By John Lavey | Hammock President and COO

What are companies that are very successful with content marketing doing right? What about companies that are less successful?

The B2B Content Marketing: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—a comprehensive survey of more than 1,000 companies of different sizes and across different industries—contains some useful data for healthcare marketers. It reveals the profile of B2B companies that are the most successful at using content marketing. The most successful companies view the following two qualities as most important:

• Extreme commitment to content marketing

• Realistic view regarding what content marketing can achieve

As for B2B companies experiencing average (or worse) results with content marketing, they view the most important focus as:

• Measuring content marketing ROI

These survey results are consistent with Hammock’s more than 25 years of experience. Success means undertaking content marketing as an ongoing business process, not a short-term campaign. Success also requires a clear and realistic idea of what content marketing can achieve for your company.

What can you realistically expect to accomplish with content marketing? You can make gains all across the customer journey, from the discovery of your company up to the point of sale. After a sale, you can help customers realize the promise of your product or service, and convert them into loyal happy owners.

Let me be clear: Measuring content marketing ROI is still important. The most successful content marketers rate measuring ROI as the next most important factor after commitment to content development and a realistic view about what it can accomplish.

But the most successful content marketers know that without a clear idea of what success looks like—or without a commitment to ongoing content development—measurement doesn’t matter.

Image Credit | iStock

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