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B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing
Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 in association with BrightTALK
Econsultancy London
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http://econsultancy.com
Econsultancy New York
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New York, NY 10001
United States
Telephone:
+1 212 971 0630
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Published May 2014
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Contents
1. Introduction ..................................................................... 4
1.1. About Econsultancy .................................................................... 5
1.2. About BrightTALK ...................................................................... 5
2. Foreword by BrightTALK ................................................ 6
3. What is Content Marketing for B2B? .............................. 7
4. Market Trends ................................................................. 8
4.1. Contact strategies, international content and paywall strategies dominate the conversation ......................................... 8
4.2. Centralisation of content production, a publishing mentality and good writers needed ............................................................. 8
4.3. Outsourced content is difficult to get right but overcomes a lack of web producers and ‘visualisers’ ....................................... 9
4.4. Content formats adapted for mobile and video production skills are highly valued ................................................................ 9
4.5. LinkedIn drives traffic but some senior figures still not engaging with social media ....................................................... 10
4.6. Matching content to stages of the buying cycle with CRM, automation and paywalls is resource heavy ............................. 10
4.7. Sales can’t always be attributed to content, but analytics and testing are still important ................................................... 11
5. Key Challenges and Goals for B2B Content Marketers . 12
6. Case Studies ................................................................... 14
6.1. IBM creates content hub to engage with mid-size businesses .. 14
6.2. Maersk’s distribution of content with social media .................. 16
6.3. Sage uses content to enhance search ranking ........................... 17
7. Market Data and Statistics ............................................ 20
7.1. Econsultancy reports ................................................................. 20
7.2. Third-party statistics ................................................................. 22
8. Resources ....................................................................... 25
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 4
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1. Introduction This briefing is based on the issues discussed by digital marketers at Digital Cream
London 2014.
Digital Cream is a regular Econsultancy event, held across Europe, North America, the Middle
East, Australia and Asia, bringing marketers to a selection of exclusive invitation-only
roundtables, each with a different theme. Digital Cream provides an opportunity for senior client-
side digital marketers to discuss best practice and the reality of digital marketing with the
industry’s ‘cream of the crop’.
With the discussion moderated by a subject matter expert, the elite of the digital world share their
thoughts under the ‘Chatham House Rule’ which ensures that they can speak freely without their
comments being attributable either to their company or themselves. In addition to the insights
shared, this document provides background information on this topic, and points to resources
from Econsultancy and other companies that provide analysis and discussion on the subject area.
The Digital Cream roundtable on B2B content marketing was sponsored by BrightTALK and
moderated by Ben Davis, Content and Community Producer at Econsultancy.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 5
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1.1. About Econsultancy Econsultancy’s mission is to help its customers achieve excellence in digital business, marketing
and ecommerce through research, training and events.
Founded in 1999, Econsultancy has offices in New York, London and Singapore.
Econsultancy is used by over 600,000 professionals every month. Subscribers get access to
research, market data, best practice guides, case studies and elearning – all focused on helping
individuals and enterprises get better at digital.
The subscription is supported by digital transformation services including digital capability
programmes, training courses, skills assessments and audits. We train and develop thousands of
professionals each year as well as running events and networking that bring the Econsultancy
community together around the world.
Subscribe to Econsultancy today to accelerate your journey to digital excellence.
Call us to find out more:
New York: +1 212 971 0630
London: +44 207 269 1450
Singapore: +65 6809 2088
1.2. About BrightTALK BrightTALK provides videos and webinars for professionals and their communities. Every day
thousands of thought leaders are actively sharing their insights, their ideas and their most up-to-
date knowledge with professionals all over the globe through the technologies that BrightTALK
has created.
At BrightTALK, we believe that people learn the most when they hear directly from those who
know the subject best. We also believe that this experience is enhanced through a dialogue
between speakers and the audience. Our online event tools offer a dynamic environment for
everyone involved. It is the interactions we witness and the advancement of knowledge in our
online communities that excites us the most.
For more information about BrightTALK, visit www.brighttalk.com.
