October 16, 2017 | 1 minute read

41% of Digital Marketers believe blogs rank highest at bringing in qualified leads

Passle

In the Search Engine Journal report below, marketers will find various interesting findings. The one I've highlighted below is the stat that blogs continue to dominate in content marketing as an effective way of getting in front of the right people.

Also of interest are the metrics the surveyed marketers favour:

39% Engagement (comments, shares, likes)
31% Conversions
13% Traffic
9% Don’t know
6% Reach
2% Followers

It's great to see the "number of followers" metric rank so low. With so many robots out there, it's easy to gather large followings but they're often dead weight with no bearing on your success or failure. Better to spend your money on endeavours that have an impact on your brand or business instead!

As for engagement and conversions, they're as popular as I'd like, and to me utterly intertwined. I know that as a marketer I should be solely focused on conversions, but social media isn't just about that, it's also about growing a community, engaging your readers with great content, and building your brand's personality. Conversions are one thing, but you want to have happy customers too, and for that, they need to stay engaged with you even after they've signed on the dotted line!

Check out the full report below!

When asked what they thought the most effective aspect of digital marketing was, 56% said it’s a balanced mix of content marketing, SEO, social media, and link building. However, among the mix, our respondents believe that content marketing leads the pack. In fact, 53% state they have a documented content marketing strategy. Yet despite its popularity, digital marketers don’t allocate a big part of their budget to content marketing. 24% of respondents spend under $50 a month, while 20% spend $51 – $300 and 17% spend $301 – $1,000. On what types of content are most effective at bringing in qualified leads, blog posts top the list at 41%, with long-form content such as white papers and e-books coming in at a distant second (14%). Other content types include video (12%), webinars (7%), and podcasts (3%).