Content Marketing Institute
Companies that market to other businesses have unique challenges. With employee turnover rates at some companies between 30-40%, decision makers to whom they market can change frequently. So, how do business-to-business (B2B) companies build trust and acquire new customers?
The latest B2B research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Marketing Profs shows that 73% of marketers use case studies, and 65% feel they are an effective tactic. But, for many smaller businesses, the $2,000-$5,000 of internal resource time needed to produce a case study may be too high.
Besides, if you were writing a case study to market your company’s products and/or services, wouldn’t you make it appealing? Continue reading
What’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Would you like to know if it’s the same as 79% of B2C (business-to-consumer) and 82% of B2B (business-to-business) companies?
A study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) says that “B2B marketers remain slightly more likely than B2C marketers to be using content marketing (93% and 90%, respectively), per the studies, with the former also more likely to rate their efforts as being effective (42% and 34%, respectively). Adoption and effectiveness appear to be on the increase for both groups.”
Before I get to the top content marketing goal, here are some interesting comparisons between B2C and B2B:
- This year, 72% of B2C marketers said they’re creating more content than they did one year ago, about on par with the 73% of B2B marketers increasing their level of output. Meanwhile, 60% of B2C content marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next 12 months, as do 58% of B2B content marketers.
- B2B marketers still allocate a higher share of their budgets to content marketing than their B2C counterparts, though (30% and 24%, respectively).
- For B2C content marketers, the most widely used tactics are social media other than blogs (88%), articles on their websites (78%), e-newsletters (76%) and blogs (72%), with the same order of adoption apparent among B2B marketers.
- Facebook is – predictably – the most commonly used social platform to distribute content among B2C content marketers (by 89%), and is also rated the most effective by its users (62%). For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is both most-used and most-highly rated.
- Web traffic is the top content marketing metric for both B2C (66%) and B2B (63%) marketers. Social media sharing is relatively more important to B2C respondents, who are far less interested in measuring sales quality and quantity.
- Lack of time is the top challenge faced by both B2C (57%) and B2B (69%) content marketers. B2C respondents are relatively more concerned with producing the kind of content that engages, while B2B marketers are more concerned with producing enough content.
- 39% of B2C marketers have a documented content strategy, compared to 44% of B2B marketers.
Okay now. The TOP content marketing goal for both B2C and B2B: Brand awareness! B2C (79%) and B2B (82%).
Customer acquisition (71%) and retention/loyalty (65%) are the next-most common goals for B2C respondents, while lead generation is next among B2B respondents.
And, again… what’s your organization’s top content marketing goal? Is it the same as this study indicates? Please share.
Chart: MarketingCharts
Here’s a switch. Smaller businesses - those with 10-99 employees - are outdoing large companies with over 1000 employees on content marketing strategy. Almost half of smaller businesses (48%) have a documented content strategy, compared with 41% of large organizations, according to a newly-released study from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.
And, get this…
Small companies are more likely than large companies to have someone who oversees content marketing strategy (78% vs. 58%)! Now, that surprised me. You’d think the larger companies could better afford to hire someone or outsource content marketing.
Now, guess which tactic the majority of respondents chose as the most effective tactic? The old-fashioned in-person event! Not much technology involved in meeting face-to-face, is there?
Which content marketing tactics are working best for your business?
