting smarter
about how to divvy up the tasks that are associated
with content strategy, development, distribution,
and measurement.”
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6.
Engaging external content marketing agencies and
in-house “agency-like” teams seems to work best
with large companies trying to mature and/or are
currently experimenting with different models:
In several organizations, the content team plays an
advisory role in which one or more persons from the
marketing department partners with business units that
have subject matter expertise. A similar process can
also be used with external agencies (instead of in-house
agencies). Infusing subject matter expertise is a key
challenge for many organizations, and this approach
addresses this while staying true to the content marketing
discipline.
“We have an agency type of model, where our marketing
generalists work with business units to help them execute
in the best way… or we may tell them to change some
strategies because there are better ways to do X right.
Everything is defined — for example, we’re going to do X
number of events, X number of direct mail pieces… and
here’s the thought leadership that we need to help entice
and engage our target audience and our target executives.
My team then helps them create that content — everything
from the actual thought leadership, to the direct mail
piece, the email, white paper, case study, podcast, webinar,
events… all of it.”
“The ideas or strategies for developing a certain content
stream come from all over, but the creation of content is
centralized. My group tends to be the creative force that
helps units refine their strategies for developing the content
and gives them input on how to deliver it.”
Assigning channel managers works best
when there is one primary owned media platform
(e.g., a blog):
Other companies are centralizing around specific
channels (e.g., a topical blog) creating full creation,
managerial, and distribution. These independent channel
teams may draw on a marketing or organization-wide
creative services team to supplement their content
creation. For instance, the team may look like this:
Here are a few approaches to
working with agencies:
Hire freelancers who are present
in the office: Those who want flexibility
or don’t have budget for a traditional full-
time employee are having success using
freelancers who work in the office next to other
employees.
Differentiate what agencies and
freelancers do: Marketing leaders need
to recognize what strengths freelancers and
agencies have — and what skill gaps that will
plug. For instance, agencies may work on
evergreen content, whereas other freelancers
can focus on real-time content.
Find journalists with editorial
experience and extensive networks:
When editorial planning skills are needed,
marketing leaders are having success in hiring
people from a publishing background to help
set up and manage processes. An additional
benefit to hiring journalists is that you can
often tap into their networks.
Rely on agencies for design: Many
marketing leaders are using agencies to
develop the creative design, but the content
comes from within.
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 A hub manager who oversees the entire platform
for the owned media approach (e.g., the blog)
 An editor who supports the hub manager by
managing all freelance writers and expert
influencers who contribute content
 A social media coordinator who pushes out the
content and directs traffic back into the hub
This team is supported by the broader (marketing-
focused) creative services team, which is also
responsible for creating materials for marketing and
other functions of the business. This structure can
then be leveraged as more platforms are considered.
“Our main avenue for distributing or presenting our
content is Facebook, social media in general, Facebook
in particular. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest,
LinkedIn, Instagram, Google +, all are coordinated,
leveraging the content that we create and distribute on
our blog. We created a Wellness/Medicine/Healthcare
Blog. We post all of our content there. We promote that
content throughout all those social channels. That’s our
primary model for content marketing.”
A central strategist model seems to work
effectively when the business already
has executive buy-in and the effort is to
fundamentally transform the team:
A central, corporate group creates strategies for each
industry, solution area, and geography. A central
content strategy team translates that strategy and
supporting research into content plans, which are then
brought to market by different execution teams, such
as field marketing and business development. Unlike
the agency model, in which the business units or other
decentralized subject matter experts come to the
table with overall goals and topics, in this “top-down”
example the strategy and themes are centralized at
the corporate level and then executed at the business
unit level. Here is one way to structure a central
strategy team:
 An industry and strategy team creates annual
go-to-market strategies for each industry, solution
area, and geography.
 A content strategy team applies the research
from the industry and strategy team to create the
content strategy for the target verticals, countries,
and solutions.
 Field marketing builds the execution plan for the
content strategy for things such as events, webinars,
and campaigns. They are the ones that essentially
have the discretionary budget, in marketing, to
make the local calls in each of the cities and
countries around the world.
 A business development rep team pursues the
prospects generated by the field marketing team.
From there, they’re nurturing qualified leads that
are handed over to sales.
“I still want the field marketing teams to have some
flexibility and obviously localize the strategies, but by
and large, once we set content strategies, they are
going to be followed.”
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8.
INTEGRATION OF CONTENT MARKETING
TEAM MEMBERS WITH OTHER MARKETING
FUNCTIONS IS TRICKY BUT IMPORTANT
Technology is changing fast, so an integration
with IT is vital: For many companies, technology
and marketing automation go hand in hand with
the success of content marketing. Additionally,
other technologies to support content marketing
are springing up everywhere. As such, collaboration
between IT and the content marketing group is
crucial.
