2015 B2B Content Marketing Research Report

The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released their 2015 B2B Content Marketing Research Report.

Here are some of the findings that I thought were interesting:

• The key theme from the research is to have a documented content marketing strategy. 35% have a documented content marketing strategy, 48% have one not documented, and 14% do not have a strategy.
• 84% said brand awareness was their most important goal of content marketing.
• Website traffic (at 63%) was the metric used the most to assess content marketing success.  The lowest metric was subscriber growth at 30%.
• Content marketing tactics used the most was social media at 92%, e-newsletters at 83%, website articles as 81%, and blogs at 80%.
• The top four challenges marketers face are producing engaging content (54%), producing content consistently (50%), measuring content effectiveness (49%), and producing a variety of content (42%).  
• Creating more engaging content is the top content marketing initiative. 69% are currently doing this and 19% are planning to do this within the next 12 months.
• 55% are currently trying to have a better understanding of what content is effective and what isn't. 31% plan do this within the next 12 months.
• 63% are currently trying to find more and better ways to repurpose content. 23% plan to do within the next 12 months.
• 63% are currently trying to better understand their audience. 21% plan to do this within the next 12 months.
• 62% are organizing content on website. 21% plan to do this within the next 12 months and 12% said it is not a priority.
• 55% of the respondents that have a documented content strategy publish new content daily or multiple times a week.