Outsourcing of content marketing set to increase this year, says report

by Brian Oliver

Seventy percent of companies plan to outsource at least part of their content marketing in the next 12 months, according to a new Digital Content Marketing Survey commissioned by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and branding agency Brandpoint.

This follows CMI research earlier this year which revealed that 62% of companies are already using third-party expertise to strengthen their content marketing activities (compared with 55% in 2011).

The 2012 Digital Content Marketing report – based on a Readex Research survey of nearly 400 ‘marketing decision-makers’ – found that 99% of respondents had recently used some form of content marketing.

And what these companies are looking for in a third-party content provider, says the report, is the ability to deliver “engaging and creative storytelling”, “custom content”, and “professional-level writing”.

WELL-WRITTEN CONTENT IS KEY

Industry observers believe the shift toward using external content providers is being fuelled by the growing importance of publishing well-written content on a regular and sustained basis.  Many companies, it seems, are finding they don’t have enough time, expertise and resources to achieve this in-house.

They also recognise that poor quality writing – with bad grammar, spelling mistakes and factual errors – can have a negative impact on their brand’s reputation. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team, recently warned that sites with frequent content errors tend to have lower rankings in search results.

As Contented Marketer recently reported (“Frequent publishing helps to improve ROI”), the ability to publish quality content on a regular basis is a key factor in maximising investment in content marketing campaigns. At the same time, Google is now upgrading the page-rankings of websites that deliver high-quality content that people want to read and share (see “Google updates making quality content dominant factor in SEO”).

CONTENT BEING OUTSOURCED

The new Digital Content Marketing Survey found that video is the type of content that marketers are most likely to outsource, followed by infographics, online articles, digital white papers, e-books and blogging.

Only 18% of the marketers surveyed cited cost as the deciding factor when choosing whether or not to outsource content marketing. Eighty percent stated they were happy to pay a little extra for the added value of well-crafted, customised and professionally-written material.

BEST RESULTS

Social content, blogging, press releases and online articles are the forms of content used most often, says the report, with marketers finding that social content, e-newsletters and blogging provide the best results.

WRITE FOR PEOPLE NOT SEARCH ENGINES

Eighty two percent of respondents said it is more important for their website and blog copy to be written for people rather than search engines – with SEO expertise ranked fifth among the list of 11 qualities marketers want in a content provider.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, said: “This survey affirms that marketing pros are embracing the value of online marketing, but they also acknowledge the need to stay true to certain fundamentals. Quality continues to be a key requirement for success across all forms of content marketing.”

He added: “While the Internet continues to revolutionise the way we all do business, the need to tell a clear compelling story through our marketing efforts remains constant.”

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

New LinkedIn ‘Follow’ button helping B2B content marketers

The recent rollout of LinkedIn’s new ‘Follow Company’ button is making it easier for content marketers to target and engage with B2B audiences that are already using LinkedIn.

This appears to support the view that, while Facebook is great for B2C marketing, LinkedIn can work better for B2B. LinkedIn claims to have over two million companies in its network, representing all industries and company sizes.

Just like Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and Twitter’s ‘Follow’ button, you can now add the LinkedIn ‘Follow’ badge to your company website – making it easier for businesses or individuals to begin following your company’s LinkedIn page with just one click. There is no need for them to navigate to the LinkedIn website.

As LinkedIn’s Mike Grishaver explains: “Companies can engage with people from their Company Page on LinkedIn and through status updates. It’s a great and easy way to gain insights and stay connected.”

According to LinkedIn, the ‘Follow’ button is already being used by companies such as Starbucks, AT&T, Sony Electronics and American Express.

HIGHER LEAD CONVERSION RATE

In a recent study of over 5,000 businesses, integrated marketing solutions company HubSpot found that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74% – almost three times higher than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%).

This suggests that increasing your reach on LinkedIn through quality content is not only likely to boost your website’s LinkedIn referral traffic, but can also lead to an increase in sales leads because of the higher conversion rate of LinkedIn traffic.

NEW TARGETING FUNCTION

LinkedIn has also announced plans to roll out two new functions – ‘Targeted Updates’ and ‘Follower Statistics’ – which have been designed for companies that have followers on the network. Initial users will include AT&T, Samsung Mobile, Dell and Microsoft.