In our interviews, we heard as much variety in how
companies structure the relationships with IT as
we did in the organizational structures for content
marketing itself. We heard about:
 Marketing departments that manage and own
their own technology (within the guidelines and
blessings of IT) so that they can move more rapidly
 Marketing-dedicated technology roles that dual
report to marketing and IT
 Full marketing technology teams that sit within IT
 Formal liaison teams between marketing
departments that create content, and IT
departments that manage the publishing systems
What was in common? Not surprisingly, where
there was little collaboration, there was notable
frustration.
Improved relations with other “communications
silos/departments” is critical: While integration
and better communications with all of the
communications teams was mentioned, PR, in
particular, was a group that was discussed by several
participants. In many cases good content was not
being shared or used to its full potential by PR and
the content marketing team.
One suggestion to improve this relationship:
“We are building what I would call a content factory.
Part of the intent of this content factory is to equip
our global PR and analysis agencies worldwide with
content they can pick and choose from.”
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9.
BUDGETS ARE GROWING AND ARE A
VERY REAL PART OF THE MARKETING MIX
BUDGET AND DISTRIBUTION
We asked participants how much they are spending
on content marketing, including all the resources
(staff, materials, media) needed to create, manage,
and promote content. The estimates we received
varied widely, from $50,000 to $50 million annually.
The median spend on content marketing was $1.75
million with about 1 in 6 organizations spending over
$10 million annually.
Hard dollar spend likely has more to do with industry
and company size than with content. The key
takeaway is that while there was no agreement about
the broader areas that should be included within
the “content marketing budget,” those with specific
content marketing strategies knew where they were
spending their money.
Although ranges in budgets exist, two trends were clear:
Marketers are prioritizing content programs,
and spending is getting real: On average, the
companies dedicated about one-third of their
overall marketing or marketing/communications
budget to content marketing. This is in line with
what we have found each year in our annual
content marketing research.
As with most other areas of our survey, we found
a wide range of allocations. On the low end,
marketers are spending under 5 percent of their
marketing budgets, and on the high end, they are
spending 80 percent.
Effective marketers are allocating a higher
percentage of budget to the promotion of
content: Moving beyond hard dollar spend, we
wanted to figure out how companies are allocating
the money they spend on content marketing. There
are three “buckets” we asked leaders to consider for
their spend:
 Content creation: People, processes, and
technology to create and produce the content and
materials
 Content distribution and management: Social
channels, software, and agency costs around
distributing content
 Content promotion: PR, ads, and other paid
channels used to promote the content being
created
The general allocation was 50 percent of budgets
on creation; 25 percent on management and
distribution and 25 percent on promotion.
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10.
LARGER BUDGETS DO NOT CORRELATE TO
GREATER EFFECTIVENESS, BUT CONTENT
MARKETERS ARE FEELING EFFECTIVE
Defining what’s “in” a content marketing budget is a difficult yet important part of getting ROI:
Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s quite difficult to estimate the total budget around content marketing. How
do you draw the lines as to what’s budgeted as content and what isn’t?
 What costs should be included?
 When evaluating people costs, many people aren’t dedicated resources. How should you account for
their time?
 What are departments outside of the marketing leader’s domain spending, including those that
are global?
As one participant explained:
“That’s why I am not going to answer it specifically because I just don’t think it’s a line that we draw on how
much are we spending on content. I could go through all the functional names within marketing. There isn’t a
function we call content marketing. There is content being created, consumed, and delivered in many places
across the company. It’s not like housed and... here’s where the content marketing budget is located, and you
get X amount of dollars.”
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CONTENT PROMOTION IS BECOMING
AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT PART
OF THE CONTENT MARKETER’S BUDGET
While content marketing is often seen as a way to own your media channels instead of renting them, using
paid promotion to distribute content (instead of your product) is another key place where marketers are
spending. Effective marketers typically allocate a larger percentage of their budget to promotion as they
realize the importance of marketing their marketing.
Four out of five participants have integrated content into their advertising programs typically as part of their
brand messaging, with just as many promoting their content using paid advertising versus integrating it into
overall advertising. Content advertising applications mentioned were white papers, banner ads/pay-per-
click, and social media/LinkedIn and Facebook advertisements.
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Half of content marketers are
effective, but all are challenged
Half of content marketers are effective, but all are
challenged. Only three of the 27 participants thought
they were not effective.
