MarketingProfs
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?
Every time I use Manage Flitter to see which of my Twitter followers do not follow me back, I am always amazed. Some are clients, friends, colleagues, and even nonprofit organizations I have supported.
It made me wonder how frequently these people are checking to see who follows them. They may be missing out on some valuable connections. Or, they be ticking off the people who are already in their circles - and I don’t mean Google+ circles!
Here are just a few examples of my non-followers:
1. A recent best-selling author I connected with on LinkedIn. He sent me a personal e-mail (along with everyone else he knows, I assume) about the launch of his new book, asking if I could help him promote it. When I replied asking him if I could interview him for a MarketingProfs post, he never replied. Isn’t social media about giving as well as taking? I unfollowed him back.
2. At least three bloggers who do similar work to me. Delete.
3. Some of the blogs to which I contribute!!! Geez. Give me a break.
4. Several nonprofit organizations to which I have made donations. Are they nuts? Do they want my money or not? Social media = engagement! How can they engage with me if they don’t follow my tweets? Mind boggling.
5. Several nonprofit publications. I wondered why they wouldn’t follow someone like me since I post a lot about nonprofit marketing topics. Plus, I may retweet their posts. Oh well.
When was the last time you checked your Twitter followers to see who’s there? Maybe you’re missing people you should be following and with whom you should be engaging?