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2. Foreword by BrightTALK Having worked in B2B digital content marketing for the last five years, I’m beginning to wonder
where the industry is going next. With technology enabling a more digitally connected and
socially savvy B2B world, I feel organisations are constantly seeking out new ways to innovate and
connect with buyers. But connecting with them once isn’t enough.
Officially, B2B buyers spend about 60% of their time researching a solution before starting a
conversation with a sales person. As a result, marketers need to create content so that they are
present during these early stages and can nurture buyers through the sales cycle.
Of course, for all your investment in a content marketing machine, you can also expect leads to
bypass stages of the sales cycle and pick up the phone directly without doing any content
research. Just accept it.
At Digital Cream 2014, I engaged with many great marketers at different stages of their content
journey. They have also experienced the same challenges I’ve had in creating compelling content,
driving the best audiences and connecting it to revenues. The most important takeaway is to make
content easy for prospects to consume by making it searchable, discoverable, and shareable.
Giving the prospects great content and a great experience will get them to reengage.
Quoc Dang
Senior Manager, Demand Generation, BrightTALK
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3. What is Content Marketing for B2B? What is content?
Videos, webinars, tools, blog posts, how-to-guides, news, Q&As, images, photography,
infographics, podcasts... anything produced via any media that isn’t a simple press release or
mission statement.
Good content should be one or all of three things: entertaining, interesting or useful. If the
content isn’t any of the above, then it has no value and we won’t stake our online reputation on its
quality.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to
acquire customers.
What is content marketing for B2B?
This depends on the company in question, but the main difference between using content for B2B
(as opposed to B2C) is the use of different content at various levels of the sales funnel and the
customer lifecycle. Content is used for brand awareness, but also to attract, quantify, engage and
nurture leads, as well as for customer retention.
Other differences to B2C can include how niche or myriad the content is, often aligned to fairly
complex products and compiled by thought leaders in a particular industry. B2B companies may
also have clients in a range of verticals, making it harder to tailor content.
Additionally, access can be a thorny part of content strategy as many B2B companies have content
as part of product. Determining what is notionally free and can be distributed is perhaps a
challenge.
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4. Market Trends
4.1. Contact strategies, international content and paywall
strategies dominate the conversation At Digital Cream 2014, professionals working in all areas of B2B marketing fleshed out their
thoughts on the challenges, goals and strategies they have in content marketing.
Notably, this year’s discussions did not focus too heavily on content format. Although it’s
acknowledged that different content works well in different scenarios (more on this later), most
companies admitted to creating content and being able to judge its efficacy.
Formats that may have caused confusion in previous years, such as video and interactive
elements, are now within the experience of many B2B companies.
More than content format, contact strategies were a theme for discussion. This is an area that
blends content with CRM and automation, showing how joined-up a content marketing strategy
has to be.
Whereas debates in previous years may have been about the need for content, board buy-in is
now being sought for improved database and marketing technologies to properly exploit content.
Creating content for international markets emerged as a bigger trend than in previous years. This
is particularly true for non-English speaking regions in Asia Pacific, where the challenge of
creating local content within a centralised strategy was one not many had got to grips with.
Other general trends included the challenge of setting paywall strategies for publishers (how
much to give away?) and how best to work with senior thought leaders to ensure effective
dissemination. Involving senior stakeholders included challenges as disparate as ‘how do we get
senior staff on LinkedIn?’ to ‘how do we sensitively edit senior staff’s opinion pieces to make sure
they are relevant?’
4.2. Centralisation of content production, a publishing
mentality and good writers needed According to some professionals, content creation fails when it isn’t centralised. If content
creation is devolved or even created outside of the business itself, consistency can be lost.
However, when keeping the creation of content in-house, staff need to be appropriately skilled,
whether it’s thought leaders being focused and edited well, as well as taught how to use social
platforms, or marketing staff taught how to create new forms of web content.
There is a huge desire for authorship. The people behind the content also need to be or reflect the
people personally driving the product. Thought leaders need to put their name and face to the
content, as this engenders a feeling of trust and credibility. Unfortunately these thought leaders
tend to also be the busiest people in the company and therefore can’t necessarily be relied on for
timely commitment. Product knowledge also doesn’t always translate to market knowledge, so
correctly pitching a piece of content can be tricky when relying on a topic expert.
