Is your business doing Content Marketing? If not, read this RIGHT NOW

Published in

Marketing And Growth Hacking

4 min readAug 20, 2017

The rise in content marketing in advertising circles is staggering. From native ads to blog posts, articles, and videos, it’s re-framed how some businesses do marketing. The adoption of ad blockers and concern over where ads are placed has only accelerated the movement.

It’s almost become a universal marketing tactic.

93% of business-to-business sellers use some form of content marketing.
60% are creating daily content.
This year, Half of businesses have put someone at the Executive level in charge of content strategy.

Per the people in charge of moving the sales needle, the process works. 82% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot show a positive ROI using content as part of their inbound marketing. An Aberdeen study report a 6x multiple for conversions over those not using content for marketing their business.

The industry is still growing. By 2019, content marketing is projected to be a $313 billion-dollar industry, with double digit growth rates each year.

Content marketing is becoming more and more important in the purchase funnel. B2B buyers are bypassing advertising altogether and doing independent research on products.

51% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago
78% of CMOs believe custom content is the future of marketing.
As marketing grows in importance, companies are putting greater emphasis on managing the process.
73% of organizations have someone in place to oversee their content strategy.
86% of highly effective organizations have someone in charge of content strategy.
Compared to other types of measured media, marketers say content marketing is 72% more effective than magazine ad and 69% better than direct mail, per the Custom Content Council.
82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI from their inbound marketing.
Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%).

Since Google punishes websites for duplicate content, there’s a constant need for fresh material.

In the next year, B2B marketers are going to spend more time, more money, and more resources creating original material than ever before.

81% of marketers plan to increase their use of original written content.
58% of marketers said “original written content” is the most important type of content, outdoing visuals and videos.
75% of marketers are increasing investment in content marketing.

Video is on the rise with the increase in mobile viewing of the internet. That includes both short-form and long-form formats, often shot in a vertical format specifically for mobile.

Top three most effective types of video content: Customer testimonials (51%); Explainer/tutorial videos (50%); Demonstration videos (49%). (Ascend2 Study)
How is video marketing effectiveness changing? Increasing significantly (43%); Increasing marginally (44%). (Ascend2 2015 Study)

So is interactive content Games, contests, quizzes, polls — anything to engage people.