B2B firms struggling with content marketing
The recent study, conducted by Forrester in association with the Business Marketing Association and the Online Marketing Institute found that, while B2B marketers are increasing their content marketing budgets, currently a little over half (51%) say their efforts in this realm of marketing are only ‘somewhat effective’.
According to Laura Ramos, Forrester VP, marketers are still trying to figure out how best to approach content marketing. While many say their content marketing strategies are already mature, it does appear that there are problems with the content being created rather than effort plus a case of quantity of quality.
For example, speaking to AdAge, Ramos says that many content marketers are focusing more on talking about themselves and their products rather than understanding and addressing the problems their customers face.
Furthermore, many of those marketers producing content originate in the sales, business development or product design departments. These individuals are more used to the hard sell and are product and company focused and, says Ramos, “where being provocative, intriguing and informational isn’t as valued as it is in fields such as journalism, for instance”.
In a nutshell, concentrate content marketing on solving your customers’ problems and provide consistent content across multiple channels and aim content at all levels of customers’ decision-making hierarchy.
