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Sourcing relevant content and finding the internal resources to produce it are the two greatest challenges faced by organisations investing in content marketing.

New research from IMN shows that despite content marketing being named as a medium or a high priority in the overall marketing plans of 78 per cent of marketers, production remains a major challenge.

This is one of the key reasons why an increasing number of companies are turning to external providers to meet their content marketing needs.

Outsourcing content marketing not only overcomes the challenges companies face with finding the resources to source and create content, but also gives marketers access to the skills needed to produce a wider variety of content types.

B2C organisations now use 12 tactics on average to achieve their content marketing goals, research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs found. The most popular tactics used were social media, articles posted on their brand website and eNewsletters. 

How different industries tackle content marketing

Although the major challenges of content marketing remain the same across industries, the research, which polled SMEs in the US, revealed disparities in the strength of different sectors' content marketing plans.

The financial services, insurance and software industries appeared to be leading the charge in having formal plans in place, although there were concerns over how regulation could impact their plans.

Seventy-five per cent of financial services firms, 50 per cent of insurance firms and 50 per cent of software firms all had in place different content marketing strategies for different channels. In particular, many companies in these sectors had formal content calendars in place.

However, 50 per cent of insurance firms and 33 per cent of financial services organisations cited compliance as a concern.

Read more about the benefits of outsourcing content marketing.