The ‘Targeted Updates’ function will allow companies to segment their followers by a range of variables such as industry, seniority, job function, company size, non-company employees, and geography. LinkedIn says this will enable companies to send different content and status updates to different groups of followers.

The ‘Follower Statistics’ product will be an analytics dashboard that allows companies to see how effective their updates have been.

According to LinkedIn, the new tools are all about “driving media efficiency” and helping marketers to create “direct and lasting relationships with their audience”.

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Here’s a video showing how businesses or individuals can follow a company on LinkedIn …

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

More than 90% of B2B buyers influenced by content marketing

by Brian Oliver

A new study by DemandGen, an emedia publication that focuses on B2B sales strategies and solutions, has found that more than 90% of B2B purchase decisions start with exposure to some form of content marketing material.

The report also found that over 40% of B2B buyers often learn about a supplier’s products or services for the first time by downloading content from their website.

This highlights the growing importance of a content strategy that includes the provision of helpful downloadable material – such as white papers, case studies and eGuides – to demonstrate the value of a company’s products or services.

CRITICAL TOOL

The study’s findings show that optimised content-led marketing is becoming an increasingly critical tool for many B2B companies. It suggests that companies that guide prospects through the ‘conversion funnel’ with engaging and relevant content are more likely to be successful in generating qualified sales leads.

This is in line with a recent study by integrated marketing solutions company HubSpot which found that some 25% of businesses that use content marketing now find it essential.

“Research has shown that engaging content is critical to supporting an inbound marketing strategy and helping companies get found,” says Jeanne Hopkins, director of marketing at HubSpot.

She adds: “Progressive marketers are realising that content also plays a key role in advancing prospects from the middle of the funnel to closed deals by nurturing and educating buyers with information that speaks directly to their needs at different stages.”

GROWTH OF CONTENT MARKETING AGENCIES

The DemandGen Report also recognised that B2B companies often find it difficult to create and sustain effective content without outside help, such as independent content writing services.

“As these trends emerge, B2B marketers continue to struggle to keep pace with content development, content marketing strategies and how to utilise content to drive demand,” says DemandGen Report editor Andrew Gaffney.

Industry expert Jon Wuebben, CEO of ContentLaunch, believes this is one reason why we’re seeing the growth of agencies that specialise in the strategic planning, creation, distribution and curation of customer-focused content. In his latest book, Content Is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web & Mobile, Wuebben insists that the content marketing agency is now replacing the traditional ad agency for many companies.

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

 

Video content marketing helps to increase online sales conversions, says new report

Using original videos in content marketing is one of the best ways of driving customer engagement and increasing online sales conversions – that’s according to new research conducted jointly by comScore Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, and online video distribution network EXPO.

The report found that more than half of the people surveyed gained a better understanding of marketing messages when they were presented in the form of a video – with around 80% of them finding videos easy to relate to, and more than 80% stating that videos give them a better understanding of the importance of key messages.

The study measured a series of indicators and found that professionally-produced video content and user-generated product videos can both help to drive higher levels of sales effectiveness. However, branded video content is regarded as better at conveying features and benefits, while user-generated videos are seen as more trustworthy when it comes to dealing with product claims.

VIDEOS INCREASE CUSTOMER CONFIDENCE

Frank Findley, comScore’s vice president of research and development, said: “While marketers may already be familiar with the effectiveness of professional video content alone, these results suggest that even greater returns can be had by combining their use with authentic, user-generated content.”

Jessica Thorpe, vice president of marketing at EXPO, said: “We found that consumers perceived feature benefits as more believable when coming directly from the brand through professionally-produced content, while the unbiased user-gen videos were more believable in verifying specific product claims, such as superiority and convenience.”

She added: “When used together, all of the perceived gaps get filled in and consumers become more confident in their purchase decision, resulting in better sales effectiveness.” 

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(Image via Clker)

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Content marketing set to benefit as Google bids to ‘humanise’ searches

New semantic search technology will penalise over-optimised sites…

by Brian Oliver

As part of its efforts to ‘humanise’ its approach to search, Google is understood to be planning the most significant changes yet to its search algorithm.

It is not replacing its current keyword-search system, but intends to blend it with new semantic search technology that will increase its ability to read and understand a page (and its content) almost like a human. This, says Google, will help to improve search accuracy and provide more direct answers to users’ queries.

