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Is Poor Grammar Killing Your Content Marketing? Study Says 69% Of Brands Fail to Make The Grade

Using linguistic analytics software to measure grammar and style, Acrolinx finds most content marketing lacks quality.

Amy Gesenhues on March 31, 2015 at 3:36 pm

While marketing teams continue to create more and more content marketing materials, a new study from marketing software provider Acrolinx claims brands are not spending nearly enough time on the quality of their content marketing efforts.

Using linguistic analytics software to evaluate grammar and style, Acrolinx leveraged a 100-point scale to score marketing, corporate, technical and customer support content from companies with $250 million or more in annual revenue.

When attention to quality is overlooked, things tend to fall apart quickly.

The report analyzed 20,000,000 sentences pulled from 150,000 web pages for 340 global companies, and found only 31 percent of the brands exceeded an “impact score” of 72 or higher – with the remaining 69 percent of companies earning below Acrolinx’s target score.

“To assess a company’s grammar usage, we examined its content against best practices for standard grammar conventions then calculated how many errors it contained on average per 1,000 words,” says Acrolinx.

Content Impact Score Distribution

To drive home the importance of quality content, Acrolinx referenced a 2013 UK poll conducted by Global Lingo that reported 74 percent of survey participants said they noticed the quality of spelling and grammar on company websites, with 59 percent claiming they would not use a company whose site included poor grammar.

The report also noted the importance of correct grammar in terms of search marketing, referencing a quote from Bing webmaster Duane Forrester. “If you struggle to get past typos, why would an engine show a page of content with errors higher in the rankings when other pages of content exist to serve the searcher?” asked Forrester.

The report did not attach any specific company names to content marketing scores, but it did call out Kohl’s, Caterpillar, the National Australia Bank and European mobile carrier EE for their high scores.

Looking at industry-specific content, the retail industry led with a 73.2 impact score, while the telecom industry came in last with a 66.2 score.

Earning a 70.2 on the 100-point scale, the US and Germany tied for highest regional scores.

Content Impact Scores by Region

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.