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TEAM STRUCTURE & OUTSOURCING
A
s we’ve found in past years, many organizations have small or one-
person content marketing teams serving the entire organization.
Large companies (1,000+ employees) are the exception.
67% AGREED THAT, OVER THE LAST YEAR, THEIR CONTENT TEAM
HAD BEEN ASKED TO DO MORE WITH THE SAME RESOURCES.
How does the work get done? The data suggests that many companies
are both outsourcing content marketing work and asking internal
staff with other responsibilities to take on more. However, those who
have dedicated internal content marketing resources tend to be more
successful with content marketing.
“The pandemic slowed things down for us,” one respondent said. “We
were going to hire support for content, but we haven’t been able to. So,
we’re doing more with less/the same and it’s tricky.”
Outsourcing trends
In a consistent year-over-year trend, around half of all surveyed used
outsourcing. The percentage was higher for large companies and lower
among the least successful. It makes sense that the least successful are
doing more content marketing work in-house, as many from that group
are in the early phases of content marketing maturity and may be laying
the foundations internally before seeking outside help.
Regarding large companies, 61% indicated last year that they outsourced.
This year, the figure was up to 75%. This suggests that in the early phase
of the pandemic large companies pulled the reins back on outsourcing
but are now back to the practice. In fact, more large companies are
outsourcing now than in 2019 (75% vs. 71%).
THE DATA SUGGESTS THAT DURING THE THICK OF THE PANDEMIC,
LARGE COMPANIES PULLED THE REINS BACK A BIT ON OUTSOURCING
BUT ARE NOW BACK TO THE PRACTICE … MORE LARGE COMPANIES
ARE OUTSOURCING NOW THAN IN 2019 (75% VS. 71%).
Reinforcing this, 40% of respondents said budget issues were a top
challenge when seeking outsourced content marketing help – down
from 51% the previous year. The top challenge? Finding partners with
adequate topical expertise (65%), which was also the top challenge the
previous year.
Where the content came from
Many organizations did whatever it took to keep the content coming:
“We created a dedicated cross-functional task force team to pump out
content regularly to keep up with changing COVID issues related to our
customers. This team spent 25-50% of their time doing this which made us
the leader in our industry.”
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