B2B CONTENT MARKETING IN IRELAND

B2B CONTENT MARKETING IN IRELAND

Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers are on the frontlines of some of Ireland’s largest corporations. Their task is simple – but by no means easy – attract an audience, engage with potential buyers and educate decision-makers. Content marketing has been a valuable tool in the sales cycle of any fast-growing B2B business over the past decade. With the right team in place and enough buy-in from executives, companies can see tremendous returns on their efforts – if they can manage to figure out how to track their ROI.

Read on for 256’s in-depth study of content marketing in Ireland and how it’s impacting B2B marketers.

COMPANY SIZE AND MATURITY LEVELS

We don't run short of diversity when it comes to B2B content marketers in Ireland: 52% have one person running the entire content marketing show while the remaining 48% have between 3-5 people on their teams. That’s a small number of people doing a whole lot of work.

In total, 88% use content marketing and a massive 97% are somewhat or extremely committed to content marketing. Our respondents describe their content marketing maturity levels in a variety of ways.

SIZE OF B2B COMPANIES

SIZE OF B2B COMPANIES

There isn’t much of a deviation between B2B respondents’ marketing maturity level and our respondents as a whole. Our results show that B2B marketers are largely confident with what they’re doing – likely a sign of the fact that B2B was an early adopter of content marketing.

While nearly two-thirds of all B2B marketers viewing their maturity as adolescent or mature, there’s hopes that this will lead to a far greater segment of sophisticated content marketers in the near future. Integrating content marketing cross the organisation isn’t an easy hurdle to clear, but it’s necessary if companies want to find true, long-lasting success in the field.

CONTENT MARKETING MATURITY

CHART TITLE
WHAT THEY’RE DOING

WHAT WE’RE DOING

You can get a lot out of content marketing when you know why you’re doing it.

We found out that when our respondents are selling B2B, it’s all about the lead – and anything that contributes to it.


WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY USE CONTENT MARKETING?

1. Lead generation
2. Website traffic
3. Brand awareness

Build awareness to generate traffic and capture leads – sounds like something taken out of the B2B playbook. Consumers question everything nowadays and the same traits carry over to corporate prospects. Our respondents recognise that you can’t just say you’re the best anymore. You have to prove it.

As for reaching those hallowed leads, email has been the choice du jour over the last 12 months. Along with blogs and landing pages, these types of content play a key role in the ability to create brand awareness, generate traffic and secure leads.

The industry is confident too – 70% think their content marketing efforts have been effective so far. And 75% are producing more content now than they did a year ago.

MOST POPULAR CONTENT MARKETING TACTICS

EMAIL 93 %
BLOGS 79 %
LANDING
PAGES 75 %
CASE
STUDIES 64 %
EBOOKS AND
WHITE PAPERS 61 %
VIDEOS
AND VLOGS 46 %
INFOGRAPHICS 39 %

HOW ARE WE FUNDING IT?

Content marketing requires an investment when it’s done right.
For the large part, Irish B2B marketers are committed to making it work and they’re putting forth a good chunk of their budget to make that happen.

AMOUNT OF BUDGET SPENT
ON CONTENT MARKETING

AMOUNT OF BUDGET SPENT ON CONTENT MARKETING

Spending over one-quarter of the budget on content marketing? Not a bother on you. And that’s not the end of it, either. Most people have plans to increase their spend over the next 12 months.

INCREASING YOUR CONTENT MARKETING
BUDGET IN THE NEXT YEAR?

INCREASING YOUR CONTENT MARKETING BUDGET IN THE NEXT YEAR?
ARE THEY MEASURING IT?

ARE WE MEASURING IT?

Money talks and a great content marketing strategy is a chatterbox. However, (cue a record scratch) many B2B content marketers aren't measuring ROI.

In fact, just 47% measure content marketing ROI while 53% don’t measure content marketing ROI or are unsure if they do. The fact that people aren’t measuring the return on the content they create contradicts what they’re actually measuring: website traffic, leads, landing page click-through rates, SEO ranking and social media performance.

Click-through rates and leads are a great way to establish what sort of value content marketing efforts are giving and for the most part, the industry is monitoring that already.

While leads and CTR show whether companies are getting people in the door, it’s that many marketers don't have a grasp on how those prospects benefit the business.

As a group, just 30% of you measure direct sales via content marketing.

This number is pretty low for a metric that’s tied so closely to a key business objective: selling product and services. But let’s dig a little deeper – could it be that many aren’t tracking it because, well, they don’t have a written strategy about what you should be tracking?

Well, wouldn’t you know it. Following our hunch paid off.

It’s easy to see that when there’s a concrete, documented idea of what the team wants to achieve and how it wants to do it, there’s a better understanding of what you need to measure to get those results. No surprises there.
ARE THEY MEASURING IT?
ARE THEY MEASURING IT?

WHAT’S IN A DOCUMENTED B2B CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY?

But what exactly goes into a documented B2B content marketing strategy? A mix of assets that gives the marketing team a clear direction of what content they should create, why they’re creating it, who it’s for and what it all means for the business.

It’s unsurprising to see analytics and SEO (75 percent) and KPIs aligned to the business goal (75 percent) as two of the top three elements. They provide the sort of data-driven, statistical grounding that any modern content marketing strategy needs.

Remember – strategies are designed to get results and marketers have to be able to track their progress as well as show why the result is beneficial to the business.
WHAT’S THE ISSUE?

WHAT’S THE ISSUE?

The biggest content marketing issue for B2B marketers? Not having the time for it.

Multiple levels of sign-offs, the complexity of certain topics and the cost of scaling campaigns is dictating how quickly teams can produce content.

  • The average social media post takes 1.5 days to complete.
  • The average blog post (650 words) takes one week to finish.
  • The average video (60 seconds) takes three weeks to push live.
  • The average eBook (20 pages) takes two months to publish.

TOP PROBLEMS B2B CONTENT MARKETERS FACE

LACK OF
TIME 59 %
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
AND TRAINING 56 %
INABILITY TO MEASURE
CONTENT EFFECTIVENESS 48 %
LACK OF BUDGET 44 %
TURNAROUND TIME
FOR CONTENT PRODUCTION 37 %

WHERE DOES THE CONTENT GO?

B2B content marketers aren’t a big fan of Instagram – just 19% use it to promote content – but they’re all in on LinkedIn. It's no surprise that Twitter and Facebook follow closely in second and third place, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn (#1), Twitter (#3) and Facebook (#4) are among the top four most effective ways to amplify B2B content.

Somewhat surprisingly, partnering with influencers (#2) was highly rated when it came to effectiveness.
WHERE DOES THE CONTENT GO?
WHO’S ON THE TEAM?

WHO’S ON THE TEAM?

The success of a content marketing campaign is only as strong as the skills behind it. When it comes to B2B, writing reigns supreme as the must-have skill for an in-house team.

Who are the biggest snubs? Videographers, photographers and developers (oh my!).

With so many skills needed for a successful campaign, it’s no wonder that 40% turn to outside help to supplement the team. Still, 44% keep it all in-house and a modest 16% outsource content marketing entirely.

When it comes to outsourcing, writing, video/photography and design are the top skills the industry is in search of the most.

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