Marketing teams need to adopt a ‘publishing’ mentality. They need to be able to moderate,
appraise and proof content as it’s being produced.
Some would argue that marketers need to be writers. As our reading habits have changed, the
ability to write for the web is a must for all new employees. Training courses on writing for the
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web should be offered to any employee who has anything to do with content creation, marketing
or distribution.
If specific training cannot be given due to limited resources or resistance, then skilled
interviewers are needed to find and hire the right level of creative employee.
The major takeaway for writing for the web is that it’s vital that you write for people, not for
search engines, using as little jargon and acronyms as possible.
4.3. Outsourced content is difficult to get right but
overcomes a lack of web producers and ‘visualisers’ Should a company use third parties to create its content for clients?
It seems that there are masses of content creators out there, but there is no consistency of quality.
One option for a successful third-party approach would be to create a standardised template or
strategy to help get the best results from outsourced creators.
It’s been experienced that there can be lots of ‘storytellers’ in an organisation, but nobody who
can visualise ideas effectively. Often employees ‘have a go’ at content and the company feels
obliged to put it live. Web producers are often needed to help produce content, but this resource
is hard to find, especially when many tech teams proper are under-resourced.
This leads to the question of whether it is better not to publish content that is poor even though
time, money and other resources have been spent on it, or if it should just be published for the
sake of it – to be seen to be ‘doing something’. This can be damaging for the brand and it’s felt
that a hard line must be taken with content that isn’t up to scratch.
There is also the challenge that visual creators are very much in demand. Especially the good
ones; those with creative skills, subject knowledge and marketing expertise.
Some companies have partnered with other brands to co-create content. Thereby sharing markets
and doubling both brands’ audience. Buying in data in order to market to a new audience is a
challenge, as making the right connection can be a time-consuming and costly exercise. However,
if you partner with a brand with a similar demographic as yours this will give good chance of a
relevant audience.
4.4. Content formats adapted for mobile and video
production skills are highly valued Video and webinars were considered to be one of the stronger formats for marketing to customers
closer to sale of a considered purchase. The video format is expected more and more by customers
and can be used to circumvent reams of written content having to be used to explain complicated
subjects. It’s immediately engaging, concise and can deliver a vast amount of information quickly.
The challenge is that it’s difficult to make ‘good’ video, as there are many component parts to
video production that require multiple skills or multiple individuals with unique skills. To this
end, tools to make videos quicker and easier to make are valued.
More video is being watched on mobile as smartphone capability and speed of networks improve.
Written content has to be snackable and reading on mobile is affecting content formatting online
and in print.
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Infographics and data visualisation are relevant when done well. Pictures are very important for
engagement on social media, whether when creating or curating content.
Being aware of topical subject matter and tying content to it can help engagement. One company
gave the example of Britain’s flooding this winter as an event they had lots of relevant content
around, but failed to take advantage of.
4.5. LinkedIn drives traffic but some senior figures still
not engaging with social media Social media is an effective way of pushing out older but evergreen content on a regular basis.
These efforts need strategising in order not to seem like mere company broadcasting.
There has been a huge change in perception when it comes to social media as a distribution
channel. The effectiveness of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter has been proved time and time
again. However there is still some resistance from older generations holding senior positions in
companies.
There are some blue chip companies that still restrict social media access. It’s difficult to build a
business case for using social media as a means of distribution if you can’t access it within your
own office.
Of the social networks used, LinkedIn is driving most traffic and leads to B2B websites, but
companies must be subtle when engaging. Answering questions in full and not merely selling
products is needed.
The right content must be married to the right channel. Therefore research needs to be
undertaken as to the users of a specific channel and their expectations.
4.6. Matching content to stages of the buying cycle with
CRM, automation and paywalls is resource heavy Email has been proven for many companies as the best driver of engagement. Remarketing to
people who are already familiar with your brand is seen as a highly successful practice. Using
CRM and a level of automation, relevant content can be targeted to customers at the appropriate
stage of the buying funnel. Any visitor who engages with content can be remarketed to, led down
the funnel towards purchase.
