Introduction
Content Marketing in B2B is a serious business. Never more so than during the pandemic when audiences have flocked to trusted, and non trusted, sources for guidance on how to think, function and thrive. And for B2B marketers, this has presented an even larger opportunity to influence our absolute ideal audiences. The question of course is, how are B2B marketers feeling about their activity?
This report, by Finite and powered by CogniClick technology, gathers insight from 100 B2B marketers to benchmark performance and identify the challenges in delivering content that will add value to business. It's an opportunity to consider your approach, improve strategies and tactics, and to deliver stand out content marketing over the coming months. Enjoy!
This report, by Finite and powered by CogniClick technology, gathers insight from 100 B2B marketers to benchmark performance and identify the challenges in delivering content that will add value to business. It's an opportunity to consider your approach, improve strategies and tactics, and to deliver stand out content marketing over the coming months. Enjoy!
What's proving most challenging in B2B content?
We asked 'what are you finding most challenging?' and the following 3 content related tasks came out on top of your lists.
16%
of marketers find 'Measuring ROI' most challenging
26%
of marketers find 'Reaching the right Audience' most challenging
35%
of marketers find Producing enough content' most challenging
"Creating engaging content is often not the problem, the problem is lack of the right eyeballs. Please tell me – what's the point of creating wonderfully creative content if (a) you don't know how to target the right people; (b) you don't allocate the budget to target the right people or (c) you don't even bother trying? You may as well chuck all your multicoloured, post-it notes in the bin!"
Helen Kensett – Co-founder and Head of Marketing at CogniClick
"Its great that around 2/3rds of us are confident using content to attract and inform but what about the other 32%? Are they too nervous to try? If you’re not doing it at all, then go ahead and give it a go. But if content is not working for you then you need to figure out why. Content marketing is not a formula you can apply and then walk away - it needs constant experimentation, updating and reiteration."
Lucy Thorpe – Head of Social Media & Content Creation, In Cloud Solutions
Gating content is still a key strategy ...
Gating content has long been a strategy to capture the all important contact details of our prospects. Gating 'valuable' thoughts and ideas is clearly still in the armoury of as many as 65% of b2b marketers, with 30% of us still using this approach often and always.
34%
of marketers only 'sometimes' gate content
25%
of marketers 'often' gate content
5%
of marketers 'always' gate content
“One of the great things about working for startups is you tend to get lots of highly motivated colleagues outside marketing with a strong sense of ownership over the company blog. Typically as an organisation grows, that interest can tail off. In my experience it’s important to find content advocates across functions from the beginning and do your best to keep them engaged. I’ve also found it helps to offer people different ways to get involved: from suggesting ideas, to being interviewed, through to writing a piece. At the least, it’s valuable to get someone outside the team to do a review. I find the content is usually better if I’ve drawn on different voices and expertise within the business.”
Nicki Cho – Head of Content, TrueLayer
“It surprises me that the figure is only 70%. A lot of decision makers are working from home and in this virtual environment they are consuming much more content online. Search engines in many cases are the gateways to this and in my mind I think 70% of marketers should be saying that SEO is the ‘most important element’ in their content strategies to gain competitive advantage moving into 2021."
James Rowland – Digital Performance Director, Refinitiv
What the industry said about KPI's
Key performance indicators (KPIs) have come a long way since the days when people were measuring “hits” on a page, yet many marketers are still stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to measuring the effectiveness and impact of various forms of content. The tactics that work in measuring a website or a traditional customer acquisition funnel do not always translate into content marketing measurement. For white papers, eBooks, blogs, eNewsletters, or whatever format you choose, The Content Marketing institute recommends, as a minimum we measure: Reach, Engagement and Sentiment.
43%
of B2B marketers only 'sometimes' have defined content marketing KPIs
18%
of B2B marketers 'rarely' or 'never' have defined content marketing KPIs
"Content marketing is - and has always been - aimed at long-term success. It’s about building a brand, an audience and engagement. Everyone knows content marketing is a good thing, and everyone knows you can’t afford not to do it. But not everyone knows the exact value it adds. The objective of content marketing initiatives (such as blogs, campaigns, events) is rarely directly/solely revenue related. It is often: acquire more traffic, build x number of links or get x new numbers of social media followers. Again, all of these outcomes are vital for any modern business success, but it is rare that companies have advanced-enough tracking to be able to attribute exact ROI to each. I would argue that by focusing on exact ROI, you are inherently missing the point of content marketing. It is there to serve an incredibly important job for brands big and small. If you are able to attribute lifetime value to each customer, or the average value of a social media follower, then your tracking is probably not exact, but certainly sufficient in gauging the ROI of your content marketing."
Adelle Kehoe – Head of Content, MVF
"That's not too surprising! Lack of resource and stakeholder buy-in is often at play here. Content marketers may feel pressured to produce lots to keep bosses happy at the expense of quality. Creating content that educates a B2B niche audience about specific problems requires the careful sourcing of writers with industry & product knowledge, well-defined briefs, time for research, writing, editing and design. Skip these steps and the quality or quantity of content drops."
Christina Pashialis – Content Marketing Manager, Soldo | Founder, ContentUK
Next steps
About FINITE & 93x
FINITE is the free private community for ambitious marketers in B2B tech & SaaS companies to connect, share and learn. Although the FINITE community began primarily through London based meet-ups, we are now a global community with 800+ B2B tech marketers across Australia, America, Asia & Europe.
FINITE provides its members with private events, a podcast, curated B2B tech marketing news, FinTech interview series, and access to an international, active Slack community.
93x is the specialist B2B digital marketing agency, delivering SEO, PPC & content marketing exclusively for B2B technology, software & SaaS clients globally.
The B2B Content Marketing Report
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