Regardless of confidence, all marketing leaders
were quick to identify areas for improvement,
noting specific challenges and roadblocks: The
major challenge factoring into content marketing
effectiveness was the lack of executive/leadership
buy-in or vision, leaving content marketers with fewer
resources to work with (e.g., people, time). When
leadership buy-in and vision were lacking, companies
placed less of a priority on content by allocating fewer
resources (e.g., people, time).
On the other hand, when marketing leaders considered
themselves effective, they were eager to report the very
real impact in terms of increased customer engagement
and generation of leads/sales.
B2B content professionals shared effective content
marketing practices:
“(Beyond budget), champions and leadership buy-in to
help drive success and keep CM efforts moving forward”
“We have good content and good people, but we also
have fantastic technology that lets us distribute it
properly.”
“We could probably be more effective if we were even
more integrated and had more integrated processes
in place.”
BUDGET AND DISTRIBUTION
What Makes a Content
Marketer Successful?
Content Marketing Success Factors:
 Having executive buy-in/vision
 Taking a longer-term view
 A collaborative & integrated approach
 Dedicated content marketing team/
leadership
 Ability to demonstrate content marketing
ROI/value
 A culture of change and openness
 Ability to tap into subject matter expertise
Factors that limit content marketing’s
success:
 Lack of executive/leadership buy-in
 Difficulty measuring content/ROI
effectiveness
 Limited time/resources allocated to
content
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Content marketers with codified plans feel more effective: As we often observe in our annual content
marketing research, one of the key differentiators between effective content marketers and their peers is
the presence of a documented content marketing strategy. As such, we wanted to see what role this played
for the marketing leaders we interviewed.
Eighty percent of those interviewed had some form of documented content marketing strategy or plan in
place. About 40 percent reported a formal document or presentation existed — a number that is in sync
with our annual content research, which found that 44 percent of B2B marketers have a documented
content marketing strategy.
Roughly a similar share of participants stated that “elements were in place” and/or they were working
towards having a more formal content plan or document. Many in the “in progress” stage have content
marketing plans for some business units or beta test units but have not implemented the plan across the
entire organization.
“It’s not a corporate document, but we as a small team have architected a workflow and an objective.”
“We do have guidelines on what I would describe as best practices. Do we have one central document? No.”
“We have a written direction around content marketing. We have only begun to start this work from a
strategic level, so, no, we do not.”
Very few of companies interviewed indicated that there wasn’t any plan. This confirmed what our annual
content marketing research suggested: A documented content marketing strategy/plan is a key element to
the long-term success of the content marketing journey.
What we have also found is that a written strategy helps determine what companies should be spending
on — and what they should not. As such, it helps with more efficient spend.
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CONCLUSION
The nascency of content marketing may explain why there is little consistency in how organizations are
structuring their content marketing teams. While there is no one “right” way to organize around content
marketing and while it is tough to draw conclusions about what the “answer” might be, larger companies
classifying themselves as more effective on their content marketing journey tended to:
 Leverage a combination of internal and external resources
 Have a higher share of internal “owned” resources vs. external
 Have a more centralized content management model
In short, adoption of content marketing is less about the age or history of the company and organization
and is, instead, driven more by the culture and mindset of innovation around content marketing.
Regardless of where companies are in their content marketing maturity, though, marketing leaders
who truly want to operationalize content marketing and get the most benefit need to transform their
cultures. Our follow-up report, The Future of Content Marketing Teams and Keys to Transformation, will
explore specific suggestions for content marketers who want to embrace and foster change within their
organizations.
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15.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CMI is grateful to the extraordinary companies that participated in our 2014 Executive Research
and shared their insights and expertise.
 3M
 Ameriprise Financial
 Avery Dennison
 Beechcraft Aviation
 Cisco
 Cleveland Clinic
 CSC - Computer Science Corporation
 Diebold
 DuPont
 EMC
 Fidelity Investments
 Genact
 IBM
 Infor
 Kraft Foods Group
 LEK Consulting
 Lincoln Electric
 Master Control
 McGladrey
 Rockwell
 SAP
 SAS
 Standard Register Business Service
 Sykes Enterprises
 Symrise
 Towers Watson
 Wells Fargo Advisors
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ABOUT CMI
Content Marketing Institute (CMI) is the leading global content marketing education and
training organization. CMI teaches enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through
compelling, multi-channel storytelling. CMI’s Content Marketing World, the largest content
marketing-focused event, is held every September. CMI also produces the quarterly magazine Chief
Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and content marketing research for some of the
best-known brands in the world. CMI is a 2012 and 2013 Inc. 500 company.
If you manage your content marketing program, subscribe to CCO magazine.
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