While most of the major business to business (B2B) organizations are now using some kind of content marketing strategies, they are actually not following the underlying concept of this marketing phenomenon. It might sound really shocking to many, but it is the unfortunate truth. A recent study conducted by an independent US researcher showed that around 72% of companies from a sample of 87 B2B companies who were running at least a single content marketing strategy had no relevant, interesting contents in their campaign. As a result, those companies were suffering a lot problem in lead generation since they were not getting engagement from the campaign. According to another survey, only one in every five B2B marketers and sales professionals said that their demand generation campaigns are fully effective, whereas the rest simply discarded content marketing as absolutely useless or semi-ineffective. However, after a thorough inspection, it was identified that the 80% companies in this survey were also using dull and irrelevant contents. The marketing experts and gurus blamed poor content quality are the main reason behind the failure of those companies in generating new business leads.
Mixed Reaction from Users
Ever since the phenomenon of content marketing was introduced and implemented in B2B companies, they had a mixed reaction from users. To some people they were really effective and helpful. Since content marketing is quite cost effective relative to conventional marketing strategies and can provide better engagement and interaction for a business, every business wanted to adopt this. However, these individuals were new to this concept and this is why they outsourced their content marketing to a third party. Those third parties were also quite effective in the initial stage since they implemented the content marketing campaign by the book. They used to develop interesting and engaging contents to share them with their customers through different media such as blogs, websites, e-magazine, and so on. The key success factor behind a content marketing strategy is to develop relevant and striking content that can educate the potential customers, create credibility for the business, and, most importantly, lead to future business leads such a purchase or subscription. In the beginning of content marketing, the marketers truly followed this concept and reaped huge benefits from proper implementation.
Growth of Content Marketing
However, with the rising popularity of content marketing, things started to change rapidly in the business to business (B2B) arena. Within a very short span of time, a large number of new agencies appeared in the content marketing business that actually did not have that much expertise in developing quality content. As a result, content marketing is gradually losing its dominance among businesses. The findings from the Corporate Visions’ 2nd Quarter of 2012 Sales and Marketing Messaging report also justified the notion. This survey was conducted in 2012 in a poll of more than 440 B2B salespeople who actually tried to explain the reason behind the recent failures of content marketing. Among them, the majority of the people (37%) has identified dull and irrelevant content as the reason why content marketing is not generating any more positive results. The study also identified a few other reasons such as budget constraints, lack of executive buy-ins, less content, poor sales alignment and so on. However, the dull and irrelevant contents still remained as the biggest reason why the content market was presumed ineffective by a majority of the people.
Results of Content Marketing
However, the study findings weren’t that shocking to many marketing experts. The marketing experts were already saying that since most of the content is now concentrated on the products and services rather than the needs of the customers, they are no longer engaging the customers. In fact the irrelevant content is now working as a negative force for businesses by annoying the potential customers. If you are also running your content marketing based on dull contents, there is a big chance you will be marked and blocked by your customers as a spammer. Hence, you should really put effort toward the quality and originality of your content before you send your next message to your customers.
