Content marketing can be an effective option in B2B companies’ communications toolkits, but for most businesses, what constitutes “effective” isn’t clear. B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America, a report from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, found that 55 percent of business-to-business marketers say that their organizations don’t understand what successful content marketing programs look like, despite 88 percent of the respondents saying that they use content marketing.

Content marketing, the CMI says, is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.” And according to the marketers it surveyed, only 30 percent of organizations are effective at content marketing. In last year’s survey, 38 percent described their organizations as effective. The survey’s authors note that effectiveness levels are greater among respondents with documentation, clarity around success, good communication and experience. Compared to last year’s survey, fewer B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy compared with last year—32 percent versus  35 percent.

B2B content marketing is primarily focused on lead generation (85 percent) and sales (84 percent). Respondents rated sales lead quality (87 percent), sales (84 percent) and higher conversion rates (82 percent) as the most important measures of content marketing’s success.

Learn more on the report’s key findings here.