The B2B Content Marketing 2010: Professional Services Industry Report is based on research conducted by Junta42 and MarketingProfs in September 2010. I, for one, was surprised by the findings. I always assumed professional service firms were leaders in thought leadership marketing. They practically invented the discipline, after all. When I think of which companies I believe are most sophisticated and successful in using content to support sales and brand awareness, I think of McKinsey, Booz & Company and PwC. Turns out, professional service firms are not more likely to use content marketing—in fact, they trail their peers in a number of important ways.
First, let’s talk turkey: the composition of respondents. Of the 1,124 respondents, 112 self-identified as working for or owning a professional service firm. Respondents were very heavily weighted to smaller practices:
41% work for firms with fewer than 10 employees (we can assume some are sole practitioners)
39% work for firms with between 50 and 249 employees
9% work for firms with between 250 and 4,999 employees
8% work for firms with more than 5,000 employees.
Keep in mind, therefore, that this report reflects the experiences of small- to small/mid-size firms. Another way to consider this: 80% of PSF respondents hail from firms with fewer than 250 employees, versus 67% across all industries. For this reason, consider comparisons with great caution.
What do we know about PSF marketers?
Eight out of 10 professional service firms use content marketing as compared to nine out of 10 marketers across all industries. PSF marketers closely mirror the larger population in terms of adopting specific content marketing tactics. Their top five tactics are:
Social media (80% of PSF marketers use social media versus 79% of cross-industry average)
Articles (78% PSF adoption versus 78% cross-industry average)
eNewsletters (65% PSF adoption versus 61% cross-industry average)
In-person events (64% PSF adoption versus 62% cross-industry average)
Blogs (63% PSF adoption versus 51% cross-industry average)—an interesting anomaly.
Professional service firms are most likely to use LinkedIn (62% use the platform versus 51% on average across industries) to distribute their content via social media channels.
The content marketing confidence gap
Perhaps the most interesting findings have to do with “content marketing effectiveness.” Marketers were asked not only whether they used certain tactics, but also whether they found those tactics to be effective. For PSF marketers (as well as all other marketers) we found what we called a “confidence gap.” That is, while marketers use particular tactics in large numbers, those tactics are not always considered effective. For example:
80% of professional service firms use social media but only 35% believe it to be effective (defined as a rating of “4” or “5” on a 5-point scale)
78% use articles but only 48% rate that tactic as effective.
We also found certain tactics enjoyed high effectiveness ratings even though fewer marketers use them. For example, 64% of professional service firms use in-person events as a tactic but 85% believe that tactic is effective. (You can find much more detail in the report itself.)
Overall, PSF marketers are much more optimistic about the effectiveness of their content tactics than the cross-industry average. Even so, marketers are not using many measurement criteria to support this belief. The top five measurements PSF marketers use to analyze the success of their content marketing program are:
Qualitative feedback (53%)
Web traffic (52%)
Direct sales (52%)
Sales lead quality (44%)
Sales lead quantity (37%)
The use of measurement criteria among PSF marketers is modest at best.
Conclusions
Again, the report must be viewed carefully because the respondents represented smaller firms. Even so, it’s clear that content marketing as a discipline is still not yet well understood by most professional services marketers. The low effectiveness ratings for many content marketing tactics can be attributed to either a disenchantment with that tactic, simple confusion about how best to use the tactic or even how best to determine its effectiveness (I would wager the latter).
Another important point is this: the report provides a snapshot in time, and I tend to think the most value will come from viewing the trend line. Are marketers moving to certain tactics over others—particularly those viewed as more effective? Are they becoming more astute about measurement? Goals?
Are you a PSF marketer? What tactics do you find most effective? Do you experience the same “confidence gap”—using specific content marketing tactics but feeling perhaps they are not meeting your needs?
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