Alan Draper
I’ve finally made some time to go deep into the 2014 Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks study (sponsored by Brightcove). After my review, there were a few findings in this content marketing research that just didn’t sit right with me.
Here’s what I found to be most alarming:
1. Less than 10 percent of B2B marketers are truly successful with content marketing: Just nine percent of the 1,217 B2B practitioners who responded feel that their content marketing efforts are “very effective.”
My take: Content marketing obviously has a long way to go, not just in terms of how it’s applied, but also in organizations’ understanding of what a “win” looks like from a content perspective, and how it fits into achieving overall marketing goals.
2. Only 44 percent of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy: Which means 56 percent are flying blind in their content efforts, without having a plan for its execution or success. No wonder there is so much horrible content being distributed by B2B brands.
Click to tweet: Only 44 percent of B2B marketers have a documented content strategy. #CMIcontent
My take: The other scary part here is that this is likely an inflated number to begin with. Based on my experience in working with B2B businesses, I believe the real number is closer to being below 15 percent. The difference: Most marketers don’t know what a content marketing strategy looks like (yet), let alone how to document it for better use across the enterprise.
3. B2B Marketers with a content marketing strategy are 600 percent more likely to be effective: What’s shocking about this? Maybe it’s the fact that 11 percent of B2B marketers without a strategy still consider their efforts to be effective.
My take: Without a strategy, any success you achieve is more than likely to be dumb luck — and probably short-lived, as well.
4. Small companies are 40 percent more likely to have someone in charge of content marketing than larger enterprises: Take it from me: Implementing content marketing in larger enterprises can be a political nightmare — not to mention the added complications caused by the multiple content creators already operating within almost every silo of the company (PR, search, social, email, corporate communications, HR, etc.).
Click to tweet: Small companies are 40% more likely to have someone in charge of content marketing than larger enterprises #CMIcontent
My take: Content marketing will not work without designating someone to be accountable for the brand story across the entire organization.
5. Two-thirds of B2B Marketers without a content marketing strategy are creating more content now than they did in the previous year.
My take: Good grief! Doesn’t that amount to 66 percent more misguided content marketing being produced this year, rather than strategic, effective content? No wonder those reported success stats are so low.
6. Seven in 10 B2B Marketers do not use print distribution in their content marketing: What if I told you that you could communicate with customers through a channel where they would almost surely see your message — and it’s a space where most of your competitors wouldn’t be? Welcome to the world of print.
My take: This amounts to a big opportunity for marketers who want to test out print as a viable content channel.
7. Only one social channel received a positive approval ranking in terms of effectiveness — LinkedIn (62 percent): Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ all received approval ratings of 30 percent and under. Yet, the lack of success they are experiencing hasn’t stopped marketers from continuing to distribute content on these channels (and others). In fact, compared to results from our 2013 report, the number of B2B marketers who are using each of these channels has increased.
My take: Most B2B marketers do not have a defined “why” for social media channel use (i.e, “Why are we using Google+ as a channel?”). Determine the value each channel holds for your business before adding it to your list of outlets.
8. The No. 1 metric for content marketing measurement is web traffic: Content marketing, as both a discipline and an approach, will remain in our current early-adoption phase until we start looking at better metrics to gauge the returns on our content marketing investments.
Click to tweet: The #1 metric for content marketing measurement is web traffic #CMIcontent
My take: More traffic may not be a positive indicator of more definitive (and essential) metrics, such as subscriber growth, lead quality, or customer retention.
My final thoughts
What are the differences between those who are receiving your content and those who aren’t? Finding the answer to that question should be your first mission as a content marketer.
Although I’m excited that we are seeing overall effectiveness improvement in the B2B content marketing space, we surely have a long way to go.
For more insight on developing a strong plan for content marketing success, read Joe Pulizzi’s latest book, “Epic Content Marketing.”
Cover image via Bigstock
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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This is a great list, Joe. It really highlights how much is misunderstood and underestimated about content marketing’s correct use, metrics, and effectiveness. As you said, we certainly have a long way to go.
One thing I find especially telling is the results concerning the different social media platforms’ approval ratings. It makes sense that B2B marketers find success only with LinkedIn, where it is easy to segment users by their profession and potential interest in a particular product. Not so with the other sites, which do not reward this kind of direct targeting as much.
It seems people are continuing to use these ineffectively, and though they are dissatisfied with their results, they remain using them, likely in the same broken ways, because they feel they would be missing out to ignore such a ubiquitous online presence. The thing is, implementing a faulty strategy on these sites can only marginally more effective than doing nothing at all– by not taking a step back to understand each social media site’s unique pattern of interaction and potential use for sharing content, they are breaking one of the key principles of any kind of marketing, the necessity of a defined strategy and tailored approach for every different tool you put to work for you in the marketplace.
None of my clients has a content marketing strategy either. What they do have, is really good SEO strategies…and content that is written to support them. They’ve all been quite successful in this way.
This is a great article with some eye-opening stats about content marketing.
Jim, I agree that a lot of people think about SEO first. Which comes back to people measuring content marketing success by increased web traffic.
Web traffic is definitely a factor to content marketing success… But I personally don’t believe it’s the core metric. Lead quality increase should be the indication of a good content marketing strategy. If you write your content to the right audience, you’ll get more leads of a better quality (because you also are getting more traffic).
I guess all I’m saying is that web traffic is too far up the sales funnel to be a good metric. Content takes time and effort to do right… So get those content strategies in place folks!
Two things—for marketers, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Don’t guide a client or your company into something you and the organization don’t full understand and aren’t prepared to commit to. Secondly, I’m positive there are plenty of agencies that are irresponsibly selling “content marketing” services without full educating their clients or establishing the proper relationship to ensure success (though, in many cases, both parties usually end up being guilty for failure). So we end up with all kinds of people haphazardly experimenting with content marketing concepts—hence the statistical failure. And there are many ways to fail as this data shows us.
I clicked on one of the ‘click to tweet’ links and it ended up being too long to share. I suggest you fix it!
The purpose of content marketing should be to delight your customer/prospect base. I’m not sure exactly how you would measure that, but web traffic is certainly not it. If you delight your customers with your content, other benefits like traffic and conversions will follow as a matter of course.
Interesting, all of it. The fissure between results from content marketing and “just doing it” is a bit larger than you point out. Many organizations are happy to point out what doesn’t work in marketing simply because so much of it isn’t quantifiable. Business people want simple cause and effect metrics. The integrated marketing strategy WE marketers implement is “too gray” for most non-marketers to wrap their heads around.
Who was polled in the above survey? B2B practitioners is clear enough for me.
Regardless, the fissure is often one of four things…the content is too complete and leaves the customer NOT wanting more; thee content is too basic and leaves us looking silly; the information is too easily accessed leaving no leads to cultivate; OR the marketing/sales pipeline is not being tapped and leads are running back into the ocean.
As marketers, we have to always assume the responsibility of marketing our efforts repeatedly internally. As you say, strategy. But let’s not stop there. Let’s make sure we have continuous buy-in and metrics in place for each step of the strategy to continue to demonstrate growth and development of new and potential new business that non-marketers can understand.
Let’s do a little “content marketing” of our own.