Investment increased in-house for content creation in 2020

UK PR and marketing firms are confident in their in-house abilities to create quality content for campaigns in 2020, according to research from digital asset management specialist Canto and Sapio Research.

Analysis of responses from decision makers in SME, enterprise and blue-chip marketing departments found an upcoming average increase of 9% in PR and marketing content creation, with a third of marketing teams planning to reduce agency spend and create more content in-house than a year ago. In bigger companies with over 100 employees around half (49%) plan to in-source more of their content next year.

One of the barriers the companies surveyed frequently come up against with sourcing content includes information silos within their organisations – 71% of respondents cited examples of missing or overlooking potentially useful content due to employees not sharing outside of their own teams (a factor also raised in a recent study from Survey Media). More than three quarters of the respondents (80%) believed that content is often buried within the business and hard to find.

Unsurprisingly, improving the ROI on content produced in-house, as well as that sourced from outside, will only get more important – 51% intend to make better use of market research to get clearer results on what’s working next year. 42% are planning to use better technology, 37% will repurpose existing content, 34% will implement better measurement and 29% will reduce their spend on agencies.

‘What is clear is that higher content output must demonstrate value for organisations,’ said Canto’s head of UK business development Mike Paxton of the growth in content creation due to happen in-house. ‘Research shows that the need for high quality content is only growing in significance as brands continue to battle to boost awareness and reputation in crowded markets’.

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