BrightEdge: Brands are missing consumer engagement with content

We could arguably say there is more branded content on the Internet now than there has ever been in the past. There are product descriptions, how-to and other helpful videos, blogs about products, quoted reviews. There are social media stories and advertorials. But, is this content engaging consumers?

by Kristina Knight

BrightEdge asked that question recently and they found in many cases - no. Using the BrightEdge Data Cube, researchers looking into how both B2B and B2C content was engaging customer bases and found that on average B2C content engages about 20% of customers while B2B content engaged about half of consumers. Why aren't engagement rates higher?

"Marketers today are competing against more content across the web than ever before. The old assumption that sheer quantity is the best content marketing strategy has proved incorrect. Reaching consumers is achieved instead through developing content that drives engagement in terms of traffic, conversions and revenue," said Brad Mattick, Vice President of Marketing and Products, BrightEdge.

Here the breakdown of engagement across different industry subsets:
• Hospitality content: 87% engagement rate
• Manufacturing: 54% engagement rate
• B2B Tech: 53% engagement rate
• Insurance: 28% engagement rate
• Retail: 16% engagement rate

"Our research shows how elusive content engagement can be for many of today's largest industries. Most B2B and B2C brands are not taking a performance approach and this serves as a big wake up call for marketers to better understand demand, measure their performance and optimize their content creation cycle. The result will be much more engaging content, increased performance and, ultimately, improved ROI," said Mattick.

As for the breakdown across devices, desktop users are slightly more engaged (47% vs 33%) with content.

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: B2B content, B2C content, branded content, BrightEdge, content, content trends