#FridayFunFact: B2B Marketers Are Creating More Content, But With Less Confidence In ROI
Today’s Friday Fun Fact is a all about B2B content marketing!
As any content marketer knows all too well, creating a scalable content marketing program requires a large input of time, energy, and resources. And according to B2B Content Marketing 2015: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America, B2B marketers are experiencing growing pains in their efforts to expand their content marketing programs.
The results of this 2015 annual report from Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs indicate that B2B marketers are churning out more content, but with less overall effectiveness. Let’s dig into the data!
According to the study, a whopping 70% of B2B marketers reported creating more content than the previous year. Nearly 1/4 of respondents (27%) went so far as to classify their increase in content creation over the past 12 months as “significantly more.”
However, while B2B content marketers have clearly been focused on increasing their content marketing output, the perceived quality of this content has taken a dip. According to the 2015 results, only 38% of B2B marketers assessed their use of content as “effective” or “very effective.”
This result reflects a 4% year-over-year decrease; in the 2014 report, 42% of B2B marketers said they were effective at content marketing.
Faced with this data, you might be wondering, “if B2B marketers are creating more content with less perceived effectiveness, then perhaps it’s time to reassess their strategy!” Well, you’re on the right track!
Joe Pulizzi, Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, spoke to the link between content strategy and effectiveness in his report summary:
“The key takeaway of our B2B content marketing research this year is something we’ve been continuously stressing at CMI for a while now: Marketers who take the time to document their content marketing strategy are more effective than those who don’t.”
According to the survey results, the line in the sand between effective and ineffective B2B marketers centers around having a documented strategy. Sure, the vast majority of B2B marketers (83%) said that they do, indeed, have a strategy, but only 35% have that strategy documented.
Joe Pulizzi offered this succinct summary of the link between having a documented content strategy and the reported effectiveness of B2B content marketing programs:
“B2B marketers who have a documented strategy are more effective and less challenged with every aspect of content marketing when compared with their peers who only have a verbal strategy or no strategy at all.
Of those who have a documented strategy, 60 percent consider their organization to be effective. In contrast, only 32 percent of those who have a verbal strategy say they are effective. To take it a step further, 62 percent of the most effective marketers also say they follow the strategy ‘very closely.'”
So B2B marketers, take note! Before you simply start churning out more content, take a closer look at the strategy driving your content. If your strategy is nonexistent, then create one! If it’s verbal, or merely lives inside your content creator’s head, get it in writing!
For the complete benchmarks, budgets, and trends in B2B content marketing, read the full 2015 B2B Content Marketing report here.
For more content marketing insights, download our Colossal Content Marketing Report to learn from our analysis of 1.2 Million blog posts and their 2 billion social shares!
Kara Burney is the Content Marketing Maven at TrackMaven, the Competitive Intelligence platform for Digital Marketers. Have content marketing questions or topics you'd like covered on the TrackMaven blog? Tweet her your ideas! See more of Kara's posts
