When times are tough, content marketers must keep assessing and making changes to their content strategies to ensure their content assets are working as efficiently and effectively as they can

The best content marketers in 2023 already understand that taking a strategic approach to content planning helps focus the purpose of content assets, reduces duplication, and accelerates proofing/sign-off, as well as helping to integrate our marketing and digital marketing activities. But with so many different content marketing techniques and types - how do you decide where to invest your time and budget? These 5 marketing trends are based on current research into different aspects of content marketing, for you to review and consider when planning your next strategy or project.

1. Customer-centric content creation

In their recent survey, the Content Marketing Institute found that more than half of marketers cite finding the right content for their audience to be their biggest challenge. …

The manufacturing industry is experiencing rapid change. Catch up on the latest trends and innovations in this sector plus what we've learned about how to market a manufacturing company in 2021

Around the world, manufacturing marketers and managers are rapidly adapting and amending their marketing strategies to win more customers. Marketing for manufacturing is a unique skill, requiring a strong reliance on physical products in a digital world. That's why so many manufacturing businesses right now are relying on omnichannel marketing to acquire and retain high-value customers. We've got marketing strategies and tactics to help boost your profits. But first, let's take a deeper look into exactly how to market a manufacturing company.

How to market a manufacturing company with the RACE Framework

Regardless of your current levels of digital maturity, the RACE Framework is a structure you can use to take stock of your current manufacturing marketing efforts and find out how to…

If you're planning to launch or grow your SME in 2021, discover 5 small business marketing strategies to accelerate your growth from startup to long-term stability

Launching a start-up can be an exhilarating experience. However, there's a difference between launching an enterprise and being able to grow a small business so that it becomes a long-term success. The key to success is ensuring your small business marketing activity is working efficiently and effectively to build an audience for you.

If small business marketing was easy, everyone would be successful first time. Oftentimes what happens is that when a startup is launched, its founders tend to get overzealous with their efforts to monetize its products and services, while failing to build a solid foundation from which the startup can actually be a viable company in the future.

While running a small business presents many unique challenges,…

Looking to improve your content marketing outcomes? Capture share of mind with a data-driven B2B content marketing strategy that doesn’t cost the earth

The B2B purchase cycle is changing significantly - and so are decisionmakers, who are under more scrutiny than ever to ensure that the solutions they pick deliver ROI. This means they need to get up to speed fast on new technologies, new approaches, new solutions and more. It’s a tall order, which has led the average sales cycle for a B2B solution to increase by 22% in recent years, according to Kapost. As a result, content is now playing a vital role. B2B decisionmakers are spending more than 57% of the purchase cycle engaging with content before they ever reach out to sales representatives. According to Forrester, on average a person consumes 11.4 pieces of content before making a purchase decision. That’s…

A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service

According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times more leads than outbound marketing and it’s about 62% less costly. As a B2B brand, if you want to attract more leads to your business and spend less to do so, you should leverage content marketing. [caption id="attachment_148039" align="aligncenter" width="550"] [Image via Demand Metric][/caption]To do this effectively, you need a content marketing funnel. A content marketing funnel acts as a guide for your prospects and leads. It shows them the specific steps they need to take before purchasing your product or service. It also helps your business get more qualified leads. In this post, you will learn how to create a…

Chart of the Week: 86% of B2B marketers have used content marketing to achieve brand awareness goals in the last year

B2B marketers are successfully using content marketing to achieve top-of-the-funnel goals, with 86% saying they have used it to achieve their brand awareness goals in the last 12 months. New research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) has revealed that content marketing is helping 79% of marketers to educate their audiences while 75% are successfully using it to build credibility and/or trust. However, fewer marketers are managing to make the most of content marketing when it comes to actions deeper in the funnel. According to the 2020 B2B Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report, just 63% are managing to use content marketing to build loyalty with existing clients or customers, suggesting they could be missing out on a…

Content marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads as a B2B company. However, many struggle with executing it correctly. Are you one of them?

Around 70% of users on the internet learn via content before purchasing a product versus traditional advertisements. Times are changing. The average person used to need advertisements to tell them about a product or service. Not anymore. B2B consumers are smarter and more resourceful than ever. They have everything they need at their fingertips to make an informed decision. That’s where content marketing comes in. It aligns with this behaviour by offering high-quality valuable content that educates prospects on a relevant topic. This, when done properly, gets them sucked into your lead generation funnel, as well. [si_guide_block id="5651" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Content marketing strategy guide" description="This guide…

Going viral is something of a dream for us B2B content creators and marketers. You’d be lying if you deny that, plain and simple

And why not? Creating original, high-quality content is a monumental task in itself, let alone marketing it and making it stand out. The thought of our content spreading across the internet like wildfire is often what keeps us going. However, for B2B marketers, achieving virality with a well-written blog post is even more inconceivable. That’s because our audience is highly targeted professionals and business leaders, and our content is not meant to entertain or amuse. Going viral with a piece of content is somewhat akin to finally getting our "big break" in the digital industry, after writing countless blog posts, outreach emails, and what have you. [si_guide_block id="5651" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Content marketing strategy guide" description="This guide shows you both how to develop a content marketing…

New research highlights activities from the top performers

Joe Pullizzi and team over at the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) have been doing a great job in tracking trends in content marketing over the years. I still think of content marketing as a relatively new label for a marketing technique that has existed as long as print (see this video history of how content marketing has evolved from 1895). Yet it’s now ten years since I first read ‘Get Content, Get Customers’ by Joe, which was the first call-to-action to modern content marketing that started the latest trend.

Content marketing management trends for 2019

The latest trends and success factors for the year ahead are highlighted in this research, which focuses on B2B marketer responses, but highlights content marketing strategy success factors relevant for many other organisations. These are highlighted by categorisation of respondents by ‘top performers’ who characterizes his or her organization’s…

Chart of the Day: A review of the content types that engage B2B audiences

How to best engage audiences is a challenge in all sectors, but particularly in B2B marketing where there are so many potential formats that can be selected as suggested by our content marketing matrix. This new research considers the 5 most popular content types only, but is interesting since it goes beyond reviewing the content that supports B2B buying decisions, but also considers general content consumption by professionals: This chart shows that if you want to engage your audiences, publishing other types of industry content could be popular. Covering industry trends is significantly more popular with content around to approach business challenges less popular, but still worthwhile. This shows the value in creating an digital value proposition as part of your content marketing strategy. As the visual shows you should…