This however means that the more you categorise, the more unique content is needed to be
created for marketing. It’s important to be realistic. Not all problems can be solved at once.
Instead find the common solution.
Paid media is important, especially PPC, when promoting content. However, strategies for paid
media need to be supported by website architecture. Being able to create and optimise landing
pages is a must.
Content is still the best way to cement a company’s standing in search engine results pages
(SERPs). Content creation can be relatively cheap compared with paid media campaigns.
Paywalls and the freemium model are a hot topic for many B2B companies. How much should be
given away? Setting a big enough gate, to allow potential customers to sample enough content to
want to buy, is important, without giving away the crown jewels.
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4.7. Sales can’t always be attributed to content, but
analytics and testing are still important Content creation needs to be supported by data and research. It also needs to be measured once
it’s been released in order to gauge its effectiveness and forecast for future strategy.
It’s sometimes difficult to get feedback after content has been published and the value of that
feedback can also be ambiguous, therefore analytics are a necessity for every company.
Most professionals who were asked what systems they used generally said free tools, such as
Google Analytics. The consensus was that although analytics can point out where a problem is, it’s
hard to prove how content contributed to a lead. It was also felt that data could easily be
manipulated to ‘look good’.
Training in analytics is seen as an area that needs much improvement. Multivariate testing was
mentioned as being a key way to measure the effectiveness of content marketing. There was also a
divide between whether the best metric for success was traffic or revenue.
Sales is ultimately the only metric a marketer should be interested in, albeit not just in the short
term. Marketing teams and content creators must have an awareness of both content traffic stats,
relevant for brand awareness and engagement such as shares, as well as how content is
encouraging sales.
Attribution can be a difficult beast when considering mobile, paid media and particularly social.
Because attributing revenue to content can be tricky (outside of CRM and email), the organisation
must have an almost ideological commitment to content and report on its success in ways that
senior managers can relate to.
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5. Key Challenges and Goals for B2B
Content Marketers Organisational challenges
How do you customise content for a client, efficiently and without sacrificing time and resources
in other areas of your business? How do you articulate ambition to senior departments or
heads?
Turning off the fire hose – how to utilise or effectively curate the vast amounts of content that
has already been created by a company and make the most out of it. Especially if that
company already has a large subscriber base.
Working outside of silos, bringing together different teams within an organisation that
wouldn’t normally collaborate in order to create, distribute and measure content. A good
example is taking to experts in product teams, the marketing department and the social media
or communications team.
Many companies have the technology and tools to create content, but limited resources.
Others have the opposite problem. Both of these challenges demand investment.
Encouraging staff, especially potential influencers and experts as well as management, to
develop their own social footprints to allow further amplification and dissemination of
content.
Expanding internationally – creating local content with tailored guidelines fitting local
regulation and culture, while fitting within a central strategy.
Increasing the awareness of B2B products in a company better known for B2C products.
Curation – knowing your own content inside out in order to use it to find new customers or
steer existing customers towards older but still relevant content.
Format challenges
Producing content to effectively target different verticals.
The key areas that B2B professionals are using content marketing for are:
– Brand awareness
– Lead nurturing
– Retention
It has been experienced that people writing for retention don’t necessarily have a marketing
mind and are unable to add that ‘saleable’ edge.
Similarly, marketers don’t necessarily have the skills to create good quality content.
Some companies are using clients’ existing content to help create brand new content.
Although this can be a tricky area, as clients of course tend to be reluctant to use their own
content in this manner. The ability to share best practice guides with clients would be a
beneficial practice according to some professionals.
Some companies have a small base of high-ticket clients, where sales are less frequent but
content needs to be of very high value. Professionals in these companies felt that it would be
useful to be able to repurpose a document made for a previous client in a way that made it not
seem like ‘recycling’ but in fact was providing a much deeper level of service.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 13
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Distribution challenges
Deciding how much content to give away when a paywall is in place. How big is the gate in the
wall?
