Written by: Vickie Sullivan | August 11, 2015
Content Marketing That Brings in Leads
Because so many of us use content marketing to show off our thought leadership, let’s check out this latest CMO Council research. As reported before, the big dawgs are using content to stand out. This report shows the real return on investment: what’s bringing in leads and what isn’t. Favorite findings:
- Many folks don’t know what generates great leads and what doesn’t. Those who do report that white papers lead as the #1 generator of great leads with 24%. A close second at 22% is a three-way tie between videos, webcasts, and analyst reports. The darlings of content formats — ebooks and infographics — are at the bottom of the heap with only 13 and 12%, respectively.
- Most companies (66%) admit that their best channels — website, social media, their own email databases — are moderately (or “in the middle” successful in generating leads. And like us, they are not venturing outside their comfort zone with magazines, content syndication, or third-party emails. Talk about lost opportunities.
- Biggest factors that derail content effectiveness: content not developed for target audiences (!), and budget limitations.
Everyone knows that content marketing works, but few of us know how to maximize this powerful tool. The elephant in the room here is that throwing out content doesn’t work. Generating high-quality leads takes more strategy than we realize.
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