CLEVELAND — Only 18 percent of business-to-business (B2B) manufacturing marketers say their organizations are effective at content marketing - down from 26 percent reported in 2015. That’s just one of the findings in the research released today by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). The third annual B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America report, sponsored by Lionbridge, shows how B2B manufacturing marketers have changed their content marketing practices over the last year.
While manufacturing marketers reported effectiveness is down, they did report they are using more content marketing tactics (13 this year vs. 12 last year), and that they are more effective with those tactics. As they did last year, manufacturing marketers say in-person events are the most effective tactic (66 percent last year vs. 75 percent this year).
“Content marketing is still a new approach for most manufacturing organizations,” explains Joe Pulizzi, founder, Content Marketing Institute and author of Content Inc. “Even those that are experimenting with content marketing are still heavily product-focused. The sales organizations in manufacturing organizations dominate budgetary thinking. Leads and closed deals rule. This means that patience through a measured content marketing approach is often absent. If they are committed to content marketing, they need to document, plan, resource, and make the hard choices necessary for success.”
Other key takeaways:
- 18 percent of manufacturing marketers have a documented content marketing strategy, 50 percent have a verbal-only strategy, and 27 percent have no strategy.
- 32 percent of manufacturing marketers meet daily or weekly to discuss their content marketing program.
- YouTube is the social media platform that manufacturing marketers use most often (87 percent), as well as the one they say is most effective (66 percent).
- More manufacturing marketers are using promoted posts to distribute content this year (38 percent last year vs. 45 percent this year); however, only 29 percent of those users say promoted posts are effective (down from 39 percent last year).
- 49 percent of manufacturing marketers say they will increase content marketing spending over the next 12 months.