Many agree that an effective skill in using and reusing existing content is the ability to take
larger pieces of content, break them up into smaller chunks and market these smaller pieces
through different channels. Companies with a large amount of existing content are using it as
an acquisition tool.
A further challenge in this area is tailoring that existing content effectively for the new client,
or even just simplifying it for a more general readership. The less content has to be made from
scratch the more time can be devoted to other areas of the business.
Measurement challenges
Scalability – how much content is needed to be created in order to generate revenue?
Making content work for ROI, whether that means revenue, conversion, social shares or client
satisfaction.
Lack of systems for measuring the success of content marketing and the subsequent inability
to amplify that success and communicate it to senior executives.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 14
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6. Case Studies
6.1. IBM creates content hub to engage with mid-size
businesses IBM created an educational content hub to reach and engage with IT professionals at mid-size
businesses, driving traffic to IBM.com and achieving a clickthrough rate more than 10 times the
industry average.
Summary
IBM wanted to demonstrate the value of its mid-size business solutions to IT professionals at
mid-size businesses, ensuring the brand was front of mind when purchasing decisions were made.
With more companies investing in content as a way to reach and engage customers, strengthen
credibility and build a community of brand advocates, IBM identified this as an effective means of
reaching and engaging with its target audience.
IBM launched MidsizeInsider.com, an online editorial hub and educational platform, producing
content based on IBM’s objectives, prospective customer interests and pain points. During 2012
there were over 7,200 direct visits to IBM.com (without paid media support) and a 1.7%
clickthrough rate (CTR).
Objectives and aims
IBM wanted to reach and engage IT professionals at mid-size businesses in order to demonstrate
its business solutions, which offer businesses information technology and services designed to
help them realise their full potential.
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The company sought to be top of mind as a problem solver and solution provider with “affordable,
easy-to-implement” solutions. Leslie Reiser, Program Director of WW Marketing for IBM General
Business, chose a content marketing approach to spread brand awareness and increase IBM’s
standing within this customer consideration set. To be successful, the team needed to implement
and sustain a newsroom-oriented production process for creating quality content at scale.
Implementation, execution and tactics
More companies are turning to content as a way to reach and engage customers, strengthen
credibility and build a community of brand advocates. With this in mind, IBM created
MidsizeInsider.com, an online information repository and educational platform designed to
address key trends and breaking news pertinent to mid-size business owners.
The company worked with the Digital Influence Group to provide planning, development and
implementation of MidsizeInsider.com, as well as overall strategic guidance for cultivating
awareness among mid-market technology professionals. IBM also partnered with Skyword’s
Content Production Platform and advisory services to help manage the content marketing
process.
The company’s content marketing hub features strategic topic selection based on IBM’s
objectives, prospective customer interests and pain points, using a pool of 20,000+ freelancers to
produce editorial.
A SaaS platform was deployed for content strategy, content development, content production and
optimisation for search and social promotion, as well as measurement and analytics, while
detailed content intelligence was gathered for identifying the information IBM’s target audience
valued, in order to continually improve content offerings.
Results
In 2012, IBM’s Midsize Insider program created over 2,900 articles and saw more than 204
million social impressions generated.
More than 595,000 page views were recorded, and content was shared over 16,000 times.
There were over 7,200 direct visits to IBM.com (without paid media support) and a 1.7% CTR
(more than 10 times industry CTR averages for banner ads).
[Source: Econsultancy]
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6.2. Maersk’s distribution of content with social media Danish shipping company Maersk began using social media in 2011 as an experiment to see
whether its customers would interact with them in the same way as in B2C industries.
The plan was to raise brand awareness, gain insight into the market and get closer to its
customers. However, Maersk’s activity distributing content through social media has also helped
to generate leads.
Maersk focuses on the stories that emerge from within the business, such as how it is helping fuel
a boom in the sale of Kenyan avocados.
Similarly, using Facebook, Maersk garnered 150 unique leads from a Facebook campaign telling
the story of how its shipping containers navigate the frozen Baltic Sea during winter.
