In the realm of business-to-business marketing, there are many effective strategies to producing results that can be construed as successful marketing. Lead generation, being one of these strategies, has sometimes proven to be a struggle for marketers of all types, namely B2B. A new article from eMarketer reveals information gained from a study performed in August by Holger Shulze that shows that recently, creating compelling content on the web is one of the better strategies for provoking thought and brand awareness. It is through this successful content marketing that B2B marketers have found successful ways to generate leads for their businesses.

In their article that reports the findings of the report, eMarketer has created a bar chart that accurately displays the main goals of B2B content marketers for this year and last. In 2011, 62% of marketers saw lead generation as their top goal in content marketing, 37% said their main goal was thought leadership and market education, and 34% said that their main content marketing goal was to create more brand awareness. Now, in 2012 the numbers have gone from 62% to 68%, from 37% to 50%, and from 34% to 39%. This shows that many more marketers are relying on creative content marketing to fulfill the needs of their marketing campaigns.

Reporting another set of findings from BtoB Magazine, eMarketer writes,

Though engagement as a campaign end goal was only cited by 20% of respondents, as a tactic, it was vital for content marketing success. BtoB Magazine found that more than half (56%) of US B2B marketers used content marketing to foster greater audience engagement—necessary for drawing leads and generating greater brand awareness. Other top reasons B2B marketers turned to content marketing to achieve their campaign objectives included its ability to establish brand trust (47%) and offer marketers a way to create faster, more frequent touchpoints with customers and prospects (33%).

Significant effort is needed in order to create content that will “satisfy those multiple touchpoints.” Marketers have quite a bit of weight put on their shoulders to produce engaging content that will successfully draw in customers. Apparently, 94% of B2B technology marketers create their content from scratch, while only 39% report that they have curated third-party content, and 32% said that they have reused existing content.  Engagement is key in creating content from scratch, so it takes quite a bit of effort to organize and plan out how to engage viewers of said content.

The bottom line is this; eMarketer states that though potential and existing customers do somewhat rely on professional content to help them make decisions, what really draws them in is engaging and creative content on the web. After all, people are becoming less and less interested these days on the text they see on the web, and more so the imagery and interactive video. Engagement and subsequently lead generation relies on compelling and interesting content now, and not simply content that just works. It is important for marketers to realize this fact, so that successful content marketing can continue to take place.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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