When the CMI team read the initial results from our newly-released B2B Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends research, one finding immediately jumped out at us:
Eighty-six percent of B2B marketers are using content marketing — a number that has declined from last year’s adoption rate of 93 percent.
At first glance, this stat seems startling — especially considering how popular and prominent our discipline has become over the last few years. But when you take a look at the underlying message it conveys, this decrease is actually an encouraging sign. Let me explain.
Using content for marketing isn’t necessarily content marketing
In previous years’ surveys, we defined content marketing as the following:
“The creation and distribution of education and/or compelling content in multiple media formats to attract or retain customers.”
This past year, we updated our definition in the survey to better reflect the core components of the discipline (this is now the official CMI definition):
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and ultimately drive profitable customer action.”
Truth be told, we were not expecting our revised definition to impact the adoption rate significantly. In fact, we predicted that this year’s research would show rates that remained consistent with last year’s findings. And, by adding a few new questions, we planned to explore the gap between true content marketing vs. using content in marketing efforts (a huge difference — and more on that below).
Still, it came as a bit of a surprise to us that, when marketers read the new definition, it seems they may have started to realize on their own that just because they were creating content, it didn’t necessarily mean they were practicing content marketing.
In short, we see the lower adoption rate of content marketing as an indication that the market is maturing. As an industry, we would much rather see fewer content marketers if it means those who remain are executing strategically — as opposed to flooding the market with those who refer to anything they do that’s content-related as “content marketing.” Not only would those poorly self-identified “content marketers” quickly grow frustrated by their unsuccessful efforts, but they would also likely remain closed off to truly using content marketing as a strategic practice, which is how it has always been meant to function.
Breaking down the definition of content marketing
As mentioned above, we restructured this year’s survey and added questions to help us evaluate how marketers are faring in all of the aspects needed to make content marketing a strategic approach. Here is how the definition breaks down into its component parts — and what we learned about B2B marketers’ understanding and execution of true content marketing.
Content marketing is strategic, and it requires a plan
Marketers understand the importance of having a plan, as 83 percent of B2B marketers indicate they have a content marketing strategy. How can content marketing truly be a “strategic approach” if you haven’t created a plan? (The answer: you can’t.)
Content marketing involves both the creation and the distribution of content
As I’m sure you have heard, your job is not done when your content has been created. You need to market your content for it to be successful. We have been looking at how marketers are using social media to distribute their content for years — and, on average, we’ve found that marketers are currently using six platforms to distribute content. Six doesn’t sound like a lot, but even this might be too many.
Furthermore, while social promotion can be sufficient to help you reach certain marketing goals, we also wanted to begin to track how many marketers are using paid promotion to boost the performance of their content. We found that 80 percent of B2B marketers are using paid promotion, and they use an average of three methods.
The content you create must, at the very minimum, be relevant and valuable
Year after year, content marketers have cited “producing engaging content” as their top challenge. It’s clear that those who create content marketing understand that “any ol’ content” just won’t do anymore.
Content marketing is consistently delivered
We wondered how many of the people who call themselves content marketers truly publish on a regular basis. Results from this new question revealed that 42 percent of content marketers publish daily or at least multiple times per week, with 90 percent publishing at least monthly. 
Your content needs to attract and retain an audience, with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action
This year we also evaluated the organizational goals for content marketing to see where in the buying process content marketing is making an impact. In the chart below, you can see the range of goals, with 75 percent of marketers associating content marketing and sales. 
You must have a clearly defined audience in mind for everything you create
While marketers are always talking about the importance of framing editorial for a specific audience, we wondered to what extent they do this. We discovered that marketers have an average of four distinct audiences (typically, the larger the organization, the more personas they target), and 84 percent of respondents indicated that they are working on — or will be working on — gaining a better understanding of their audience.
Where we go from here
Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be digging into the research, sharing additional findings and providing insights on how to move your content marketing program forward. But, for today, I think we should be proud as an industry that we are finally ready to progress to the next stage and approach content marketing in more mature and strategic ways. Onward and upward! If you are wondering where to go from here, here are a few suggestions:
- If you are getting started in content marketing, start with our Back to Basics series.
- If you want to learn more about how to continue to transform your organization when it comes to content marketing, read 6 Keys to Shifting an Enterprise to a Content Marketing Mindset.
- If you want to see more research and learn about the findings as we delve in, subscribe to our email updates.
Want more details on our latest B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends — North America report? Check out the full study on SlideShare.
Cover image by Petr Kratochvil via Publicdomainpictures.net
