As we prepare to enter 2014, it’s time to take a look back at some of our biggest content marketing goals and priorities from the past year. According to Alimeter’s “State of Social Business Maturity” report for 2013, 57 percent of marketers said that content marketing was their top external social priority in 2013. The second and third top external social priorities were developing ongoing dialogue with customers (50 percent) and engagement with customers (43 percent).
The report went on to note that content marketing being a key objective shows that brands are looking to “tell stories, market, and create awareness, preference and even demand.” The year-in-review report, which was published in October 2013, shows that businesses are not only recognizing the power of content marketing, but also looking for ways to further enhance their use of it.
Heading into 2014
If reflections on 2013 show a growing confidence in content marketing, then a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs shows that content marketing is about to become ubiquitous. The survey, titled “B2B Content Marketing 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends–North America,” shows that 93 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing, an increase from 91 percent last year.
While learning about the technological advances in various platforms and methods of content marketing distribution may have slowed down some business’ enthusiasm to get on board, 2014 is looking to be the year in which the question is no longer whether your business is using content marketing, but rather how much of it is being used and which methods are effectively utilized.
“In 2014, the digital marketers that will be the most successful won’t be thinking from a ‘digital’ perspective,” wrote Forbes contributor Brent Gleeson in his recent column on 2014 content marketing predictions. “That will simply be one element of how they deploy and measure their big ideas.”
An Increase in Content Marketing Production
The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProf’s survey further shows that 73 percent of B2B content marketers are producing “more content than they did one year ago.”
Furthermore, the survey shows that content marketers have increasing confidence in most content marketing strategies, and marketers are using social media more frequently than they did last year.
All of this goes to show that as businesses and marketers are becoming more familiar with the methods and strategies that they can use to succeed in content marketing, the entire industry is beginning to become more confident in their initiatives. It is an exciting time to be involved in content marketing. While those in the industry will always be keeping an eye out for Google’s latest algorithm, the best news about content marketing is that it creates the sort of material that readers want to consume, whether through white papers, infographics, feature articles, blogs or social media interactions. There are as many methods of content marketing as there are great ideas to spread the word about your brand. Who knows what sort of content marketing strategies we’ll be looking forward to when 2015 comes around?
Only time will tell.
Edited by
Justin Reynolds
