Lots of marketers do not use a content marketing strategy based on established documents to help in their campaigns.
According to a new study, sponsored by Imagination and developed by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, a lot has changed on how business-to-consumer marketers use content marketing from the past year.
Titled B2C Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America, the study not only determine the changes, but also renders insights between effective marketers and less or ineffective content marketers.
Documented Marketing Strategy
Among the central findings is that marketers with documented marketing strategies rated their campaigns as more effective in all aspects of content marketing than those without any type of strategy.
Then again, even though most B2C marketers use content marketing, most of them do not use documented or genuine content marketing strategies.
While B2C marketers’ use of content marketing steadily increased from 86 percent in 2012 to 90 percent in 2013, not even 50 percent of them carry out a documented strategy.
About 60 percent of B2C marketers who rated themselves as the most effective in content marketing have a documented strategy, whereas only 12 percent of marketers who rated themselves as the least effective have a documented strategy.
Tactic Effectiveness Rating
According to the study, B2C marketers increased their confidence in the top ten tactics they deem most effective, except for a two percent decrease in blogs.
Moreover, B2C marketers rated in-person events as the most effective plan of action, as confidence in its effectiveness increased from 62 percent in 2012 to 74 percent in 2013.
Social Media Usage
The study found that B2C marketers use all of their social media platforms more often in 2013 than in 2012.
LinkedIn received the largest increase in B2C usage, from 51 percent in 2012 to 71 percent in 2013.
In this year’s B2C Content Marketing study, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs asked marketers to rate how effective social media platforms are in their strategy.
The researchers found that marketers still doubt the effectiveness of social media, even though their use of it has increased.
Content Marketing Budget
About 60 percent of B2C marketers – 55 percent higher than in 2012 – expect an increase in the content marketing budget of their organization in the next 12 months.
Another point of interest is that 69 percent of B2C marketers who consider themselves the least effective plan to increase their content marketing budget, as opposed to 55 percent of those who consider themselves the most effective.
Content Production
About 72 percent of B2C marketers said they generate more content now than the same period in 2012. It increases to 77 percent for those who consider themselves the most effective marketers and 81 percent for those B2C marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy.
