Content Marketing Is Kicking With US B2Bs Planning For 2016 Now
Research highlights where B2B content marketers will focus in the year ahead.
A study by the Content Marketing Institute in partnership with Marketing Profs highlights where the priorities for B2B marketers in the US lie for the year ahead. It also looks at how they have fared with content marketing in 2015.
This infographic summarises some of the most interesting findings.
While on average companies currently spend 28% of the overall marketing budget (excluding staff costs) on content marketing, 51% expect that figure to increase for 2016.
The greatest focus for content creators will be to mould content that engages, understand what is and isn’t working, find better ways of repurposing what’s already in existence, and to get more visual.
76% of companies also believe they will increase the amount of content they produce next year.
Content Marketing Goals
The most important content marketing goals for the next 12 months, in order of importance, are:
- lead generation
- sales
- lead nurturing
- brand awareness
- engagement
- customer retention/loyalty
- creating brand advocates
- upselling/cross selling.
Biggest Content Marketing Challenges
The toughest issues companies have had with content marketing programmes this year include producing truly engaging content, measuring content effectiveness and ROI, producing consistently and a lack of budget.
Content Marketing Metrics
When it comes to metrics, what’s most commonly used isn’t what’s deemed to be most effective. While in the past measuring content marketing ROI has largely been done by looking at web traffic and SEO rankings, the most important metrics are considered to be sales lead quality, sales and higher conversion rates.
Top Content Tactics
The top four tactics or formats used currently for B2B companies are social media content, case studies, blogs and eNewsletters.
YouTube Is Moving Up
LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, in that order, are still the most commonly used social media platforms to promote B2B companies. However, when asked what they believed to be most effective, companies put YouTube rather than Facebook in third place. Instagram has also gained ground since the same study was carried out last year.
Takeaway
For a more in-depth analysis, read the B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America in full.
For an infographic on similar research carried out in the UK last year take a look here.
Original Article
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