Content Marketing and the Manufacturing Industry
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) released its 2015 findings from its study and survey of content marketers who work in the manufacturing industry. The survey found that many of the marketing trends in the manufacturing industry mirror the ones of other industries. The CMI reported that of all the marketing groups surveyed, those marketers in the manufacturing field reportedly had the hardest time tracking ROI and only 12% say they are successful at understanding the benefits of their marketing programs.
Along those lines, other key findings suggested that sales is their top marketing goal but only 48% of marketers in manufacturing actually use it as a metric or measure it against their marketing goals. While measuring ROI of any campaign can be a challenge, CMI says finding a way to judge effectiveness of marketing programs is paramount. In a recent article, CMI stated: “At CMI we talk about how the content you create needs to directly impact your business goal(s). If you don’t know how your content will move the needle for your business, it probably won’t.” CMI says that marketers in manufacturing need to “Find your single version of the truth so everyone working on content marketing is focused.”
The CMI research also showed that the use of video as a top tactic in the manufacturing industry has risen to 87% (versus 80% last year) but its usefulness is still a murky subject. This year while, video was used liberally by marketing professionals in manufacturing, but nly 65% (versus 71% in 2014) said it was effective. The interesting note was that CMI stated that the marketers in the manufacturing field used more video than any other group they studied.
Since video is used as a top content marketing tactic, it is not surprising that CMI found that YouTube is still a top social media platform for marketing professionals to disseminate information the in manufacturing industry. However, this year, LinkedIn surpassed YouTube as the number one social media network most often used, but its effectiveness dropped two percentage points. As a matter of fact, 66% of marketers noted this year (versus 59% last year) that YouTube is indeed more effective.
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