The Facebook page linked to a landing page where users could fill in their information to
download a brochure about the company’s anti-freeze services.
Those who downloaded the form became a lead in Maersk’s sales pipeline.
Maersk now has more than 1.5 million Facebook fans (of which around 15% are customers) and
12,000 Twitter followers, as well as active accounts on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Google+ and
LinkedIn.
[Source: Econsultancy]
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6.3. Sage uses content to enhance search ranking Sage integrated paid search and SEO to raise awareness of the company’s offering among micro-
businesses and to boost sales, developing original content around seven themes to identify user
intent.
Summary
Enterprise software company Sage wanted to engage with an audience which is expensive and
difficult to reach, namely micro-businesses (fewer than 10 employees) through traditional
channels. Its data-focused approach not only identified how to reach these audiences online, but
also how to engage with them effectively by providing them with the content they were looking
for.
The project used search and content as a brand awareness channel through a measurement
framework which allowed it to actively optimise for engagement and made the connection
between awareness and conversion further down the line. The campaign achieved a reach of over
85% in the UK micro-business sector.
Objectives and aims
Sage is a multinational enterprise software company headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is
one of the world’s biggest suppliers of enterprise resource planning software and of the largest
suppliers to small businesses.
The company wanted to:
Reach micro-businesses where awareness was low, the brand was not perceived as relevant
and sales were lost to competitors.
Demonstrate efficiency in reaching this market and driving awareness.
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Impact sales.
Implementation, execution and tactics
Research showed micro-businesses were reliant on search to find help with business problems.
With this insight, Sage focused purely on this channel to meet objectives.
The company categorised this search behaviour into seven themes to identify user intent (i.e.
Start a Business, Grow Your Business, Manage Cash Flow, Control Costs, Work Life Balance, Beat
Business Fears and Employing People), developed original content in multiple formats around
each theme, and used an integrated SEO and PPC campaign to connect this content with its target
audience.
The measurement framework ensured that Sage could actively optimise budgets to deliver
objectives efficiently and track engagements through to sale.
Categorising 100,000 business searches by theme and volume helped develop the right
strategy and deliver it efficiently.
The measurement framework scored every valuable action relatively, from a visit to a video
view to a PDF download, and set a permanent cookie to track how these engagements turned
into sales up to 180 days later.
In PPC the campaign was actively bid managed, so these content engagement metrics and
cookie pools were built around each theme to extend reach across the Google Display
Network.
SEO focused on the top 30 keywords in terms of volume and engagement using PPC data,
categorising the SEO keywords using the PPC campaign structure to deliver integrated data,
report on SEO CTR (using impression data from PPC) and understand incrementality
between the channels.
A 12-week off-site campaign also ran to ethically build links and social media ‘signals’ around
the seven themes.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 19
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Results
The campaign achieved a reach of over 85% in the UK micro-business sector, according to
Google, generating 130m impressions.
On softer metrics, the campaign generated 578,600 ‘engagements’ (clicks, video views, shares,
likes).
On harder metrics, the campaign generated 13,000 PDF downloads and 600 leads (contact
forms completed).
In PPC, CTRs were up to 33% on generic keywords due to the themed nature of the campaign
involving over 11,000 ad groups.
In SEO, half of the target 30 keywords moved from outside the top 100 to first page on Google
within three months.
Like-for-like sales up 20% year-on-year, including 19,000 new software demos generated
during the campaign.
[Source: Econsultancy]
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 20
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7. Market Data and Statistics
7.1. Econsultancy reports Content marketing is one of the three most important business opportunities in 2014, alongside
customer experience and mobile, according to the Econsultancy / Adobe Quarterly Digital
Intelligence Briefing on 2014 digital trends.
The report is based on a global survey of more than 2,500 marketers and internet professionals
carried out at the end of 2013.
Figure 1: Which one area is the single most exciting opportunity for your
organisation (or for your clients) in 2014?
Source: https://econsultancy.com/reports/quarterly-digital-intelligence-briefing-2014-digital-trends
The Econsultancy / Responsys Marketing Budgets 2014 report revealed a continuing trend of
content marketing as the most buoyant area for investment.
