A new poll has shown that almost half of content marketers are not solely focused on generating leads – they’re aiming to boost brand awareness instead. Clutch’s ‘Content Marketing Survey 2016’ showed that though content marketing is developed with a variety of objectives in mind, 49 per cent of professionals focus on simply bringing more awareness to their company and brand as a whole. In addition, a variety of mediums, particularly original research and infographics, are expected to be successful in the coming year.
The new year has brought fresh opportunities for companies to jump on the latest trends in order to maximise their content marketing strategies in 2017. It is, therefore, extremely important to reflect on the industry trends noted in 2016. In the survey by Clutch, it was discovered that brand awareness was the leading objective for content strategists. Other goals that were placed as a priority included reaching a higher search engine visibility, with 30 per cent of respondents mentioning this. Meanwhile, lead generation was also important, finding favour with 21 per cent of those questioned.
Delving further into the type of content that saw the most success, it was shown that infographics, original research and data, and product reviews continue to do well. They were mentioned as the best performers by 17 per cent, 18 per cent and 16 per cent of respondents respectively. Other content formats included blog posts, which 14 per cent of people said excelled, and videos, mentioned by 13 per cent. At the other end of the scale, eBooks and podcasts failed to find success.
Clutch also investigated the ways that companies measure their success. For 32 per cent of respondents, content marketing success is directly tied to sales metrics, with campaigns perceived to be more successful, according to how many new customers are gained. Meanwhile, 29 per cent of firms focus on lead generation, whilst the same percentage take consumption metrics into account. Researchers said “metrics should tell a story about whether you achieved your goal… before creating content, you need to define what return-on-investment (ROI) means for that specific piece.”
For content marketing strategists, promotion remains a key way to boost the success of a campaign. It means that companies are using more methods to promote their work, with 71 per cent using paid advertisement options, 70 per cent making use of organic social media, and 69 per cent relying on traditional marketing channels in order to amplify their marketing efforts. The report writers noted “it’s important to prioritise paid forms of content distribution over organic efforts. In fact, we found that the majority of enterprise content marketers surveyed believe paid advertisements are more effective than organic approaches to content distribution.”
Elsewhere, a new report entitled “B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America’ found that 62 per cent of marketers in the B2B sector believe their current content strategies are already more successful than a year ago. This is largely attributed to increasing content priorities, producing better quality content, and developing strategies. Additionally, 52 per cent said that blogs would be vital for marketing in 2017, whilst email newsletter and social media content will also remain important.
