Measuring the return of investment or ROI of any marketing campaign to consumers (B2C) is not easy, according to a recent study/survey by the Content Marketing Institute. In fact, the Institute found only 23% of B2C marketers are successful at tracking the ROI and success of their content marketing programs. Additionally, 51% say “…measuring content effectiveness is a challenge, compared with 36% last year.” Part of this issue was also the challenge in finding professionals with a track record of being able to effectively track results.
The Content Marketing Institute reached out to more than 5,000 marketers, across 25 industries in 109 countries to ascertain attitudes when it comes to measuring the results of their marketing campaigns.
One of the most telling results of the survey found that 69% of marketers are implementing more content campaigns than ever before but more are not finding all of their programs to be very effective. When the Institute asked if marketers have confidence in their marketing campaigns, three years ago, 32% said they were effective; last year, 34% said they were effective. However 60% said they would increase their marketing budgets in the next fiscal year.
One of the more important findings of the study found that those marketers who had a written a content marketing strategy was helpful in tracking and generating results. Forty-three-percent of B2C marketers said written plans helped them in successfully tracking ROI, while the number who cite measuring content effectiveness as a challenge drops to 33%.
Last year, many marketers claimed to have a strategy but nearly half had not written it down. As a matter of fact, 50% claimed they had a “verbal” marketing strategy but nothing in ink (so to speak). The 27% who said they had written their strategy down and documented it were much more effective.
Another interesting result is when asked what social media sites the B2C marketers used, Facebook came out as number one – in fact 94% said they were using the social network to promote their products. The Institute noted: Fewer than 45% of B2C marketers said they use the following social media platforms: Tumblr (29%), Foursquare (28%), Vimeo (27%), Flickr (26%), Vine (21%), SlideShare (20%), StumbleUpon (20%), and SnapChat (15%).
Likewise, when asked what methods B2C marketers were using, online versus traditional advertising, the results showed a growing taste for content marketing and other newer methods of promotion:
“Although the percentage of B2C marketers who use “newer” paid methods such as native advertising and content discovery tools isn’t very high yet, 40% to 42% of those who use them say they are effective. This is a higher confidence rating than B2C marketers give for the more established method of “traditional online banner ads.”