After a tough year in terms of content marketing effectiveness, B2B marketers got some reassuring news from the Content Marketing Institute’s just-released annual survey. Now 62% of B2B marketers in North America say their organization’s overall approach to content marketing has been much more or somewhat more successful than one year ago.
“After analyzing the findings, I truly feel the momentum we are seeing in the industry is taking a turn for the better,” said Joe Pulizzi, founder of the CMI, in a statement. “One important distinction among marketers who are consistently top performers is their level of commitment. Ninety-one percent of top performers are extremely or very committed to content marketing, compared to 63% of the overall sample and 35% of the bottom performers. It’s clear if you want to be successful with your content marketing, you need to make it a priority.”
Further, 76% of B2B marketers said they always or frequently prioritize delivering content quality over content quantity, while 68% of B2B marketers agreed that their organization is realistic about the results content marketing can deliver (compared with 91% of top performers).
Finally, CMI’s report found that some of B2B marketers’ content success has to do with an increasing comfort with metrics. Almost 90% of top performers said they measure content marketing ROI, compared with 72% overall. Moreover, 75% of B2B marketers agreed that their team leverages metrics to demonstrate how content marketing has increased audience engagement. Interestingly, 49% of B2B marketers measure content marketing ROI at the top of the funnel, in areas such as lead gen and audience acquisition, making it the phase of the buyer’s journey where they are most likely to measure ROI.
