Before we say anything, proper credit is due to Captora for the infographic we’re using here. Twenty minutes disappeared while we were studying it, so they clearly managed to do something right.
If you’d prefer our favorite bullet points, might as well start by saying…
№ 1: There’s a reason they used an infographic for this content. To be specific: for top-of-funnel traffic, infographics are the content offers which get the highest click-to-open rates (51.3%), with guides and e-books coming next at 46.2%, followed by blog posts with 44.1%. The surprising caboose here is video with 20.1%.
№ 2: Content definitely makes it easier for your customers. Across both B2B and B2C content marketing, 61% of consumers are likelier to buy from companies making their own custom content. And here’s an interesting comparative stat: 80% of decision-makers actually prefer brand content over typical advertising from the same brands.
№ 3: Conversions are overall higher for businesses who invest in their content marketing. This is true whether you’re talking about website conversion rate, email-marketing click-through rate (CTR), or for B2B peeps, the conversion rate from marketing response to marketing-qualified lead (MQL). Compared to no-content peeps, content-focused businesses are liable to see higher conversions for all three (roughly 5x, 2x, and 7x respectively).
№ 4: The ROI of content marketing tends to be highest when you make smaller investments of time producing each piece. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about B2B or B2C; it doesn’t matter what type of content you’re talking about (customer testimonials, blog posts, videos, and so on). Take any one of the above, produce three versions—high-powered, time-efficient, and somewhere between—and the ROI will be highest for the time-efficient version. Done is better than perfect, people!
№ 5: There’s no perfect strategy for generating and qualifying leads. This applies more to B2B, though not exclusively. For lead-gen, there’s a balancing act between Quantity of Leads, Quality of Leads, and Resources Required. So you might notice that live demos yield (by far) the highest-quality leads—or that options like free trials yield a higher quantity of leads. Valid observations, but the part you’ll have to figure out for yourself is the smartest use of your resources; surveys and your Contact Us page might not seem sexy, but they’re mostly passive and worth every second, even if they’re less effective overall.
№ 6: Blog posts get a lot more social shares (+46%) when there’s a question mark in the headline, versus no punctuation. Oddly specific, but we like it. Might as well mention that the optimal headline length for social sharing is 60 characters.
In the ROI department, content might never compete with paid advertising’s quick, clear, and sometimes explosive results. Content is a slow burn and a long play—but marketing is clearly better for including it, and that’s easier to see the further you zoom out.
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