The new algorithm – called Google Penguin –  goes even further than last year’s Panda update which downgraded the page-rankings of content farms and low-quality, advertising-heavy websites full of aggregated duplicate content.

Google’s new semantic technology will reportedly group data into three categories: people, places and things. It will then analyse every word and interpret how various keywords relate to each other – instead of simply counting how many times a specific keyword appears.

Role of content marketing enhanced

Observers believe these changes will further enhance the role of content-led marketing and will boost the page-rankings of websites that focus on delivering high-quality content to visitors.

At the same time, keyword density, backlinks, and on-page optimisation will become less important as a result of the Penguin update.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team, recently warned that sites will now be penalised if they are aggressively over-optimised.

“We’re trying to level the playing field a bit,” said Cutts. “All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over-optimisation or overly doing their SEO – versus those making great content and great sites.

“We’re trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it – like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links, or go well beyond what you normally expect.”

Cutts said Google wanted to reward people who “make a compelling site, make a site that’s useful, make a site that’s interesting, make a site that’s relevant to people’s interests.” 

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Consumers trust branded website content more than ads, says Nielsen report

The growing importance of using quality content to attract potential customers to your company website is highlighted by a new study which found that consumers trust branded website content more than TV ads, paid search advertising, online video ads, or ads on social networks.

According to Nielsen’s new Digital Consumer Report, 52% of the people surveyed said they trust companies’ official websites when they find them through search engine results or other methods. But only 36% of respondents said they were willing to put their faith in PPC ads served up in this way.

The report underlines the fact that consumers are more likely to be drawn to a website containing well-written articles designed to inform or ‘educate’ rather than content that is simply trying to sell them something.

Consumers also have much greater confidence in content on branded websites than television advertising, the report found. Only 46% of those surveyed felt TV ads could be trusted.

According to the report, only 32% said they trust social media ad campaigns and online video advertising. Less than three in 10 felt they could rely on online banner ads, display ads on mobile devices, and SMS ads on mobile phones.

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Image courtesy of Gadgety

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

 

Frequent publishing helps to improve ROI in content marketing

by Brian Oliver

Publishing quality content on a regular basis is a key factor in increasing companies’ return on investment (ROI) in content marketing campaigns – that’s according to a new report from internet marketing company HubSpot.

The percentage of companies that gain new business from content marketing decreases as publishing becomes less frequent, says Hubspot.

The company’s 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report discovered that 92% of businesses that publish multiple articles every day tend to acquire more customers directly through their blogs and have a higher rate of sales conversions.

However, the study found that just 10% of companies actually publish new material every day. The majority of users of content marketing only post new articles on a weekly basis.

BENEFITS OF FREQUENT UPDATES

The report found that a content strategy that includes frequent updates has several overall benefits. New content brings search crawlers back to index more pages which, in turn, helps with search standing. And a regular helping of recent content attracts a more positive response from Google’s new ‘fresh factor’ algorithm.

Potential customers are also more likely to see your website as a more trustworthy authority when you consistently publish valuable content.

COMPANY BLOGS BECOMING MORE IMPORTANT

According to Hubspot, another key takeaway from the new study is that businesses are becoming increasingly aware of the value of a well-written blog that delivers quality content. Some 81% of companies described their blog as “useful”, “important” or “critical” – with 25% rating their company blog as “critical” to their business.

In addition, 62% of the companies surveyed said social media had become more important to them as a source of leads in the past six months.

Significantly, the study also found that content marketing campaigns can attract new sales leads at a much lower cost per lead than outbound marketing activities … typically about 61% lower, according to Hubspot.

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Bing, Yahoo and Ask growing, but Google still dominates UK search market

by Brian Oliver

UK content marketing campaigns should continue to focus on achieving high rankings on Google’s search engine results pages, according to the latest UK figures released by digital intelligence service Experian Hitwise.

While search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and Ask managed to marginally boost their share of UK search volume in the four-week period ending 4 February 2012, Google remained the clear market leader.

The Experian Hitwise figures show that Google.com and Google.co.uk achieved a combined total of 90.84% of the 2.3 billion visits to search engines made by UK internet users during this period. However, Google’s share slipped slightly – down 1.11% from a total of 91.75% in December 2011.

Meanwhile, Bing received 3.78% of UK search volume (up 0.14%), Yahoo 2.31% (up 0.09%), and Ask 1.83% (up 0.09%).

