Only half of marketers think the content they produce is more varied and more comprehensive than that produced by their industry rivals.
That’s the alarming statistic revealed in research carried out among 172 B2B marketers by B2B Marketing, in association with Tomorrow People. Some 38% rated themselves as about the same as the competition, and 12% actually thought their content was less varied and more limited.
The report, Dare to be different: The state of B2B content marketing differentiation in 2017, also discovered just 16% of marketers have a formal strategy for content differentiation in their organisation.
The top two reasons marketers cited for differentiating their content by channel or audience was to improve customer experience (71%), and to attract more customers (70%).
Paul Snell, deputy editor at B2B Marketing, said: “It’s worrying that just half of marketers believe they are outperforming the competition when it comes to differentiating their content. If you’re a marketer and you’re not setting out to be different to your competition, what are you even doing in marketing?”
Separate research by Yahoo predicted content marketing spend is set to double by 2020, with budgets in the UK alone set to soar from £125 million in 2014 to £349 million.
