New Perspectives: What Effective B2B Content Marketing Looks Like

How many transportation and logistics companies even know what effective B2B content marketing looks like? It's a question that plagues our industry - and many TMSA members. That's one reason why TMSA has secured Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and a leading expert on content marketing, as its keynote of the 2016 TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Leadership Conference.

CMI recently release findings of its annual content marketing survey. Pulizzi notes that over the years, CMI has focused much of its efforts and research on effectiveness. But this year, while his team was discussing new questions for the survey, they stepped back and asked the same question as TMSA.

The answer they found may surprise you. According to this year's survey, 55% of B2B marketers said that it is unclear within their organization what an effective or successful content marketing program looks like. Let’s take a look at some of the key findings from the report, B2B Content Marketing 2016: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America, produced by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, and sponsored by Brightcove.

Effectiveness Increases When You Know What Success Looks Like
Last year, 38% of B2B marketers said they were effective at content marketing versus 30% this year. Interestingly, companies that report being clear on what success or effectiveness looks like also show a higher effectiveness rate (55%).

32% of B2B Marketers are Sophisticated and Mature with Content Marketing
Effectiveness also increases as the organization’s content marketing grows in maturity. Nearly 65% in the sophisticated/mature phase say they are effective at content marketing, while 23% in the adolescent phase say they are effective at content marketing, and only 6% in the young/first-steps phase say they are effective.

Communication is key
Clearly, knowing what content marketing success looks like to the organization is beneficial, but the most-skilled marketers do even more. (Note: Most-effective marketers are defined as those who rate their organization’s content marketing effectiveness with a 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale). The most-effective marketers are more likely than less-effective marketers to document their content marketing strategy, have a documented editorial mission statement, and hold regular meetings. In fact, 61% of the most-effective B2B marketers meet daily or weekly with their content marketing team either virtually or in person. Furthermore, those who meet daily or weekly find the meetings to be more valuable (70%) than those who meet biweekly or monthly (49%).

More Work Needs To Be Done on Documenting Strategies and Missions
For the past two years CMI has shown the positive impact that documenting the content marketing strategy has on a marketer’s overall effectiveness. But B2B marketers have made less progress in this area over the last year. As the organization's fifth annual study (B2B Content Marketing 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America) revealed, 35% of B2B marketers had a documented content marketing strategy, compared with 32% this year.

Recommended By TMSA: CMI's 16-page Guide To Learn How To Document Your Content Marketing Strategy
> Download Now

New this year, CMI asked if content marketers are documenting their editorial missions: 28% are, but that percentage increases with effectiveness (48% of the most-effective have a documented editorial mission statement).Read the entire report for more details on these and many more findings, including:

• Which tactics, social media platforms, and paid methods of content promotion are marketers using? Which are the most effective?
• What is the most important metric for measuring content marketing success?
• How much budget do they allocate to content marketing?
• Which content offers are they asking people to subscribe to?
• Which goals will they be focusing on over the next 12 months?
• What are their top priorities for internal content creators for the coming year?