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“B2B companies are using nearly 30% of their budget in content marketing whereas B2C are using 35% of their respective budgets!”
Whether business to business (B2B) or business to customer (B2C), content marketing has grown as the strongest medium of communication among companies and their respective consumers.
Content marketing has a great impact on the consumers’ behavior and the pattern they follow before taking their final decision about any purchase. Let me walk you through a few stats based on various studies in recent past that can just point out how consumers amicably go with the contents.
• 61 % of consumers prefer a company that offers custom content which helps them in making decision to do shopping from there only.
• 60 % of people hold positive opinion after reading the custom content on the company’s site.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing means information either in words, pictures, infographic or anything that you like to share and that can be translated into marketing, into building a trust, into branding the image of the organization without writing any sell’s pitch.
So we can now say that content marketing means:
Business Relevant Communication-Selling Pitch= Content Marketing.
Stats on why content marketing is becoming increasingly important nowadays:
• 27,000,000 pieces of content are shared each day
• 93% of B2B Marketers use content marketing
• 78% of CMOs think content is the future of marketing
• 73% of B2B Marketers have someone in charge of content marketing
• B2B Marketers spend 30% of the marketing budget on content marketing
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads
• Conversion rate for brands using content marketing is 6 to 7x higher
• Interesting content is a top reason that people follow brands on social media
• 57% of digital marketers define Content Marketing as their #1 priority
Social Content Marketing Stats:
• Social media advertising spending will increase to $8.3 billion by 2015 (*BIA/Kelsey)
• Content from reputable sources is the most shared (*UCLA)
• 90% of users listen to recommendations shared by friends (*Voltier Digital)
• 73% of all industry-specific Twitter posts include content sharing (*AOL & Nielsen)
• 99% of people who share via social network are sharing via multiple platforms (*AOL & Nielsen)
• Clicks from shared content are 5 times more likely to result in a purchase (*Voltier Digital)
• 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content (*Content Marketing Institute)
• 34% of marketers have generated leads on Twitter (*Huffington Post)
• 80% of users prefer to connect with brands on Facebook (*Huffington Post)
• People spend more than 50% of their time online with content and an additional 30% of their time on social channels where content can be shared (*AOL & Nielsen)
Mobile Content Marketing Stats:
• 75% of smartphone users watch videos on their phones, 26% of whom use video at least once a day (*Ooyala/ Ipsos)
• 63 % of all tablet owners have purchased a product or service from their device, compared with 39 percent of smartphone users. (Source: eMarketer)
• 70 % of mobile browser searches lead to action within an hour — 40 percent are on tablets and 60 percent on smartphones. (Source: iAcquire)
• 9 out of 10 smartphone shoppers used their devices to buy products while at a brick-and-mortar store. (Source: JiWire)
• Mobile responsive design got on average 20 % increase in clicks and conversions. (Source: Responsys)
• Half of smartphone users say: “If a retailer’s technology isn’t easy the first time, I’ll stop using it.” (Source: First Data)
• 47 % of consumers want mobile offers on their devices when they pass by a store. (Source:comScore and UPS)
• An estimated 54 million consumers in the U.S. will use smartphone coupons in 2014. (Source:eMarketer)
• Mobile offers are redeemed 10x more frequently than print offers. (Source: eMarketer)
Video Content Marketing Stats:
• Online video has increased eightfold in five years
• Video on demand will be tripled by 2016
• In 2016, it will take 6 million years to watch all the online videos uploaded in one month
• Mobile video traffic will get increased by eighteen times than now, in 2016
• There are more than 1 billion unique visitors and 4 billion hours of video watched every month
• Past year, Nielsen reported that over 27 million pieces of content were being shared each day
• Online marketing costs over 60% less than traditional advertising and marketing and also generates 3 times more leads
• 93% of marketing professionals used video as part of their strategy in 2013, 71% increased their video spend from 2012 levels
• In case of B2C online marketers , video is the fourth most popular content marketing tactic, which is just behind social media, article’s and e-newsletters. Whereas in case of B2B, it has taken sixth most popular place
• ROI Research reports user interactivity with video content is twice the rate of other forms of content.
Stats on how Blogging works wonders:
“Blog doesn’t sell but it definitely allows you to get better sales and better growth!”
• Each month, 329 million people read blogs (*Blogging.org)
• Blogs give sites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links
• 37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable content type for marketing
• Companies that blog 15+ times per month get 5x more traffic than companies that don’t blog
• Companies with an active blog report 97% more leads.
A few stats on how content marketing influences customers’ purchase decisions
• 61 % of consumers prefer a company that offers custom content, and do shopping from there only
• 60 % of people hold positive opinion after reading the custom content on the company’s site
• 78 % of consumers feel that custom content establish good affinity with them
• 63 % agreed that blog post influences their buying more compared to magazines
• Blog brings 55 % more visitors.
