Looking over the research and reports about content marketing produced last year, one figure kept cropping up. Around 45% of marketers said they expect to spend more in the channel going forward.

Combine this with the fact that growth in marketing budgets is sluggish at best, and it looks like content marketing has finally proved its worth. More money for content when there isn’t more money overall must mean content is working. Or, at least, working better than other channels.

But that’s not the whole picture. In October 2024, a US Content Marketing Institute report revealed that more than half of the B2B marketers they surveyed (58%) only rated their content marketing as ‘moderately effective’. That compares with less than a third (29%) who said it was ‘extremely or very effective’, and 12% who said it was ‘not very effective’.

The other factor that crops up in all the research is the struggle marketers face in terms of lack of resource for their content marketing. In the same CMI report, 54% of those surveyed said this was their biggest challenge. Earlier in the year, Statista found that almost a third of their research sample said the same.

Clearly, limited effectiveness and lack of budget are linked. But we don’t think that means spending more money would deliver better results. Instead, we suspect that often it’s the other way around. Greater effectiveness would unlock more resources. And that’s what’s happening in the 45% of businesses that are continuing to increase their content marketing budget.

So what’s happening to all the rest of us?

A report published last year by demand generation platform Demand Exchange found that half of content marketers struggle to measure the effectiveness and ROI of their content. The same proportion find it hard to create the right content for different stages of their customer journey, and for different customer personas. (Full disclosure: I was one of the authors of this report).

This is no real surprise. Despite digital marketing’s promise of ultimate measurability, true multi-channel attribution remains elusive. At the same time, customer behaviours are changing fast, especially in B2B. Potential buyers retain their anonymity until much later in the purchase journey. Multi-disciplinary buying committees are becoming the norm, and their makeup can change as the journey continues. This means marketers have to create specialist content for each member of the client’s committee, without knowing who they are, where they are, or where their expertise lies. No wonder so many are finding it a challenge.

AI in contentmarketing

It’s also no wonder there’s so much noise in the market about 2025 being the year of AI for content marketers. The prospect of being able to produce vastly more content at a fraction of the cost is hugely enticing. It’s certainly one way of rebalancing the ROI equation.

But speaking recently to marketing consultant John Watton (formerly of VMWare and Adobe), he reminded us that the fundamentals of marketing don’t change. Despite all the noise about tools and technology and channels, you still have to think about who the customer is, where they hang out, what sort of language they use. You have to show them how you’ve helped people like them solve problems like theirs. And you have to know what’s working, so you can do more of it.

Currently AI will certainly help you create more content. But on its own, it won’t help you turn moderately effective content into something better. Likewise video – the other hot ticket for 2025 – will only improve your ROI if it’s the right medium for your customers.

John Watton’s three ideas

That’s not to say you shouldn’t experiment with any and all the exciting new technologies you want. After all, you’ll only know if they work for your customer base by trying them out. But, at the same time, remember these three ideas that came up in our conversation with John Watton.

1. Firstly, all good content is co-created. It might be directly with your customers. It might be with your sales team, or with customer service, but you’re not going to do it alone in your office.
2. Secondly, what you’re doing needs to align with the goals of the business. The CMI found 42% of the respondents who rated their strategy as moderately effective or worse said a lack of clear goals was the reason why they didn’t rate it higher. And knowing what you want to achieve also makes it easier to find the right metrics for what you’re doing, if only to allow you to make comparisons.
3. One of the other things the Demand Exchange research found was that companies who said they were content marketing leaders were likely to spend more money in the channel in future than those who said they weren’t. That means the gap between them and the rest is only going to grow. So whatever else 2025 is the year of, it should be the year you prove the value of content marketing to your business.