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Challenges related to a content marketing strategy
In August of this year, HiveFire surveyed marketing professionals to better understand the state of the B2B marketing landscape including what was really creating the biggest challenges, how they were choosing to market and what they saw on the horizon. (get a copy of the survey results here)
One major theme surfaced from the results: content marketing (the creation and publication of original content, such as blog posts, photos, videos, website resource pages, case studies or white papers to enhance a brand’s visibility) is changing the way B2B marketers work. More and more marketing effort is being channeled towards content creation and curation. But it’s not without its challenges.
Some of the more interesting findings of the survey are wrapped in the challenges of actually creating the content. Few argue about the tactic’s value — it’s the how to get it done on a consistent basis that seems to be causing the most trouble.
Driving leads is the number one objective of B2B marketers but they are challenged with having the resources to accomplish this goal. 78% of respondents cited driving sales/leads as the most important marketing objective for their organization.
But they have to do it without a lot of help: working with a limited budget (28%) and limited staff (23%) were the top two marketing challenges cited by respondents.
I think most businesses have more content than they know. They just aren’t looking in the right places. If you’re trying to implement a content marketing strategy — you can probably re-purpose content found in:
- Annual reports
- Sales proposals
- Marketing materials
- Sales presentations
- Orientation manuals (lots of good stuff about the company here)
- Sales fliers
- Instructional documents
- Emaiils to/from customers
- The FAQ section of your website
- Diagrams/charts of your product/service (think infographic!)
- Customer service manuals/instructions
And that’s just scratching the surface. Remember — the content shouldn’t be all about you. In fact, if it is — your audience will run kicking and screaming. Broaden your scope by asking “what does my audience care about?” as opposed to “what can I tell them about us?”
By asking the right question — I suspect you just made finding content to share a whole lot easier.
Related articles
- Blog Posts Most Valuable B2B Marketing Content [Data] (hubspot.com)
- Content Marketing Needs More Than Content (customerthink.com)
- B2B Content Marketing: The Grande Guide from Eloqua (marketingtechblog.com)
