by Fronetics | Jul 6, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing
Businesses report these 3 content marketing challenges are the largest they face. Here’s how to track your progress in overcoming them.
Is content marketing working well for your business? If not, you are not alone. Though it is one of the most effective ways to grow your business, content marketing has been challenging B2B and B2C organizations since its inception.
You may think it should be simple: Write, post, get more customers. But content marketing is much more complex, demanding more time, thought, and careful strategy than churning out a few blog posts.
First and foremost, what you produce must engage readers. This is, however, one of the biggest content marketing challenges facing both B2B and B2C marketers.
In fact, the 2017 State of Inbound Report found that content creation is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of content marketing challenges that businesses face. Here are 3 marketing challenges and ways to track your progress in overcoming them.
3 content marketing challenges
1. Generating traffic and leads
Echoing their priorities, marketers today find generating traffic and leads to be their biggest challenge. In fact, 61% of those surveyed listed it as their number one challenge. ‘Content is king’ has become a marketing mantra, but how can you turn your content into actual leads that turn into sales?
Tying revenue directly to publishing and distributing content can be difficult. Thinking about social media content within the context of your entire sales funnel can make it easier to determine effectiveness. Content is typically used to attract leads, to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog, or to have prospects submit contact info to get higher-value content. Continued engagement nurtures leads and moves them further down the sales funnel.
Track this: The cost to get a lead. You can then determine the percentage of leads that move on to become qualified leads, the percentage of qualified leads that then become opportunities, and the percentage of opportunities that are ultimately won. At the end of the day, you’ll be able to calculate the revenue generated from leads that entered the funnel from your content marketing efforts.
2. Proving the ROI of marketing activities
Coming in at a close second, 43% of marketers felt that proving their ROI from content marketing activities was their biggest challenge.
Whether launching a product or a new social media campaign, we look for instantaneous numbers that will affirm we made the right choices. But here’s the problem: Not all metrics are created equal. Content marketing ROI is harder to confirm than checking a few quick numbers.
Lean-startup pioneer Eric Reis said, “The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions.” In other words, measuring your ROI will tell you if an effort was profitable so you know where to put your time and money.
ROI can help you determine whether it was worth spending your resources in a particular way. This is extremely useful on platforms like blogs and social media, where things are constantly changing. Using ROI as a litmus test, you can keep experimenting and making sure you’re using these tools effectively.
Track this: Use tools like HubSpot, Hootsuite, and built-in analytics platforms like Twitter Analytics, Facebook Insight, and YouTube Analytics to track detailed information about engagement with your content.
3. Budget
Organizations that have a documented content marketing strategy are more likely to be successful than those that don’t. But setting aside the funds to develop and implement these strategies can be tricky.
The State of Inbound Report found that 30% of marketers struggle to secure a budget for their marketing efforts. Content marketing competes with other marketing campaigns (outbound, native, etc.) for funding. The Content Marketing Institute’s latest trends report states that, on average, 29% of B2B brands’ total marketing budget is spent on content marketing, leaving a majority of funding going toward other efforts.
Content marketing is here to stay. In fact, it’s at its best when it’s integrated with your other marketing efforts, becoming a part of your entire marketing strategy.
Track this: Content marketing serves every marketing channel. Experiment with overlapping marketing budgets to increase your efforts for whitepapers, sales collateral, social media posts, and to make sure your advertisements and visual messaging are in sync. Content serves every marketing channel, so you’re wasting time claiming you don’t have the budget.
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by Fronetics | May 22, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
B2B enterprises with 1000+ employees face unique content marketing challenges that can hinder a program’s overall success.
Bigger isn’t always better. Or, maybe I should say, bigger companies don’t always have it easy.
Big marketing budgets and a big marketing staff have their perks — but they also have their share of challenges. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 B2B Enterprise Content Marketing Report, which surveys B2B companies with over 1,000 employees (enterprise marketers), brings many of these issues to light.
