The 3 Crucial Stages of an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Author: Richard Adhikari / Source: E-Commerce Times

There are three key stages of implementing a content-based lead generation strategy — content development, targeting and prospect nurturing — that marketers should take into account. However, they often focus on one stage more than the others, missing out on opportunities for optimization.

That is one of the findings of a study released Tuesday by NetLine, a B2B content syndication lead generation network that processes more than 700 thousand leads monthly across 300 industry sectors.

Homing In on the Right Target

In the past year, 65 percent of lead generation campaigns excluded 17 percent of the active marketing audience, comprised of influencers outside the C-suite, the study found.

Targeting professionals outside of senior leadership can build greater credibility throughout the buying committee, according to NetLine.

Among the study’s other findings:

• Professionals in the advertising/marketing industry accounted for the highest volume of content consumption by industry sector, 16 percent;
• Senior-level leadership, including vice presidents and C-level executives, accounted for less than 15 percent of consumption volume;
• Marketing professionals who self-identified as having a general management job function drove 55 percent of total consumption volume;
• Only 40 percent of campaigns run in the past 12 months did not apply industry-specific targeting; and
• Just 19 percent of survey respondents identified a single target industry — most commonly retail and consumer goods, or computers and technology.

Balls in the Air

“Most companies recognize the need to focus on these three [content marketing] stages,” said Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research.

“To the best of their ability, they’re trying to juggle them all. How well they succeed depends largely on their resources,” she told the E-Commerce…

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