Creating content marketing for your small business is hard work, so it stands to reason that you’d like to focus on the type of content that gets the best results. A new report by The CMO Council asked marketers what type of marketing content they create most often, and what types get the highest quality leads. The results show somewhat of a disconnect between what marketers are focusing on and what they should be focusing on to generate the best B2B leads.
The most common types of content that B2B marketers create are:
- Product brochures (84 percent)
- Slide presentations (79 percent)
- White papers (70 percent)
- Videos (76 percent)
- Company brochures (70 percent)
- Infographics (65 percent)
- Webcasts (64 percent)
But what type of content delivers the best B2B leads? White papers are the number-one lead generation tool, cited by almost one-fourth of marketers as providing great leads. Next up are videos and webcasts, both cited by 22 percent of marketers as generating excellent leads.
Although product brochures and company brochures are a major focus of content strategy for most companies, neither item even made it to the top seven list in terms of generating outstanding leads. And although infographics may get a lot of attention on social media, it seems that doesn’t really translate to the best B2B leads: Just 12 percent of marketers say infographics are a highly effectively lead generation tool.
Not just the format of content, but the focus of your content is important in generating the best B2B leads. Nearly half of marketers in the study believe the reason they have trouble generating high-quality leads is that their content is not narrowly tailored to their target audience.
No wonder just 15 percent of marketers think their content marketing strategy is highly or very effective. The majority (61 percent) describe their strategy as being moderately effective or “someplace in the middle.”
How can your business generate better leads through content marketing? The Content Marketing Institute recommends clearly defining what you consider high-quality lead to be. While this might sound obvious, many of the businesses in the study admit there is disagreement between their sales, marketing and business development teams on basic terms such as what the goal of content marketing is, what types of leads the company hopes to generate, and what specific prospects or customer profiles they are reaching out to.
You can download the full report for free here to get more details about what strategies work and don’t work in generating high-quality leads for different industries.
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Author information
Karen Axelton
Karen Axelton is Chief Content Officer of GrowBiz Media, a media company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Visit her company’s blog at SmallBizDaily.com.
