A. Content Marketing Objectives
1. Improving customer engagement and increasing lead generation are the most important objectives for more than half of companies surveyed in the Ascend2 Content Marketing Trends Survey.
2. Content marketing is primarily seen as a pre-sales marketing tool by B2B marketers, as per the State of B2B Marketing by Regalix. For B2B marketers, nurturing prospects is one of the most rated content marketing objectives.
3. 76% of marketers in the Financial Sector in the UK believe that content marketing is effective in rebuilding trust, as per the Financial Content Marketing Report 2015
B. Most Effective Content Formats
4. Blog posts and articles lead the pack, according to the Hubspot’s 2015 report on driving content marketing success in Europe.
5. The Ascend survey that included a panel of 50,000+ US and international marketing, sales and business professionals also found similar results.
6. For B2B businesses, website content and webinars proved to be the most effective content format in 2014, as per State of B2B Marketing 2015 by Regalix.
7. Also, the Regalix report found that in 2015 website content will become indispensable for B2B marketers.
8. 73% of B2B Enterprise Marketers say in-person events are effective.
9. For B2C marketers, enewsletters are rated the most effective.
C. Content Marketing Investment Is On Rise
10. Brands and agencies expect an increase in dollars to be allocated to content marketing in the coming 2 years, in a survey by Pulsepoint.
11. There'll be an increase in spend for every category of content marketing activity, as per the Hubspot report.
12. As per the latest Australia and New Zealand Content Marketing Survey released by Castleford, 64% respondents said they would be spending more on content marketing, up from 47 % last year.
13. A report by BAI Retail Delivery on what to budget for in 2015 found that
14. 76% of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget in 2015.
15. 53% of financial marketers in the UK expect their content marketing budgets to significantly increase as per The Financial Content Marketing Report in 2015.
D. Difficult Types Of Content To Create
16. Videos, webinars and research-based papers often require resources not available in-house, according to the Ascend report.
E. Content Marketing: The Most Commercially Important Digital Marketing Trend
17. Content Marketing was voted the most important activity to drive commercial success by Smart Insights readers.
F. Metrics For Content Marketing Success
18. Conversion rate & quality of leads are the most useful metrics, according to the Ascend report.
19. 74% of marketers say they use the number of website visits to assess the success of their content marketing efforts.
20. According to the Pulsepoint report it’s social engagement.
G. Content Creation Is On Rise
21. 70.8% of businesses in Europe are creating more content in 2015 than they did last year, according to the Hubspot report.
22. 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago, as per B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report.
23. 69% of B2C marketers are creating more content now than they did one year ago, as per B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report.
H. What Form Of Content Marketing Is Effective In Terms Of ROI?
24. Long form & short form both work well, as per The State of Content Marketing Heading Into 2015 report by Contently.
I. Content Marketing Goals
25. For B2C marketers , customer retention and engagement are the top most goals for content marketing.
26. For B2B marketers, brands awareness and lead generation are important.
J. Content Marketing Challenges
27. Lack of content creation is one of the topmost challenges that companies face, as per the Ascend 2 report.
28. According to the Curata survey,
29. More B2B marketers say they are challenged with finding trained content marketing professionals this year (32%) than last year (10%), according to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends.
30. More B2C marketers are facing problems with finding trained content marketing professionals this year (32%) than they were last year (10%), as per the 2015 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends.
31. For B2B small business marketers, the challenge of finding trained content marketing professionals witnessed the largest percentage of growth - from 11% previous year to 31 % this year.
32. The top challenges that marketers in Europe face include:
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Producing enough content (58%)
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Producing great content (55%)
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Developing an integrated content strategy (55%) - as per the Hubspot report.
K. The Most & Least Consumed Types of Content
33.
34. For B2B tech buyers, product brochures/data sheets is the most consumed type of content, as per Eccolo Media 2015 B2B Technology Content Survey Report.
L. Content Types That Work On Social
35. Lists & Why Posts earn the most number of social shares.
M. Content Marketing - Who's Responsible?
36. 49% of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing, as per the Curata Report.
37. 45% B2C marketers have a dedicated content marketing group.
38. 47% of B2B marketers have a dedicated content marketing group, as per 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends.
39. 54% businesses are creating content marketing assets in-house, as per Managing Digital Marketing in 2015 Report.
N. Millennials & Content Marketing
40. 64% of millennials respond positively to content that is useful, as per NewsCred's Millennial Minds
41. 60% of millennials will only share content if it is thought provoking and intelligent, according to the NewsCred report.
42. Millennials consume content across different platforms, as per the content marketing study presented by Yahoo, Tumblr, Razorfish and Digitas.
O. User Generated Content & Content Marketing
43. Social media is defined by sharing UGC. Over 75% of social posts are photos, according to the NewsCred report.
P. Most Effective Content Creation Resources
44. 85% of companies surveyed say they outsource all or part of their content creation, as per the Ascend report.
45. For the financial marketers in the UK 50% take support from a specialist content marketing agency.
Q. Content Audit
46. 36% of content marketers never complete a content audit, as per the Curata report.
R. Exclusive Content Strategy for Mobile
47. 80% of B2B marketers don't have an exclusive content marketing strategy, as per the State of B2B Content Marketing 2015.
48. When asked about the things B2C marketers are planning to work in 2015 - 38% of them mentioned creating a better mobile strategy, as per the B2C 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends— North America.
S. Reuse & Repurpose Old Content
49. 29% of leading marketers systematically reuse and repurpose content, as per the Curata report.
T. Content Marketing: Who's In Charge?
50. B2B enterprise marketers, when compared with marketers from all other sizes of organizations, are the most likely to report to product marketing, as per the 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, Trends– NORTH AMERICA.
51. According to the B2C report, it depends on the company size. For larger B2C organization content marketing falls usually under product marketing umbrella.Teams in smaller companies are more likely to report to the owner/C-level.
