Enterprise marketers show more clarity than B2B marketers overall in content strategy, study finds
Enterprise marketers may be a slightly different breed than overall B2B marketers as a study suggest they have more clarity about their content strategy than B2B marketers overall.
In a recent survey of over 399 enterprise marketers in the field of IT and software, manufacturing, accounting, banking, financial institutions as well as consulting, health care medical and pharmaceuticals it appears enterprise marketers favor working as a team on content strategy, meet more often and put greater emphasis on measurement of ROI. Yet, enterprise marketers appear to be less satisfied overall with their companies content marketing strategies as only 22 per cent of enterprise marketers consider their organizations to be effective at content marketing compared to 30 per cent of B2B content marketers overall.
Additionally, only 29 per cent of enterprise marketers are clear on what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like compared to 44 per cent of overall B2B marketers. Further, only 34 per cent of enterprise B2B marketers meet regularly to discuss content marketing compared to 44 per cent of B2B content marketers overall. Additionally, 59 per cent of enterprise marketers v. 53 per cent of B2B peers overall are more likely to cite measuring the ROI of the content marketing program and lack of integration across marketing (41 per cent v. 23 per cent) as top five challenges.
B2B marketers overall are more likely than enterprise marketers to cite producing content consistently as a top five challenge (57 per cent v 46 per cent). Enterprise marketers like B2B marketers overall cite creating more engaging content as their top priority for content creators. Their other priorities closely match those cited by B2B marketers overall.
Enterprise marketers, like B2B marketers overall say that more engaging content is their top priority. In comparison, B2B marketers overall are more likely than enterprise marketers to cite producing content consistently as a top five challenge (57 per cent v. 46 per cent) while enterprise marketers are more likely than B2B marketers overall to cite measuring the ROI of content (59 per cent v. 52 per cent) and lack of integration across marketing (41 per cent v. 23 per cent) as top challenges.
When asked if their organizations were clear on what an effective or successful content marketing program looked like, enterprise marketers had more clarity than B2B marketers overall around content marketing success (64 per cent v. 29 per cent) which may explain their slightly lower marks on their companies overall performance in this area.
Additionally, when compared with B2B marketers overall, the most effective enterprise marketers meet more frequently with 58 per cent of the most effective enterprise marketers meeting daily or weekly. Further, enterprise marketers tend to have more team meetings than B2B marketers overall with 73 per cent of the most effective saying that they extract value from content marketing meetings.
Enterprise marketers tend to favor in person events (95 per cent), videos and social media as their top three tactics and 74 per cent of those surveyed say they will produce more content in 2016 v. 2015. Enterprise marketers also plan to increase their content marketing tactics from last year including eBooks (34 per cent v. 54 per cent this year), info graphics (49 per cent v. 63 per cent this year) and illustrations and photos (43 per cent v. 54 per cent this year). Additionally, enterprise marketers use an average of six social media platforms, with 94 per cent using LinkedIn, 88 per cent YouTube, 87 per cent Twitter and 83 per cent Facebook.
When asked to rate the effectiveness from the year before, the approval rating for LinkedIn increased from 61 per cent last year to 68 per cent this year. The effectiveness ratings for Facebook were for 30 per cent v. 26 per cent. Enterprise marketers use on average four paid methods including traditional online banner ads (74 per cent) while 73 per cent use SEM. Enterprise marketers made more posts from the prior year with 49 per cent v. 62 per cent from this year.
Social ads for enterprise marketers went from 53 per cent from last year v. 62 per cent for this year. The survey found that enterprise marketers felt that search engine marketing (SEM) was the most effective (53 per cent last year v. 58 per cent this year) and the greatest increase in effectiveness was promoted posts (42 per cent last year v. 48 per cent this year).
The study also found that 74 per cent of enterprise marketers focus primarily on newsletters and blogs in order to generate subscribers while 82 per cent say engagement remains an important goal. Most enterprise marketers also cite sales lead quality (34 per cent) as the most important metric.
The study indicates that enterprise marketers are increasingly focused on content marketing and yet continue to see room for improvement from within their companies. The fact that enterprise marketers place more importance on content marketing goals compared to B2B marketers overall in sales (91 percent), lead generation (88 per cent), engagement (84 per cent) and lead nurturing (84 per cent) indicates room for growth and improvement for this sector.