Evolution, Effect & Analysis of 'Content Marketing'

‘C’ KING…CUSTOMER and CONTENT. Till few years ago, it was saying that only customers is king but now content has also taken place as king. Though, content was playing silent role till few years ago, so companies were giving significant merely to the customers but now content is also coming into the picture and companies are considering as priority along with customers. 

Content has been evolved due to extremely & rapidly penetrated by Social Media & Smartphone across the globe. Smartphone users already been crossed 1.4 million and Social Media is only the fastest tool in which your product can reach high across the globe. Social Media & Smartphone users will be increasing, content marketing will also be effectively & strategically increasing.

Content and Social Media both are strappingly integrated with each other, digital marketing is growing only due to the content marketing. Content marketing can provide estimated result when it is being executed at RIGHT TIME & RIGHT PLACE with precise message.

They key role of Content marketing is to generate an awareness, gathering traffic & lead of your product/brand. Further action, measurement, monitor, lead management and analysis have to do by team. From the below mentioned analysis, you will must find that there is vast gap in lead management and nurturing which is the revenue generation tool through content marketing. 

   

Key Facts & Analysis for Content Marketing: - Mentioned analysis is playing vital role before & after content development, management and measurement. SEO, Social Media, Blog, Lead Generation & Management, E-mail Marketing, Marketing Automation etc. are influencing factor and connected with content marketing either directly or indirectly:

Social Media:-

1	The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. (Source: Social Media Examiner)
2	96% measure number of fans and followers, 89% measure traffic, 84% measure mentions, 55% track share of voice, and 51% track sentiment. (Source: Awareness, Inc.)
3	62% of marketers said social media became more important to the marketing campaigns in the last 6 months. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
4	Companies that acquired customers from Facebook: B2C is 77% and B2B is 43%. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
5	Retail is the top industry that has acquired customers through Facebook. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
6	80% of US social network users prefer to connect to brands through Facebook. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
7	Brands have seen a 65% increase in user engagement of interactive content with the new Timeline.
8	Pinterest is retaining and engaging users as much as 2-3 times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in their history. (Source RJMetrics)
9	Over 80% of pins are repins. (Source RJMetrics)
10	Daily Pinterest users have increased by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012. (Source Mashable)
11	The quality of the average new Pinterest user (as defined by their level of engagement and likelihood to remain active) is high but declining. Users who have joined in recent months are 2-3 times less active during their first month than the users that came before them. (Source RJMetrics)
12	The top interests on Pinterest in the U.S. include crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, interior design, and fashion designers/collections. (Source Ragan.com)
13	80% of Pinterest's users are female. (Source comScore)
14	The best time to pin during the day is between 2 and 4 PM EST. (Pinerly Study)
15	The best time to pin in the evening is between 8 PM and 1 AM EST. (Pinerly Study)
16	Shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to make a purchase than visitors who arrive from other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. They will also spend 10% more on average. (Source Wayfair)
17	Pins related to trending topics see an average of 94% increase in click-throughs. (Pinerly Study)

SEO:-

1	Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010)
2	Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages. (HubSpot Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses, 2011)

Blog:-

1	Blog frequency impacts customer acquisition. 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
2	81% of marketers rated their blog as useful or better. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
3	46% of people read blogs more than once a day. (HubSpot Science of Blogging 2010)
4	Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes. (eMarketer, August 2010)

Lead Generation:-

1	Call to actions promoting ebooks get almost twice the click through rate as emails promoting webinars. (HubSpot)
2	Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10. (HubSpot)
3	48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. (MarketingSherpa)
4	68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion. (MarketingSherpa)
5	16% of landing pages are free of navigation bars. (MarketingSherpa)
6	48% of offers have multiple offers on them. (MarketingSherpa)
7	42% of offer-related graphics on landing pages are not clickable. (MarketingSherpa)
8	Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)
9	Those with over 40 landing pages got 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)

Lead Management:-

1	50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. (Source: Gleanster Research)
2	Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster Research)
3	79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
4	65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
5	79% of B2B marketers have not established lead scoring. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
6	Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. (Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report)

%	B2B organizations touch leads with lead nurturing on:
9	Daily basis
22	Weekly basis
34	Monthly basis
15	Qtr. basis
2	Annual basis    (Source: MarketingSherpa)

E-mail Marketing:-

1	Secrets is the most clicked lead nurturing subject line word (HubSpot)
2	Posts and Jobs are the most clicked subject line words (HubSpot)
3	Click through rate (CTR) is higher when using the recipients first name in the subject line over no use of the first name (HubSpot)
4	CTR is higher when using the recipients company name in the subject line over no company mention (HubSpot)
5	88% prefer to receive HTML emails vs. 12% who prefer plain text from companies (HubSpot)
6	65% prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text (HubSpot)
7	Saturday has the highest CTR at over 9% (Sunday is second just under 9%) (HubSpot)
8	6 AM has the highest CTR of any hour (HubSpot)
9	Clicks by button text: Click Here gets the highest % of clicks over Go and Submit (HubSpot)
10	Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. (Source: Jupiter Research)
11	Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. (Source: Aberdeen Group)

Marketing Automation:-

1	The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase by 50% by 2015. (Source: Sirius Decisions)
2	The average sales cycle has increased 22% over the past 5 years due to more decision makers being involved in the buying process. (Source: Sirius Decisions)
3	Nearly 2/3 of B2B marketers identified engaging key decision makers as their top challenge. (Source: Forrester Research)
4	89% of marketers said email was their primary channel for lead generation. (Source: Forrester Research)

Today, companies are being adopting content marketing tools as well as hiring especially content writer who write blogs, articles, PR, E-mail marketing campaign, various landing page etc. for B2B & B2C. However, it seems that there is a gap of ROI due to lack of proper & comprehensive measurement, analysis, monitor and implementation. To get an estimated ROI result, it must require to fulfill the gap. Because content marketing is cost-effective tool  and you can reach your product & build brand image across the globe 

Today, Customer is king for Company whereas Content is also king for Customers (Because content is playing vital role to attract the customers).

‘C’ king…CUSTOMER and CONTENT!!!