UK visits to search engines were 4.5% higher in January 2012, according to Experian Hitwise, with nearly 100 million more visits than in January 2011.

Some 89% of buyers now turn to Google, Bing or other search engines to find information on products, services or businesses before making a purchasing decision – that’s according to a February study by strategic communications firm Fleishman-Hillard and market research company Harris Interactive.

The study underlined the importance of creating high search engine results by implementing an integrated content marketing strategy – publishing high-quality original content that provides sales prospects with useful and valuable information when they conduct searches.

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications.

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

How content marketers’ interest in Pinterest is growing almost as fast as the site itself

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Twitter and Google+, another social media site, Pinterest, is fast emerging as a valuable distribution platform for content marketing – especially if you’re targeting a female audience. More than 87 percent of Pinterest users are women.

Pinterest is a visually-driven social network where users create virtual bulletin boards and fill them with their favourite images from around the web. People share images by ‘pinning’ them on pinboards in a range of categories such as fashion, cooking, and crafts. Other Pinterest users pass them on by ‘repinning’ them to their own pinboards.

Launched in 2010, Pinterest has grown from 1.6 million unique visitors in September 2011 to an amazing 11.7 million users last month. It is now driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent report from content-sharing site Shareaholic.

As the fastest-growing social site, Pinterest is becoming an increasingly important content marketing tool. Many of the images being ‘pinned’ and ‘repinned’ are actually marketing materials for brands.

The ‘pinned’ images allow companies to promote their products and brands in a highly sharable forum. Most importantly, the marketing images retain their source links and can therefore help to drive traffic to brand websites and encourage brand adoption among the fast-growing Pinterest community.

For a closer look at how Pinterest is becoming such a major marketing tool, take a look at this excellent infographic created by MDG Advertising…

Infographic by MDG Advertising

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing

Majority of UK companies intend to increase marketing budgets this year, survey reveals

Some firms now investing 25 percent of marketing spend in content marketing.

by Brian Oliver

The majority of UK companies are planning to increase their marketing budgets this year, according to MindMetre Research’s latest forward-looking survey of British business.

After canvassing more than 2,000 large and small British companies, the annual MindMetre Marketing Barometer, published at the end of February, found that some 57 percent of firms plan to boost their marketing budget in 2012. Only 18 percent intend to cut their marketing spend.

A similar survey 12 months ago showed no net increase in marketing spend – suggesting that there has been a marked surge in optimism among British businesses after a timid 2011.

“These forward-looking survey results augur well for 2012,” said MindMetre’s managing director Paul Lindsell. “If marketing budget trends are taken as a forward indicator of overall business sentiment, it may herald the beginnings of a true upturn for Britain Ltd. Unlike other studies, which only track the activities of Britain’s very largest businesses, this study embraces representation from the full range of company sizes.”

INCREASING INVESTMENT IN CONTENT MARKETING

At the same time, other surveys have found that companies are planning to boost their investment in content marketing this year after recognising that high-quality original content can play a key role in moving customers through the buying process.

Some firms are now spending a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing, according to a study by the Content Marketing Institute.

The importance of implementing an integrated content marketing strategy was underlined by a February report from strategic communications firm Fleishman-Hillard and market research company Harris Interactive. The report found that 89 percent of buyers now turn to Google, Bing or other search engines to find information on products, services or businesses before making a purchasing decision.

Fleishman-Hillard’s findings support the idea that creating original online content aimed at providing relevant and valuable information to consumers or B2B buyers – without using pushy sales language – will help businesses appeal to new prospects.

ADOPTING NEW TECHNIQUES

Lisa Turner, marketing director at the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing, said she was encouraged to find “solid research” backing up anecdotal evidence and the Institute’s own findings.

“These are exciting times for marketers,” she said. “Difficult economic conditions taught us to be agile, flexible, adopt new techniques and to make every marketing penny count. Now that confidence appears to have returned, it’s that ability to embrace change and to prove marketing’s worth that will bring the greatest rewards going forward.”

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About the author:

Brian Oliver is a business journalist and the MD and founder of UK strategic communications consultancy Focus Marketing Communications. 

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CONTENTED MARKETER Magazine is brought to you by content marketing specialist Focus Content Marketing

Visit our website at: Focus Content Marketing