B2B Custom Content Use and Effectiveness

Two new research studies are out. The first one was conducted by Junta 42 and looked into the propensity for B2B organizations to utilize custom content development for marketing initiatives. The second one is the CSO Sales Optimization Report for 2008. There are some interesting indications when you apply one to the other and consider the probability for meeting goals, given what participants in both are saying.

First, let's look at the Custom Content Study from Junta 42:

• Marketers spend over 29% of their budgets on custom content development
• The top 3 resources generated are eNewsletters, White Papers and Case Studies
• 42% of marketers increased their spend on custom content in 2008

Interesting to me is that email campaigns and articles were not on the list. Microsites were combined with Web Portals and came in 10th.

Now, let's take a look at the marketing findings in the CSO Sales Performance Optimization Report:

• 51% of sales responders said marketing needed to improve lead generation, although the results have improved from last year.
• 27.4% say marketing leads take up to five months to transition to sales
• Nearly 20% of companies have no idea what the life cycle of a lead is
• Revising and enhancing lead generation processes is at the top of the sales effectiveness list.
• Only 28% of closed deals are pegged as coming from leads generated by marketing
• 28.7% of sales says marketing-generated sales collateral needs improvement and 43% say it's merely adequate.
• The more specific you can hone in on your target profile, the higher your win rate gets.

Finally, the ability of companies to build a value-based relationship with prospects helped 80% of them either meet, or exceed, their lead generation efforts.

So, what does this all mean?

Content is extremely important, both for lead generation & nurturing and for sales effectiveness. Since buying cycles are long, this means companies need more engaging and high-value content to keep their companies top of mind during the interim. Sales also needs more targeted collateral and easier methods to find it.

Chances are, that your marketing department cannot keep up with the content demands to produce both high-value nurturing content and truly effective sales collateral.

But the Junta 42 report shows that B2B companies are willing and actively investing in content development. Which is great. It's also key to remember that a solid content strategy designed to generate momentum in the buying process improve the results found by the CSO Sales Performance Optimization Report.