Chart of the day: Original research drives traffic but marketers aren't promoting it to its full potential.
Original research produced by b2B marketers drives traffic and social shares - but are marketers making the most of their excellent research? The short answer, according to research by Buzzsumo and Mantis Research is pretty much a "no".
The research found the main benefits of producing original research (research reports which involve conducting a survey of real people e.g. marketers) drives traffic and social shares, success!
Website traffic, social shares, PR and influencer mentions, as well as leads were reported by half or more respondents. This proves the value of conducting original research and shows why it's so popular as a content marketing methods.
When asked how marketers then promoted the research, this is what they found:
Most marketers promote…
Chart of the Day: Research showing the popularity of different types of content assets are used during B2B vendor service selection
Our poll featured in our digital marketing trends 2018 post showed the ongoing popularity of content marketing as a technique with marketers. This research, looks at content popularity from a different angle, the popularity of different forms of content assets during the buying process.
This visual is 'numbers' heavy, but the orange shading helps show the most popular types of content.
Which content formats are most popular?
Considering which content types are most popular, we can see that most types of content are useful to someone! This suggests the importance of using content mapping as a technique to align the right types of content with the right persona and stage of the buying process as covered in the templates and examples in our persona guide…
Chart of the day: Time is the biggest challenge when it comes to content marketing
Marketers have revealed time and quality are their biggest content marketing challenges according to research by Clearvoice.
Time, content quality and creating content were the top three challenges, which suggest a perception of the number of resource marketers feel content needs. And right they are! Quality and effective content takes time, needs to be good quality and needs the appropriate resource to put aside this time and make sure it's great quality. Marketers recognise that it's quality over quantity and understand quality is the most important aspect.
Production is also a big challenge for marketers, the resource involved in making it happen and getting it live and as someone who works full time in the production of content, it certainly is harder than you may think.
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Have you tried using webinars yet? What tools are you using to host and promote your webinars?
Do you want to learn more about what it takes to plan and promote an effective webinar? Smart Insights have kindly asked me to put together a Quick Win for their website – and it’s all about webinars, from how to set goals for webinars to finding ideas and topics and to promoting your webinar.
If you’re interested in learning more about how webinars can help you improve results for your business, make sure you check it out!
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It covers literally every aspect of planning and promoting webinars so that once you’ve…
How B2B marketers can deliver compelling content journeys to keep a buyer's attention
Did you know 775,000,000 customers visited an IKEA store last year?
How can we take the success of IKEA and their journey through home decor and meatballs and apply this to B2B content marketing? Easy - think about everything IKEA do right and apply it in your own unique way!
For instance, consider these key approaches to B2B content marketing from IKEA's layout:
Package related assets together
Let prospects preview content before filling in a form
Provide a one-way logical pathway (this allows more time, and money, spent on your product/service)
Ikea's floor arrows direct you in your shopping journey, B2B marketers need to consider the sequencing flow and whether content (products) are aligned with the buying journey.
And, as a modern marketer, you rely on content to fuel your funnel and generate qualified demand. But what if you could turn…
Chart of the Day: How businesses are promoting their content
Content marketing is the mainstay of many marketing strategies for both small and large companies. We can spend hours thinking up a theme our audience would be interested in and once you have found it, more hours are spent writing the content, finding accompanying imagery plus there is the possibility that you will need a little design help to turn your page of words into an ebook, white paper, infographic etc. By the time you have completed your brand new piece of content you have to get to work promoting it so that you can attract as many readers as possible. But how do you do this?
Linkedin and BrightTalk surveyed over 600 survey B2B marketing professionals and found that the most popular channel for promoting their content was through social media. This makes sense as it doesn't require any budget- only the marketer's time…
Chart of the day: Case studies, best practice advice and how to guides are the most effective types of content.
A recent survey of over 600 B2B marketing professionals reveals what types of content they found to be the most effective. The report makes for interesting reading, and as the chart below clearly shows, case studies stand out as the most effective content type for B2B marketers. Best practice advice was extremely close behind, whilst how to guides and market trends were also judged to be effective.
Other types of content were found to be useful by less than a quarter of B2B content marketers. This shows that the 'hard sell' and listing product features is no longer effective, and providing information such as case studies and guides is now the superior tactic.
Source: B2B Content Marketing Report
Sample:…
Chart of the Day: Most businesses address just three or more market segments with their content marketing
Marketers who are focused on campaigns, creative and marcomms can get a narrow view that marketing communications (that's content, social, ads, SEO, outdoor, video, you name it) are actually only one part of the marketing puzzle. But the smart marketer knows that spending time to develop accurate buyer personas and properly plan different strategies for targeting market segments and buyer states is also crucial.
The results of a survey which asked over 600 B2B Marketing professionals about their use of content marketing shows that plenty of content marketers are wising up to the need to properly segment their market and target different buyer personas and stages with different messaging and content formats.
Half of the companies were addressing three of more market segments, whilst almost half were addressing three or more buyer personas…
Chart of the Day: Content marketing continues to be a key tactic for B2B lead generation.
Over 600 B2B marketing professionals were asked "How is your content production going to change over the next 12 months?", a whopping 71% said they plan on increasing production, with a quarter saying they will increase production significantly.
Content marketing will continue being a major focus for B2B marketers in 2017. For those implementing an inbound marketing strategy in the year ahead, it is important that you find the right balance between quantity and quality. The production of only a handful of highly engaging pieces of content has the potential to keep you in leads for months with the right amount of promotion.
Source: BrightTalk
Data:over 600 survey responses from B2B marketing professionals.
Recommended Resource: Content Marketing Checklist
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How to use a B2B blog to generate leads
Our last post on business blogging looked at seeding and distribution and how to get people to your blog.
However, the end goal of a business blog (or any customer facing content asset) must be to stimulate demand and generate enquiries.
In this final post of this business blogging series we look at how companies can use blogs to drive demand generation. For more information you can see our demand generation definition.
Create a compelling call-to-action
There needs to be a compelling call to action to take a visitor's fledgling interest in your business to the next level.
It is commonly accepted that it takes time to build traffic to a blog, and even longer for people to interact with it. So, assuming it is almost impossible to encourage blog visitors to engage with a corporate blog, how can you keep them there and get…
