The Content Marketing Institute recently released the fifth annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America. This report is full of statistics and trends in content marketing. I’ve selected seven that I think are key for content marketing.
- Document your content marketing strategy.
Only 35% of content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. 60% of those who have a documented strategy, though, say their content marketing is highly effective. Only 32% of those with a verbal content marketing strategy would say their content is highly effective.
- Break through the clutter.
The amount of content being created is growing immensely. 70% of marketers are creating more content than last year.
With this growth, it is more important than ever to create content that breaks through the clutter and stands out. Look for new ways to engage your audience with your content.
- Quality still trumps quantity.
42% of content marketers say they publish new content daily or multiple times per week. 31% of “effective marketers,” though, publish new content multiple times per week and 32% of marketers with a documented content marketing strategy publish new content multiple times per week.
Content is king, so make sure it’s informative and engaging and has a clear objective. Creating large numbers of meaningless content is not the goal here.
- LinkedIn and Twitter top the most effective social media platforms.
63% of marketers rated LinkedIn as effective or very effective. (You know I’m a HUGE believer!) Twitter and YouTube came in second and third at 55% and 48% respectively.
- Brand awareness, lead generation, and engagement remain the top content marketing goals for marketers.
84% of marketers say “brand awareness” is the most important goal, with lead generation coming in second at 83%. New to the list this year was “customer evangelism.”
- Website traffic still ranks as the most-used metric to assess content marketing success.
Over 60% of marketers cite website traffic as their most important content marketing metric. Sales lead quality was second at 49%.
- Only 21% of marketers are successful at tracking the ROI of their content marketing program.
This means the majority of content marketers are not successfully tracking ROI. Only 35% of marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are even successful at tracking ROI.
Clearly, the importance of content development and its role in driving leads cannot be understated. By developing a written content strategy along with proper execution and tracking, your efforts to drive leads, get found on search engines, and close sales are exponentially enhanced.
Digital Media Insider 