B2B Content Marketing Is Here To Stay, But ROI Still Proves Difficult

Acceptance of B2B Inbound and Content Marketing has been a slow burn. Many organisations have found it hard to understand how content marketing could work in their environment. As content marketing has started delivering results for many businesses, what are the challenges for businesses wanting to use content marketing?

It has always been the key driving force for B2B marketing managers and CMOs to drive leads and control brand positioning. This is the same for B2B Content Marketing: Lead generation continues to be the number one priority for B2B companies. Also at top of the list are thought leadership and brand awareness. Ultimately this continues to be about customer acquisition.

The primary task in content marketing success should be getting a formal process defined. It is concerning to know that only 30% of companies driving content marketing have a documented strategy, when it's demonstrated that companies who do structure their CM processes are much more likely to deliver positive results.

mostly the biggest challenge is finding the necessary time and resources to develop the content needed. Content marketing by its very nature is hungry for content. This of course is also affected by budget constraints.

That content also needs to be insightful and entertaining and match needs of the organisation's marketing strategy.

Getting the content to the right audiences still proves challenging for 27% of B2B organisations but an interesting 42% find it hard to create truly relevant content.

The success of content isn't just about being engaging. The other important impacts on content delivery are triggering a response from the receiver and ensuring the content is SEO optimised.

Evaluating the ROI continues to prove difficult. B2B marketers have improved ROI measurement in recent years but it has created a big challenge. B2B marketers now have to get used to the concept of tracking trends rather than specific data.

The most commonly measured metric is website visits as activity aroundresponses to specific blog entries can be measured and demonstrate the effectiveness of social media and SEO work. Another crucial metric is the number of social media actions a specific piece of content produces.

Social media still continues to be the top way of sharing content and blogs are the #1 place to contain content that is then promoted on social media. LinkedIn is the first place for being the most effective platform with Twitter a near second. YouTube and video content takes third place.

Ownership for a strategy clearly lands with marketing team with 54% of companies. Interestingly and not too unusually only 8% of companies believe that this should be managed by sales.

While corporate marketing is often in charge of the production of all of the content, it is amazing to find that 80% of that content ISN'T used by sales. This suggests engaging sales in the production of content is important.

Where the production of authentic content is difficult, it is required for content marketing success. 92% of organisations produce their content internally and 38% curate or syndicate 3rd party content.

Two of the most outsourced types of work in content production are copy-writing and graphic design while only 7% of companies outsource planning and strategy.

In summary: The most important points for successful content marketing are a clearly defined strategy, outsourcing insightful content, enough budget and high frequency of publication.

At Ice Blue Sky we use B2B Inbound and Content Marketing to generate leads, create demand and improve your brand position. Go to http://www.iceBlueSky.com to find out more.

Hi folks I am Loida Guevarra and I love sharing useful information.