B2B Content marketing, while costing 62% less than any other form of marketing, is capable of generating three times more leads for B2B sector. This is the reason why a majority of B2B marketers across the world are placing high bets on content marketing to snatch lucrative outputs with this inexpensive yet effective marketing form.
According to the CMI 2016 reports, 88% of B2B content marketers used content marketing and allocated more than 28% of their total marketing budget on it to take advantage of this thriving internet B2B marketing practice. However, the harsh reality is that out of this 88% only 30% B2B marketers agreed to have effectively used content marketing to their advantage while the efforts of the remaining 70% have gone in vain!
Yet another research by Gleanster and Kapost, surveying 3,408 marketers, says that a total of $958 million is wasted annually on ineffective and inefficient content marketing making ineffective content marketing a very expensive problem. Both these unanimously point to the high wastage of content marketing efforts done by the B2B marketers. Owing to this high wastage of resources on inefficient content, it has become indispensable for the B2B content marketers to know why their efforts are going in vain. Here are the top 5 reasons.
You Do Not Have A Documented Content Marketing Strategy
According to the latest research by Content Marketing Institute, only 37% of the B2B content marketers have a written content marketing plan. Not having a documented content marketing plan leaves you with content that is not goal-focused. As a B2B marketer, it is important that you have a well-documented content marketing plan that defines your content KPI, maps your buyer’s journey, and lists you when to edit content and much more. B2B marketers with no documented content marketing plan have a 50% more ineffective strategy which is one of the reasons why 80% of your B2B content marketing efforts are going to waste.
You Are Quantifying All Your Efforts
Salecycle incorporated the strategy of ‘more is better’ in their content marketing. They quantified all their efforts and decided to post more content for a year. While the graph for content output increased, the graph for the clicks and shares dropped steeply. Thus, quantifying all the content marketing efforts can definitely render all your content marketing efforts ineffective as the B2B traffic filters out the content based on its importance and relevance to the industry. Churning out more content without understanding the relevance of the posts is one of the reasons why 80% of your B2B content marketing efforts are going to waste.
You Are Not Prioritizing Subjects As Per The Audiences’ Interest
Prioritizing subjects as per the B2B audiences’ interest is a must to keep your content marketing game strong. According to a recent study by econsultancy, a majority of businesses are more interested in reading content that has factual data, statistics and gives practical advice related to B2B marketing. The B2B traffic is seen to be less interested in knowing the client stories and even less in reading about culture and career stuff. Not understanding the audiences’ interest to post content as per the knowledge gained is one of the reasons why 80% of your B2B content marketing efforts are going to waste.
You Are Only Creating Content For Content’s Sake
Creating content only for the sake of creating does not work in B2B content marketing. Just employing resources in content marketing is never enough, you need to learn how to do it right. The content created should be valuable to the business traffic who is reading it to gain some information. Many B2B marketers create content that is not related to the business, is poorly designed, does not have substance and does not even cater to the audiences’ needs. Mere content creation, without creating a buyer persona is one of the reasons why 80% of your B2B content marketing efforts are going to waste.
You Are Not Including Effective CTAs
Most of the B2B marketers shy away from including effective Call-To-Actions in the content they share fearing it may hamper the user engagement. However, not including CTAs at the end of content posted would encourage the passivity of the business reader. The reader would not take any action if you do not redirect them for doing so. The CTA could be anything from asking email-id for subscription, encouraging conversation in the comment section, social media share, in-line CTA to informative content and much more. Leaving the content as it is without including effective CTAs for the B2B readers to take action is one of the reasons why 80% of your B2B content marketing efforts are going to waste.
With 70% of B2B marketers planning to create more content and increase their investment in content marketing, it has become important that they know what things can render their efforts ineffective. Keep in mind the reasons discussed above to safeguard yourself from wasting 80% of your content marketing efforts and create great B2B content marketing success story.
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Author Bio:
Owing to the passion for his profession, Ankit Gupta is always on the lookout for gaining more insights on effective content marketing. His write-ups reflect the knowledge and experience gained through the years. You can read more of his informative posts by following him on his Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter Handles.
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