Content Marketing Trends for 2015

Nowadays, it is obvious that content marketing is becoming an essential tool for business for the creation of a better engagement with their audiences. Indeed, the last trends leave no doubt about it: content marketing will be indispensable for any company in the coming 2015. The Content Marketing Institute, along with MarketingProfs, has carried out a survey in more than 5,000 B2C (Business-to-consumer) marketers from more than 25 companies, which presents some interesting data.

Businesses acknowledge the importance of content marketing

The survey shows the increased use that content marketingis suffering: 77% of marketers use content marketing in their businesses and, what is more, 73% of them rate its effectiveness from medium to high at helping them accomplish their goals. It is to bear in mind, however, that effectiveness partly relies on a documented strategy, and the number of businesses taking the time to put it on writing is still low: out of 77% who claim following a strategy, 50% of them only have a verbal strategy.

With regard to investment, the average B2C marketer confesses only allocating a 25% of the budget to content marketing. Nevertheless, a remarkable fact is the correlation between effectiveness and investment: the most effective marketers spend 29% of their budget, whereas the least effective ones only invest 17%. In marketers who have a documented strategy, the investment turns out to be larger, which ultimately confirms the correlation effectiveness-investment. On the other hand, 45% of the companies said they have a dedicated content marketing group. Of those which do not have one, 21% are planning to create one in the near future.

Generally speaking, investment in content marketing is undoubtedly increasing, since 69% of businesses are creating more content than they did last year.

Social networks lead the way

Since 2013, social networks have not stopped gaining ground in content marketing tactical usage: most companies are distributing its content through social sites (93%). On average, every business is using 7 social media platforms compared with 6 last year. Facebook stands as the top and most used social network (94%) along with Twitter (84%), followed closely by YouTube (76%), Linkedin (71%) and Google+ (68%). The survey also shows that Facebook turns out to be the most effective network.

As for the rest of the content, marketers share it, among others, through newsletters (80%) and web articles (78%). It is somewhat remarkable the case of blogs, as its use has decreased from 72% to 67%, whereas branded content tools have gained importance, growing from 37% to 47%.

The research also shows that B2C marketers have a difficult time tracking the ROI of its content marketing program: only 23% say they are successful, compared to a high number (56%) that are hardly or not successful and 21% who admits not tracking at all. Among the metrics they use to asses content success, they cite website traffic as the top method, followed by sales, higher conversion rates and SEO ranking. Paid advertising methods are highly used, since 92% acknowledge that they use some of those frequently, citing SEM (Search Engine Marketing) as the most effective one, apart from social ads and promoted posts.

Another fact to take into account is the frequency of new content publication, which is rather high. 48% of B2C marketers answered they publish content daily or multiple times per week. Here, we find a new correlation: those B2C marketers who rate themselves as most effective publish content on a daily basis.

New challenges to face

It is clear how improvement is paramount for every business, and marketers want to keep learning to boast the effectiveness of their content marketing strategy. Out of a list of 28 initiatives they were given, marketers said to be working on better converting visitors on website (65%), thing that can be reached by creating more engaging, higher-quality content (62%); also, they said to be committed to optimizing content and organizing website content.

As marketers acknowledge, content marketing is set to grow further and therefore is still a challenge to go for.From this perspective, they plan to start working within 12 months on a better mobile strategy, on measuring content marketing and on a better understanding of what content is effective and of how it can affect the customer’s decision to buy articles orservices. Moreover, they point to tracking ROI (Return of Investment) without hesitation, since 23% of marketers acknowledge the success of this kind of tracking within their content marketing program.

There is no point in denying the potential of content marketing nowadays. In order to satisfy this ongoing need for quality content, Lowpost is committed to offer highly-professional content writing, created by writers who are specialized in specific fields and experienced in online writing and SEO tools. The ongoing flow of quality content allows feeding social networks (essential as messages vehicles) and reaching the target audience. In fact, Google is already rewarding the quality content and place us among the best results of their browser engine. To sum up, quality has the say; with Lowpost, you will not lag behind.

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