Search Marketing Sage

It’s Christmas for content marketers! The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs have just released their annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report – and boy, is it a doozy.

Content marketing activities (such as content creation) take up a significant amount of B2B marketers’ time, according to a new report from Optify. Nearly 40% devote up to 15 hours a week to content marketing, while a further 30% spend up to 30 hours a week on content efforts.

Yet, what I found particularly interesting about the report was that the same marketers that spend so much time on creating content also think they aren’t knowledgeable enough about search marketing – a whopping 42% rated themselves as weak in the areas of SEO and PPC. Huh?

Content marketing and search marketing go hand in hand – something we discuss in our webinar How Content Marketing Drives Search and ROI Success. So, why is there such a huge disconnect between the time marketers spend on content creation and their knowledge of SEO?

Content should certainly always be written for customers – not just for search engines. Many star marketers are adept at creating well-performing content that generates leads; however, they may lack the technical SEO and keyword research knowledge to properly optimize that content to perform well in search engines. It’s important that marketers take their understanding of what their customers care about and translate that into search keywords for the content they’re creating.

So, while great content can spread like wildfire through social media (which, according to Optify’s report, 42% of marketers rate themselves as experts on), search engines continue to be the top place online where prospects will research products and services. If your content isn’t being found there, it doesn’t matter how much time you spend on content creation and lead generation – you’re still missing out on sales opportunities.