Study Finds Growing Number of Manufacturing Marketers Are Embracing Content

A new study finds content marketing is increasingly becoming an essential component to overall marketing efforts for manufacturing companies. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s “Manufacturing Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America” report, 85 percent of manufacturing marketers are leveraging content marketing. In addition, with a 72 percent increase over the 2016 study, 31 percent of manufacturing marketers have a clearly defined and documented content marketing strategy (up from 18 percent in the previous study). An additional 46 percent indicated they have a strategy, but it’s not documented. Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents indicated their organization was either “extremely committed” or “very committed” to content marketing. Twenty percent of manufacturing marketers rate their overall content marketing approach as “very successful” or “extremely successful.” “Last year, the results of our annual content marketing survey indicated that manufacturing marketers were stuck when it came to content marketing,” Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi said. Industrial Professionals Value Digital Marketing Resources A study released in Dec. 2015 found that professionals in the industrial sector are seeking out information on the web throughout the buying process. The “2015 Digital Media Use in the Industrial Sector” report published by IHS Engineering360 found that 71 percent of technical professionals visit at least six websites each week for work-related purposes. During the research analysis portion of the buying cycle, 85 percent said they utilize general search engines to find information. The majority (76 percent) also stated that they use the same resource during the comparison and evaluation stage.