Around three-quarters of responding companies (74%) said they will be increasing their
content marketing budgets in 2014, up from 70% a year ago.
Looking at the supply side, a resounding 80% of agencies say their clients will be increasing
their budgets in content marketing.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 21
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Agency respondents
Figure 2: What best describes your clients’ budget plans for the following digital
marketing channels or disciplines in 2014?
Source: https://econsultancy.com/reports/marketing-budgets
According to Econsultancy’s State of Search Marketing Report 2013 (in association with SEMPO),
45% of companies say content marketing is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO strategy.
Organisations are more likely to integrate content marketing with their SEO strategy than they
are with any other digital marketing discipline (just 24% for paid search marketing and 16% for
mobile marketing).
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 22
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Company respondents
Figure 3: To what degree are your search engine optimisation efforts integrated
with the following digital marketing disciplines?
Source: https://econsultancy.com/reports/sempo-state-of-search
7.2. Third-party statistics 86% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America use content marketing. [Source:
Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing: 2014
Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America, March 2014]
– 30% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America say they are effective at content
marketing.
– 21% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America have a documented content
strategy.
– 60% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America have someone in place to oversee
content strategy.
– 26% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America say they produce significantly
more content now compared to a year ago.
– 55% of B2B manufacturing marketers in North America outsource content creation.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 23
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– In-person events and videos are considered the most effective content tactics among North
American B2B manufacturers.
More than 73% of US B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their go-to-market
strategy. [Source: AdAge, January 2014]
In North America, 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing. [Source: Content Marketing
Institute / MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends –
North America, October 2013]
– 42% of B2B marketers in North America say they are effective at content marketing.
– 44% of North American B2B marketers have a documented content strategy.
– 73% of North American B2B marketers have someone who oversees the content marketing
strategy.
– 73% of North American B2B content marketers are producing more content than they did
one year ago.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 24
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and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © Econsultancy.com Ltd 2014
– 57% of North American B2B enterprise companies tailor content by profiling individual
decision makers.
B2B Content Marketing Trends Briefing Key Takeaways from Digital Cream, London 2014 Page 25
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and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © Econsultancy.com Ltd 2014
8. Resources Reports
B2B Content Marketing Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/b2b-content-marketing-best-practice-guide
Digital Content Strategy Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/digital-content-strategy-best-practice-guide
Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: From Content Management to Customer
Experience Management
https://econsultancy.com/reports/quarterly-digital-intelligence-briefing-from-content-
management-to-customer-experience-management
Content Statistics
https://econsultancy.com/reports/content-statistics
Content Marketing – Digital Marketing Template Files
https://econsultancy.com/reports/content-marketing-digital-marketing-template-files
SEO Best Practice Guide
https://econsultancy.com/reports/seo-best-practice-guide
Blog posts
13 content marketing tips from the experts: how to write a great blog
https://econsultancy.com/blog/61887-13-content-marketing-tips-from-the-experts-how-to-
write-a-great-blog
Six examples of B2B companies that shine on Twitter
https://econsultancy.com/blog/62692-six-examples-of-b2b-companies-that-shine-on-twitter
70 epic content marketing best practice tips, stats, blog posts and more
https://econsultancy.com/blog/63014-70-epic-content-marketing-best-practice-tips-stats-blog-
posts-and-more
The challenge of blending content with data: discussion and infographic
https://econsultancy.com/blog/64601-the-challenge-of-blending-content-with-data-discussion-
and-infographic
Which content marketing formats work best?
https://econsultancy.com/blog/64007-which-content-marketing-formats-work-best
The freemium model and paywall strategies: how much such you give away?
https://econsultancy.com/blog/64633-the-freemium-model-and-paywall-strategies-how-much-
should-you-give-away
Leads and opportunities are the primary B2B marketing measure, not attention
https://econsultancy.com/blog/64348-leads-and-opportunities-are-the-primary-b2b-marketing-
measure-not-attention
B2B SEO demystified: a content marketing case study
https://econsultancy.com/blog/63550-b2b-seo-demystified-a-content-marketing-case-study