61% of Consumers Prefer Companies with Content Marketing

At this point you’re in serious denial if you aren’t practicing some form of content marketing (most of us spend over a quarter of our marketing budget on it). And while we’re all told how important it is, there are days we ask ourselves: is it really worth it?

A new study from Captora finds that all the hard work does pay off:

  • 61% of consumers prefer companies with custom online content (they like us, they really like us!)
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful
  • 78% of consumers believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them
  • 80% of decision-makers prefer content marketing to advertising
  • 50% of all online consumer time is spent engaging with custom content

While most B2B marketers agree that live demos still bring in the most qualified leads, the study shows that content marketing can bring in the quantity and quality of leads you’re looking for. In fact, B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-blogging firms. And studies show that the average cost to generate a lead through inbound marketing ($143) is about half the average for outbound marketing ($373) – talk about a worthy endeavor!

Do you know what content marketing is doing for you? A major challenge marketers face is measuring ROI. Only 27% of marketers track content metrics effectively, which begs the question – what should you be tracking? Most content marketers use a combination of web traffic, sales lead quality, social media sharing, sales lead quantity and SEO ranking to track effectiveness.

One word of caution and I’ll let you get back to curating, writing and sharing. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Note a couple key words here: “distributing relevant and valuable content.” Your content must give people a reason to read, share and take action. Remember, good content attracts visitors, but great content hooks people for life. What content marketing strategies have you found work best? We’d love to hear from you!

The Most Effective Content to Share

  • Infographics
  • Guides or e-books
  • Blog posts
  • Templates
  • Studies or white papers
  • Videos
  • Case studies
  • Customer testimonials

This post was written for V3 Integrated Marketing and originally appeared on their blog. Thanks @shellykramer!