By John Egan.

If you’re fretting about improving the performance of your content marketing strategy, you’re in good company. According to the 2016 State of Content Marketing survey released by Ascend2, 34 percent of companies say their content marketing efforts are not successful, and 36 percent say the inability to measure the effectiveness of content marketing is a significant barrier to success.

Aside from that bad news, there is good news in the survey. Survey respondents ranked the most effective types of content they’re using. Perhaps the following list will spark some ideas at your place of business. Here are the most effective types of content identified in the survey:

• Research reports (46 percent)
• Blog posts (45 percent)
• Videos/podcasts (40 percent)
• News/articles (35 percent)
• Infographics (31 percent)
• Webinars (30 percent)
• Newsletters (29 percent)

Content marketing will be the cornerstone of a session at LeadsCon New York titled, “2016 Content Marketing Benchmarks: How to Improve Your Performance.”

After perusing the list of effective content types from the Ascend2 survey, you might figure that more of your content marketing resources should be shifted to research reports and away from webinars. But in the end, you’ve got to do what’s right for your audience.

“Creating compelling content of interest to prospects and customers is one of the hallmarks of a successful content marketing strategy,” the report says. Furthermore, if you haven’t mapped out a content marketing strategy, you’re hampering efforts to create and promote that compelling content, the report suggests.

“Lack of an effective strategy is the top obstacle to content marketing success. Planning an effective strategy requires a balance of what is most effective with what is realistic to create,” the report says.

Not surprisingly, survey respondents say increasing lead generation is the top goal of a content marketing strategy. Here are the goals, in order of importance assigned by the respondents:

• Increasing lead generation, 58 percent

• Improving customer engagement, 55 percent

• Boosting brand awareness, 46 percent

• Improving lead nurturing, 41 percent

• Boosting sales revenue, 39 percent

• Increasing web traffic, 24 percent

• Improving search rankings, 20 percent

Whatever your content marketing goals may be, it’s hard to accomplish them without money and people. Survey respondents rank money as one of the key stumbling blocks in executing a content marketing strategy.

“Lack of an effective content marketing strategy and the resources required to create compelling content are often caused by the third most significant barrier to success – budget constraints,” the report says.

Click here to register for LeadsCon New York 2016.