B2B companies feel increasingly comfortable with producing engaging content, but coming up with enough content is becoming more challenging for them, a new study from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) reveals.
The research found that almost two in three marketers said that producing sufficient content was a challenge and 29% even claimed it was their biggest problem, while in the past coming up with engaging content emerged as the hardest part. However, the CMI noted that content marketing is not about creating as much content as possible because the content produced also needs a purpose.
Overall, 91% of respondents said that their organisation used content marketing but just over one in three claimed that their content marketing strategy was effective. The most commonly cited reason for engaging in B2B content marketing was to boost brand awareness, shared by 79% of respondents. Customer acquisition and lead generation were also very popular reasons cited by 74% and 71% respectively. Customer retention and thought leadership both scored 64%, while increasing sales was a major motivation for B2B content marketing for 43%.
When asked which vehicles they used to deliver content to users, 87% of those polled said social media and 83% mentioned articles posted on their company website. Email newsletters and blogs were also highly valued by marketers, scoring 78% and 77% respectively.
Not surprisingly, LinkedIn was the most preferred social channel for B2B communication, with 83% of marketers using it. Twitter and Facebook were chosen by 80% of those polled and YouTube came next, with 61%. Meanwhile, Google+ was used by just 39%, the research found.