The challenges these enterprises face, of course, are quite different from those of their small- and mid-sized counterparts. Here are some of the top differences:
- 72% of B2B marketers agree that their organization is focused more on building long-term relationships than getting quick results. Only 58% of B2B enterprise marketers agree with that statement.
- 52% of B2B marketers agree that their leadership team gives ample time to produce content marketing results (which typically take longer than other marketing approaches). Only 38% of B2B enterprise employees agree that leadership supports their longer efforts.
- 69% of B2B marketers agree that their organization is almost always or frequently focused on creating content for an audience, instead of their brand. 47% of B2B enterprise marketers feel their focus on the brand.
Pressure to produce results quickly is a death sentence for content marketing. And being forced to create content for a brand, rather than a specific audience, can be detrimental to content marketing results. Yes, challenges facing these enterprise marketers are often as large as the companies for which they work.
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why that is, and a few solutions for solving them.
3 enterprise-level content marketing challenges
1) Organization
While the CMI Report found that 88% of B2B enterprise companies are using content marketing, a mere 2% felt their content marketing strategy was “sophisticated.” Organization might have something to do with that.
Most enterprise organizations have staff that are responsible for multiple brands and product lines throughout the company. Their time is split developing strategies for different marketing programs. Smaller operations, on the other hand, can focus on a single brand, devoting time to developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy that the team can live and breathe — instead of toggling back and forth between programs all day long.
Solution: Outsourcing can be an enterprise’s best friend. A third-party vendor can dedicate itself fully to creating a content marketing strategy that best fits individual products or brands. And the vendor can even drive the strategy, if the enterprise’s resources are so taxed. Check out these 13 stats about outsourcing content marketing to learn more.
2) Clarity
It’s difficult to deem a program effective if there is no clear vision of success looks like. Yet, almost half (45%) of B2B enterprise companies feel their organizations lack clarity for benchmarking success. You can see the problem there.
Oftentimes, especially in larger organizations, the C-suite has a very different idea about what makes a content marketing program successful (i.e., leads and sales), whereas the marketers developing the strategy know that other benefits (e.g., increased brand awareness, social reach) have long-term value.
Solution: Education is key here. For one, set realistic expectations about the length of time it will take to generate tangible results from your content marketing program. Further, marketers need to learn to speak their bosses’ language when it comes to winning support for content marketing. They should regularly report on all progress to show how, over time, “smaller” victories (like growing social media engagement) translates to leads and sales. Check out our Monthly Marketing Reporting Template for some ideas.
3) Content Distribution
As more organizations recognize the benefits of content marketing, they’re ramping up production of content. In fact, 63% of survey enterprise-level respondents reported increasing the amount of content they produce from 2016. That’s great, but — the question is — does more content definitely equal better results?
The answer is not necessarily. Content distribution plays a huge role in getting the most out of what you’re producing. And here’s where the enterprise-level marketing problem lies: 94% of B2B enterprises are using email as their main distribution channel.
I’ve written before about how organizations spend too much time creating marketing emails. I believe organizations tend to stick with this content distribution channel because they see immediate results in the form of open rates and click-throughs. But the reality is that these companies are trying to squeeze water from the same well over and over again. At some point, they’re going to run out.
Solution: Don’t get me wrong: Email marketing is an important component of a well-rounded content distribution strategy. But so are publishing on social media and blogging (on your website and others!). These distribution channels help you reach new prospects who are searching for products and services like yours. Make sure your content distribution strategy includes a variety of platforms instead of just relying on one (like email) or just a few.
It is important to note that there are many B2B enterprise organizations that have highly successful content marketing strategies. Companies like Cisco and Boeing, who are committed to content marketing, have created ways to define what a successful content marketing program looks like and to effectively measure content marketing ROI.
The differences between B2B enterprise content marketing and B2B content marketing overall are tangible but not defining. These larger organizations have the ability to make changes that can redefine their content marketing programs and open the door to endless opportunities.
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