12 Weeks of Content Marketing Insights
Welcome to the 8th post in the current state of B2B Content Marketing series! In the past two weeks we explored what type of content is most effective in lead generation and lead nurturing and why. This week will look at what content delivers the best ROI. All analysis is based on our own research sourced from over 230 B2B marketing professionals.
Week 8: What content has the best ROI?
Time and money are the the obvious and most reported constraints in implementing content marketing programs that work. So it’s important to consider what type of content is going to deliver the highest return on investment when creating editorial calendars and the content required to fill them out.
To estimate which types of content have the best overall ROI, we built a chart that cross-references our data on 3 factors:
1) Content effectiveness
2) Cost to create
3) Time to create
The chart below shows the percentage of B2B marketing professionals who rated each type of content as highly effective, affordable, and fast to create — in each category, longer bars are better.
Customer testimonials and case studies came in strong in their rankings for ROI. Over 43% of surveyed B2B marketing professionals rated this type of content as very effective or better and ranked it low on the financial resources required. Time required to create the assets jumped at case studies however, with 59% of organizations citing that it took them a significant amount of time.
87% of B2B marketing professionals reported that product collateral comes cheap, but is one of the least effective forms of marketing content. Only 20% gave it high marks for effectiveness. Blog posts had a similar ratio between effectiveness and the time and money required to create them, but scored below product collateral at 15%.
Stay Tuned
In our next post we’ll cover what primary drivers B2B technology companies cite for creating new content and the changes reported in 2011 and 2013 surveys that reflect shifts in the demands on marketing organizations and how they’re adapting to meet them.
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