Content Propels Manufacturers’ Marketing Success

Content marketing is growing even more important to marketers who work in manufacturing. That’s one key finding from new research by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Seven out of 10 marketers who work for manufacturers say that content marketing has become more important over the last year.

Content Marketing Gets Crucial Jobs Done

The CMI study shows the big jobs that marketers get done with content.

• More than four out of five marketers (85%) grow brand awareness with content.
• Two out of three marketers (67%) build trust and credibility for their company.
• Two out of three marketers (66%) educate audiences with content.
• Two out of three marketers (65%) increase loyalty among existing customers.
• Three out of five marketers (59%) use content to launch new products.

Marketers’ Top Challenge: How to Align Content to Your Buyer’s Journey

Yet marketers face daunting challenges in the year ahead.

The biggest obstacle manufacturing marketers see in 2023 is aligning content to the buyers’ journey. To overcome this challenge, marketers need to:

1. Research buyer personas. Get insights into what buyers do when they’re offstage and out of sight. Interview 10 to 12 real customers. Include a mix of those who bought from your brand, bought from a competitor or stuck with the status quo.
   
   Find out what inspired buyers’ hunt for new suppliers, why buyers moved forward with a purchase, what obstacles they hit in the buying process, what they decided to buy and how the internal buying team worked. Yes, you can do your own buyer persona research.
    
2. Map content to your buyer’s journey. Consider multiple buyer’s journey models before you choose one to map the steps your buyer takes. Here are four buyer’s journey models you can use.
   
   Buyers take four steps during a carefully considered purchase. They identify a need, evaluate various suppliers, seek social proof to lower their risk and sign a deal. At each step in the journey, they ask different questions, and prefer content in different media.
   
   Here are brands that do a good job of mapping content to their buyer’s journey.
    
3. Capture your buyers’ exact questions. At each step in the buyer’s journey, buyers pose different questions and many go to Google for answers.
   
   About one out of six Google searches begins with a question. “How?” is the top question on Google, followed by “What?”
   
   Gather 1,000 or more questions that your customers are asking now. Here’s how to capture your customers’ top questions. Use text mining to figure out which questions are most important to customers, so you can create compelling content that answers customers’ questions.
    
4. Conduct a competitive content audit. A competitive content audit helps you see which content works best in your market and what doesn’t work. With an audit, you can identify open spaces to populate with new content topics.

A perennial challenge that many business-to-business marketers struggle with: how should Marketing work inside their organizations? About two out of three marketers (58%) report it’s tough to get sales and marketing aligned. More than half (56%) find challenges communicating with other teams in a siloed organization.

Take a big-tent approach to content marketing. Convene all the principals who have a say in content marketing.

Co-create your content marketing mission, strategy and message in a big tent. With co-creation, you’ll speed up content reviews and approvals since everyone gets aligned early in the year.

One way to leapfrog competitors is to write down your content marketing strategy, since only one out of three marketers has a written content strategy.

Content trends in the year ahead

Videos are hot content! Nine out of ten marketers (90%) are producing more videos this year. And more than half of marketers (57%) said videos produced their best results last year.

In the year ahead, marketers expect to do more in-person events. Almost half (44%) say they’re putting more emphasis on using content marketing to generate demand and sales.

Most marketers say they’re beating competitors with better quality content (80%) and by covering topics that their competitors don’t (74%). Almost half say they always or frequently differentiate content from competitors.

Where will marketers invest their content marketing budgets in the year ahead?

• Seven out of ten marketers (69%) will invest in owned media such as websites and email.
• Two out of three (67%) will invest in social media and communities. LinkedIn ranks first among social media used by manufacturers.
• Three out of five (61%) will use paid media such as social, search engine marketing and sponsorships.
• Three out of five (58%) will invest in events.
• Less than half (44%) will invest in earned media such as social media, news, speaking at events and guest blog posts.

The CMI’s 2023 study on manufacturers’ content marketing was sponsored by Marketing Profs B2B, GlobalSpec and 6Sense.

Need more information?
George Stenitzer, Founder and Chief Content Officer
Crystal Clear Communications
177 North Adams Street
Oswego, IL 60543
630-383-6047
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About the Author

George Stenitzer

A change agent, George Stenitzer founded Crystal Clear Communications to help companies leapfrog competitors with the right message. He leads B2B and content marketing workshops for the Association of National Advertisers, and writes a blog on marketing. He headed marketing and communications as Tellabs’ vice president for 14 years. At Fortune 100 Ameritech, he directed media relations, corporate positioning and financial communications, coaching the CEO on speeches, interviews and more. He served on the Business Marketing Association board. BtoB magazine twice named him a Best Marketer. The Content Marketing Institute named him a Content Marketer of the Year.