Each year the brilliant folks at the Content Marketing Institute compile detailed reports about the trends in content marketing. This year they produced reports for B2B (Business-to-Business), B2C (Business to Consumer) and Nonprofits with very relevant information for content marketing writers. This information is pure gold for freelance writers since the businesses surveyed for each of the reports are the clients for content marketing writers. By understanding the needs, behaviors and challenges of potential clients, you can develop marketing strategies to help increase the number and quality of your content marketing writing clients.

The most positive finding is that 70 percent of B2B marketers have increased their content creation in the past 12 months with 27 percent producing significantly more content. The findings in the B2C arena are similar with 69 percent of B2C companies planning to increase or significantly increase the amount of content they want to create in 2015. As we all know that content marketing projects will only happen if there is funding in the budget and the findings are positive in this regard as well. 55 percent of B2B marketers plan to increase or significantly increase the amount of content marketing spending with only 2 percent planning to decrease spending in 2015.

But what does this increase in content mean that there will be more opportunities for freelance content marketing writers? All indications are that the answer is a solid YES. 32 percent of B2C and B2B marketers (an increase of 10 percent from last year) said that they find it challenging to find skill content marketing professionals. Additionally half of the B2B marketers said that one of their biggest challenges in content marketing is producing content consistently and 54 percent reported that they struggle to produce engaging content. All of these numbers point to significant opportunity for freelancers, both in terms for companies needing additional writers and needing the skills set of creating consistent and engaging content.

Here are five key takeaways from the three reports that are especially useful for content marketing writers:

[Note: If you are relatively new to content marketing writing focus on points 1, 2, and 3. Don’t let points 4,5, and 6 intimidate you.  Once you get your groove with content marketing writing you can think about the rest of the points.]

1. Focus on creating deliverables in addition to just blogs and articles. Blogs are often the first thing that comes to mind in terms of content, but the reports indicate that freelancers should expand their skill set to other deliverables as well. Interestingly both B2B and B2C marketers indicated that they are reducing the amount of blog content, but are increasing efforts for other deliverables. Both types of companies ranked social media content, newsletters, and articles on website, blogs, in person events, and videos as their top content marketing tactics. B2B companies said that they also rely heavily on case studies while B2C companies ranking photos/illustrations as one of their top deliverables.

2. Send Letters of Introduction to Nonprofit Organizations. Many writers assume that nonprofits are low paying or no paying markets. But many of the larger nonprofits have budgets for marketing and often pay competitive rates. With 61 percent of nonprofits using content marketing to increase trust in their organization and 69 percent reporting that they are creating more content than they did last year, freelancer writers should be sure to target nonprofits (especially those within their niche) as potential clients. This will be especially good news for writers who are hesitant to go into content marketing because they want to make a difference with their words.

3. Spend time researching which department owns the content marketing effort when sending LOI’s. I had mistakenly assumed that content marketing fell under the marketing umbrella at most companies and almost always start my search for the best contact for my LOI in this department. And if I can’t find a good contact specific to content marketing, then I will often target the marketing manager. But after reading this report, I will look a little  harder and wider to find the right person. However, if you can’t find the needle in the haystack then I still think that the marketing manager is a decent target since they most likely know who is responsible for content marketing and will hopefully forward your letter of introduction.

In B2C companies the C level execs are responsible at 27 percent of the companies, product marketing comes in at 19 percent with social media (13 percent), corporate communications (13 percent) and demand generation marketing (7 percent) also being the owners at some companies. The results in B2B companies are relatively similar with C-level (23 percent) and product marketing (19 percent) still leading, but the other departments rank a bit different with demand generation marketing (18 percent), social media (6 percent) and corporate communication (15 percent) rounding out the list.  And just to make it more complicated to find the right person, at 10 percent of B2B and 14 percent of B2B companies another department not on the list is responsible.

4. Add video to your area of expertise to increase your value to potential clients. Most writers, including myself, overlook video as a service we can provide to clients. However, every video needs a script and writers who become skilled in this type of writing can increase their income because 76 percent of B2C and 74 percent of B2B clients use videos as part of their content marketing strategy. Additionally, writers who learn basic video editing and production skills can increase their income even further. The storytelling skills that writers have perfected over the years can easily translate to video to help companies create effective video content. We already know how to find the compelling angle in a story, dig up the best sources and tell the story in an engaging manner. All of these tactics are essential to creating a great video.

5. Learn about content marketing strategy and offer writing content marketing strategy plans as a service. One of the most interesting findings of the studies was that most companies (48 percent of B2B and 50 percent of B2C) have a content marketing strategy but do not have it documented.The research went further to show that companies who have a documented strategy are more likely to rate their efforts more effective than those with a verbal strategy or no strategy.This presents another big opportunity for writers to offer additional services to clients.Writers who become skilled in content marketing strategy can help clients document their content marketing plans. And since this will increase the effectiveness of the content marketing efforts of your client, you will most likely land a higher volume of work for content creation since they are seeing positive results from their content marketing strategy.

6. Understand how to help your clients track ROI of content to increase your own income. The big bosses in the corner offices want to see quantitative proof that the companies content marketing efforts are impacting the bottom line. However, most companies are not skilled at tracking the metrics that will illustrate the ROI (Return on Investment) with 23 percent of B2C and 21 percent of B2C rating their efforts as successful or very successful. By learning about the metrics and how to track the results from your content and educating your clients, you can help build the case for increasing the budget for content and getting more work sent your way. I will be writing a post in the near future detailing exactly how to do this. On the flip side, if the metrics aren’t in the direction that the company would like, you can help guide the client into making modifications in strategy that will increase the ROI thus resulting in more work in the long term for you as well.

Have you seen any of these trends based on your experience? What did you think of the reports? Any other trends that you are noticing in content marketing?