According to our latest research findings, 89% of B2B companies invest in content marketing primarily to acquire new customers while only 34% do so primarily to retain existing customers. For 23% of companies, the objectives around acquisition and retention are perceived to be equally important when it comes to content marketing initiatives.
The fact that B2B companies are more than 2.5-times more likely to be focused on using content marketing for new customer acquisition than for customer retention purposes is telling, and it informs everything from content development to promotional tactics. Incidentally, this ratio has not changed significantly in the past year.
The chart below, based on 341 qualified survey respondents, illustrates some of the more granular objectives that are fueling today’s B2B content marketing initiatives.
Unfortunately, companies frequently come up short in fully achieving their objectives. Consider the following insights, which are also derived from our recent research findings:
- Fewer than one-fifth (18%) of survey respondents report that they have been “very successful” in achieving their primary objectives for content marketing.
- Fewer than one-third (32%) of survey respondents report that they have been “successful” in achieving their primary objectives for content marketing.
- More than one-quarter (27%) of survey respondents report that they have “not been successful” in achieving their primary objectives for content marketing.
The reasons that companies often fail to hit the ball out of the park (and, in some cases, completely strike out) with their content marketing initiatives are generally hard to pinpoint. They likely run the gamut, from suboptimal content development activity to inefficient operations management to poor SEM and landing page optimization to broken sales pipelines and lead nurturing processes.
An overreliance on company-produced content assets, which are often perceived by today’s target prospects to be nothing more than thinly-veiled marketing collateral, may also be a big part of the problem. Licensing or commissioning unbiased, third-party content assets can go a long way toward helping companies better achieve their content marketing objectives.
To download The 2015 Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation, click here.