We've been given early access to Kentico's new Content Marketing Survey! The survey addresses some very interesting questions about the state of content marketing for businesses of all sizes, and highlights common mistakes that businesses make, using solid data to explain the right (and wrong) way to approach content marketing for your business.
The survey starts off with some good news for content marketers: Around 74% of respondents indicate that they trust information from a business as long as it seems objective and is not trying to sell them anything. This probably comes as no surprise to content marketers, but consumer attitudes can change significantly over time, so it's good to see the basis of content marketing is still sound in its approach.
As we dig further into the data however, it quickly becomes clear that there are some practices that you should definitely avoid.
Here's one to avoid; you know how you cringe when you get to the end of a corporate blog post, or even a heartfelt post from a small business owner, and there's a random placement for a product that doesn't even fit the content, shoehorned into the end of the post? This is what that feeling would look like if it were expressed by statistical math:
Nearly half of those surveyed were put off by the inclusion of a product plug at the end of a content marketing piece. Content marketing is part of the sales funnel, and its purpose is attracting and engaging your potential customers. It's not the right step in the funnel for direct conversion, as you can clearly see.
Content marketing really shines when you are viewed as a trustworthy expert by your audience, so don't alienate half of your readers! Let your content speak to why you're great at what you do, rather than shoehorning it in yourself at the end.