Some common objectives of content marketing to be kept in mind while building your content marketing plan:
Content marketing is basically a mathematic, an art and a science of knowing your targeted consumer. So it is important to make a strategy before you enter. It is important to define your objective of your marketing. It is very difficult to define the objective of content marketing because every company uses this in its own fashion to achieve different goals. So, let’s go through a few very common objectives of content marketing to be kept in mind before you actually go ahead and make a strategy:
Improve SEO and Traffic
As we know SEO gives maximum exposure in SERP which is undoubtedly important but it is not the only thing that you want. SEO brings your sole focus on keywords but your first objective is to reach your audience and you have also other tools. SEO is just one way.
Create Brand Awareness
For beginners, it is very important to create awareness for your brand which is your first goal. It is always beneficial to share your contents with a larger audience.
Increase Engagement
Write better content that turns awareness into something more meaningful that can bring more participation, helps in building better relationship that can add an individual’s experience with your brand.
Improve Brand Perception
It develops with time through many different sources, including content. People gradually learn to recognize you from your content, tone, and style of messaging. That helps you in becoming a brand in the eyes of your consumers.
Generate Leads
Content marketing is very useful in creating lead generation. It is always important to know your audience and as per that share the right content with them which will help you to attract prospects who will give their required information against your content.
Nurture Leads
After getting the required details from your prospects, which means you have permission to send your content to them, your job, which is to follow them with meaningful content and create a dialogue, begins. It helps you to convert into qualified leads and then finally into sales.
Increase Sales/Revenue
When you do content marketing correctly, it increases sales. The main objective of content marketing is not to convert qualified leads into customers but to keep them as loyal buyers. Your content helps consumers in making decision to purchase.
Become a Thought Leader
When you write and people like your content then you become a trusted resource and people listen to you before taking any decisions and you become game-changer.
Other Objectives
First things first, it is important to know that the objectives of content marketing differ for B2B and B2C Companies. However the main objective of content marketing is educating your consumers, creating greater brand awareness, increase visibility (globally and locally), increasing user generated content (e.g. reviews and fan sites) etc. Content marketing is now the backbone of every organization. It is very important to keep your objectives clear which is possible only when you know what you’re aiming to achieve.
The Benefits of Content Marketing:
• It helps in making money
• It generates better prospect that results into better sales figures
• It pulls in new prospects and unexpected customers
• It helps you to share your thoughts and ideas that establish you as a thought leader
• It is cheaper and easier form than other forms marketing
• It helps a lot in increasing sales
• It works as a breeze between company and their audience
• It helps you to become a helpful source for getting in-depth information regarding a product and service
• It enhances your brand image by making you a trusted name
• It is found that it increases email response rates
• It creates a good launching pad to make things go viral
• It reduces your dependence on external sources
• It gives you a better control over your message
• It is seen that content marketing increases the newsletter signups
• It influences purchasing decisions of customers
A few live examples out of thousands of business that have gained outstanding results through content marketing:
Good Greens:
KelthPabley founded a company named Good Greens in 2011, which was producing bars with 40 antioxidants and 3 problotics. He didn’t have large sum of money to market his product so he tried his luck with local bloggers to increase the number of reviews and search engine results for good greens. Soon his fortune shone upon him and three of his flavors became the No 1, 2 and 3 selling bars in Cleveland and his sales grew 50% in 4 months.
Cap Cakes Business by Mari Luangrath:
In 2009 Mari Luangrath started selling her cap cakes online. However she faced an unexpected problem with her website for the first 6 months. You can understand how impossible it is to run online business without a proper website. So, she started her chat on Twitter and she increased customers and followers from zero to 2200 within 6 months and hence she attracted national press and beat sales targets by 600%.
CorePower:
In 2002 Trevor tice started a health and fitness company named CorePower. He used straight away the social networking site to become popular and in making relationship with his customers. He also started his online classes. He set a mark of his own and by 2010 his sales were $ 23 million and by 2011 he started 55 more locations for his business and by 2016 he is planning to open 100 outlets. CorePower is now the biggest yoga chain in the USA.
Mint.com:
In 2006, Aaron Patzer started Mint.com – website to look after your personal finances online. He focused on blog posts, slideshows, videos and infographics. By 2007 he had 100,000 accounts and in 2008 he had 600,000 accounts and his mint.com got almost 2 million accounts by 2009 and it became the largest player in Personal finance aggregation market. After that he sold his company in $170 million to Intuit Company.
Now you have seen some of the extraordinary results that were only achieved by using content marketing. Hope you enjoyed reading and learnt something better for your future.
What DSIM covers in Content Marketing?
At DSIM, you get to cover the in and out of content marketing starting from its introduction to its objectives, keyword research and much more. By the end of the module, you are not only able to create a content that compels but that’s also prized by search engines bringing you more traffic, engagement and sales. This is just a gist of what you will learn @DSIM, for the detailed course curriculum, you can always download it on DSIM’s website or simply click here!
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