Learn where to invest and pitfalls to avoid when crafting your 2022 marketing plan. 

Lisa Beets, Research Director for the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), conducts seven primary research studies annually, and one of her favorite focuses in manufacturing. This is in part to her days with Penton Media focused in HVAC, but also recognizing the need for data in this unique industry. 

During the episode, Lisa walks me through CMI's Manufacturing Marketing report and we discuss several datapoints that jumped out to us both, such as:

• 51% are challenged by overcoming a traditional sales and marketing mindset
• 51% struggle with creating valuable content as opposed to sales-oriented content
• 75% were asked to do more with the same resources in 2021
• 65% expect their 2022 content marketing budget to increase over 2021
• Marketers cited videos produced the best results for content marketing, with 53% citing how-to videos as the leading format
• When it comes to organic social platforms, LinkedIn came out on top as both the most popular at 93% and best at producing results.
• Facebook was the top paid social platform used at 76%, though LinkedIn produced the best results beating out Facebook by 8%
• The top ways to measure content performance were web-centric, including 73% citing website traffic and 69% citing website engagement

We concluded that there was a close synergy between the CMI Manufacturing Marketing Report and the TREW Marketing & Global Spec State of Marketing to Engineers report, and that both are helpful for marketers to educate and advocate for content marketing with internal leadership.