B2C CONTENT MARKETING IN IRELAND

There isn’t a need for thousands or even hundreds of people to run an online shop (although hundreds of thousands is working well for Amazon) and the data shows.

B2C content marketers in Ireland can usually be found working in smaller companies that dish out big value to the average consumer.

The same goes for the size of their content marketing teams. 75% do it all on their own, while 25% have the help of 3-5 people.

For the most part, our research shows that B2C marketers are still finding their footing in the content marketing world. Still – it’s surprising that more people aren’t confident in their abilities.

While content marketing found its roots in B2B, brands like Red Bull and John Deere are great examples of how it’s being done right in the B2C space. Maybe that confidence will translate to the greater community of B2C marketers at large once they get more experience under their belts.

Regardless, most are all in on content marketing – 90% of them use it. What’s more, 100% of them are committed to content marketing too.

There’s no surprise that B2C content marketers are all over the place when it comes to pinning down their content marketing maturity level. It’s a fledgling practice in the industry, despite the fact that it’s ideal for engaging with consumers.

While one-third of respondents view themselves as having the most basic of skills and strategies, a combined 66% have seen some level of success in their efforts. That’s enough to persuade us that the sky is the limit for the B2C content marketing discipline moving forward.

Let’s get right down to it – why do B2C content marketers do it? The whole, “providing customers with information so they can educate themselves,” bit, basically.

The number one reason? Brand awareness. It can be difficult to stand out in the B2C field and content marketing can help in raising your voice.

WHY DOES YOUR COMPANY USE CONTENT MARKETING?

1. Brand awareness
2. Customer engagement
3. Website traffic

Get people on the website, educate them about the product and turn them into brand ambassadors – the logic adds up.

It’s an effective method of crowdsourcing support. But when a company is entrenched in the market, wouldn’t it make more sense to use content marketing for lead generation? Unfortunately, it only ranks 5th (out of 6th) in terms of options. It’ll be interesting to see whether this changes as content marketing grows more roots in the B2C space.

When it comes to B2C marketing, every format is on the table. Because teams are tasked with engaging with prospects on an individual level – people have more feelings than businesses – there’s a greater emphasis on using a wider variety of mediums to reach the audience. That shows when it comes to the most frequently used content marketing tactics over the last 12 months:

When it works, it works: 75% think that their use of content marketing is effective. No small feat when 88% of the crowd is producing more content than they did a year ago.

Despite the big results and ardent devotion to content marketing, it’s only getting a sliver of the budget pie.

Our data shows the lack of spend correlates with the size of the company and is likely not due to the effectiveness of the tactic; smaller companies have less budget to spread around, yet every need (events, outbound marketing, etc.) still has to be met.

While 63% of respondents expect that sliver to grow as they push more funding into content marketing over the next 12 months, there’s still a hearty 37% that are content with the status quo.

In short: yes.

At least two-thirds of respondents are measuring 81% of the metrics we gave as available answers.

Website traffic, social media performance and engagement, email list subscriber growth and email open rate are tracked by 100% of all B2C respondents.

The other most popular metrics to track? Website dwell time, SEO ranking, inbound links, landing page click-through rate and direct sales.

Leads aren’t as important a metric to B2C marketers as they are to other segments, and the data shows: just 33% of respondents tracked leads. The only less-tracked metric was blog growth.

It’s clear that B2C places much more value on analytics than perhaps B2B marketers would, despite the fact that only 44% of B2C respondents have a documented content marketing strategy in place. This is right in line with the average of all respondents to the research.

Ultimately, half of the content marketing teams surveyed measure the ROI from their tactics while the other half either don’t or aren’t sure if they do.

Public enemy No. 1 for B2C content marketers? A lack of budget; 86% list it as their top issue.

It’s not surprising given that 75% of the teams spend less than a quarter of their budgets on it. Coupled with the fact that the majority of people want to increase the spend on content marketing in the next year and you can see that B2C marketers are all in on content marketing, even if their companies aren’t.

But the issues faced by B2C content marketers don’t necessarily weigh them down. Their marketing strategies follow the 24-hour news cycle more closely than others and they can’t afford not to capitalise on trends and breaking stories. It’s why you see quicker turnaround times for content – especially videos – than in B2B or Enterprise.

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

There are no surprises when it comes to promoting content to consumers. B2C marketers have to be on the same channels their target audience lives on and that’s the big four.

Media partnerships (25%) and YouTube (13%) received sparse votes, while Pinterest didn’t get any love in the polls.

Sorry Pinterest lovers.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the top three most effective platforms that B2C marketers use to promote their content. Despite not being used much, YouTube ranked fourth.

Those must be some vlogs.