Manufacturing Content material Advertising–The Yr It Was and Trying Ahead

I simply obtained an advance copy of Manufacturing Content material Advertising Benchmark, Budgets, and Developments (Thanks, Amanda!) revealed by the Content material Advertising Institute (CMI). The timing couldn’t be any higher, since lots of my manufacturing and engineering shoppers are placing collectively their industrial advertising plans and budgets for 2022.

Discuss with my publish, Industrial Advertising: What Producers Must Know when you want a fast refresher.

Let’s first look again at 2021 to see what manufacturing entrepreneurs did through the 12 months. Because the saying goes, “Those that can’t bear in mind the previous are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana). After all, I’m not speaking about historical past repeating itself, however we do acquire helpful insights by trying again.

Put up-pandemic manufacturing content material advertising

Let me begin with a direct quote from CMI’s report as a result of they’ve summed it up very properly.

“This 12 months’s analysis urged that the pandemic awoke a sleeping large – content material advertising, that’s. With out in-person occasions and face-to-face promoting, many who had beforehand paid little consideration to content material advertising all of a sudden turned conscious of its energy.”

What sorts of content material did manufacturing entrepreneurs create in 2021? CMI surveyed producers from a spread of industries, useful areas, and firm sizes worldwide. They discovered that 86% of survey respondents used movies for content material advertising functions within the final 12 months.

Utilizing movies as a part of manufacturing content material advertising aligns very nicely with the way in which engineers and technical professionals use content material of their each day work. The 2021 State of Advertising to Engineers reported that 96% of engineers watch movies weekly for work. (Work-related movies and never the naughty variety. 😉)

It’s not simply that movies are standard with engineers; they produced the perfect leads to 2021 utilizing content material advertising, with how-to movies main the way in which at 52%.

In 2021, manufacturing entrepreneurs used content material to attain a wide range of targets. Lead era was not the #1 objective, although I imagine every part works collectively in producing higher high quality leads.

Budgeting and planning for 2022

Let’s look ahead to see what manufacturing content material entrepreneurs expect and planning for the following 12 months. After all, advertising budgets are all the time on the prime of everybody’s thoughts. There’s some excellent news right here – 64% count on their 2022 content material advertising funds to extend over their 2021 funds. That may be a important change from 2021 when solely 36% anticipated their content material advertising funds to extend over the earlier 12 months.

The place will manufacturing content material entrepreneurs spend their advertising {dollars}? Not surprisingly, a whopping 85% of the producers will spend money on movies in 2022. Occasions (digital, in-person, hybrid) is second place at 68%.

Right here’s one thing chances are you’ll not have anticipated, in a post-COVID-vaccine enterprise setting, funding in in-person occasions is predicted to extend by 56%, that’s greater than the will increase in Digital/digital occasions (27%) and Hybrid occasions (31%). Have we come a full circle?

Manufacturing content material entrepreneurs will face challenges in 2022. That has been the case for a number of years now, however the challenges have modified through the years. Within the 2021 survey, manufacturing entrepreneurs who outsource a minimum of one content material advertising exercise (Content material creation was the exercise outsourced most frequently at 80%) stated their greatest problem was discovering companions with sufficient subject experience (61%).

That is a vital discovering as a result of I’ve had conversations with producers annoyed with the standard of technical content material they get again when outsourcing to freelance copywriters. One other supply of confusion is a lack of information between content material creation and content material advertising. Simply publishing content material gained’t transfer the needle for industrial corporations.

That is my abstract of CMI’s report. Do obtain it for extra statistics. Keep tuned for future posts the place I’ll dissect and analyze vital sections from the 2022 Manufacturing Content material Advertising report.