What's New in Tech Content Marketing?

Tech content marketing stats for 2019 from CMI - spacebarpressDOTcom

CMI put out their latest technology industry content marketing report and it’s always interesting to see what they find out about the circuitous route B2B tech sales and marketing take.

Read more of CMI’s report here (link)

Interesting tech content marketing stats

I’m using “interesting” in the Confusian sense, since tech content marketing affects so many different people: technical copywriters like me, product managers & owners, SVPs, CMOs, and so on.

80% of tech marketers work with sales for research

Yay! The apparent rift between sales and marketing seems to be thawing. Content marketers know that sales teams can be a good source of research on their customers and prospects, so it’s good that they’re speaking to them more often. It’s not as surprising as you might think, given how the customer success paradigm is popular in the B2B technology world. But it’s a good stat and I’ll take it as a win.

40% of tech content marketers are “mature”

Another stat that’s not as surprising, but when you dig in to how CMI defined ‘mature’, it makes more sense. For this research, CMI defined it as “Finding success, yet challenged with integration across the organization.”

This is why I found that previous stat heartening; it meant that teams are starting to talk more to each other about content marketing. They’re not just telling external teams they need something, but rather, they’re sharing the reasons they need it and how it benefits the company as a whole. Teams outside of content marketing teams understand that better and are more willing to participate in and aid content marketing efforts with context.

57% prioritize delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time

Wait, what was that? Most tech content marketers aren’t prioritizing content for customer journeys? That explains a lot.

As a B2B tech marketer, you should know you’ve got different audiences and roles at each prospect and lead. There’s the person who actually uses your products, the manager that approves the license purchase, the decision maker that signs on the dotted line of the contract, and the various layers in between that read your content and pass it along to someone else. Each one of these people needs different content at different times because they’re at different stages of the buying journey.

Yet if you insist on pushing the content YOU want to publish and ignore what your audience tells you, then it’s no wonder you’ve got high churn rates. Or why 84% of you are using paid advertising to distribute your content. You’re not letting your audience guide your content production efforts and you’re forcing it on them.

58% of tech content marketers are spending more on content creation

Right on. Keeps people like me in business. 👏🏼

Except, only 35% of you are looking for people with actual writing skills (that’s the #2 skill you’re looking for, behind marketing skills). You can spend as much as you want on tech content marketing, but if you’re not investing in anyone who can actually write, such as a copywriter or technical copywriter, then you’re wasting your money. You need to hire someone who can do copywriting, as that’s a very specific branch of writing. Here’s a quick test to see if you’re working with a copywriter, a journalist, or someone who thinks they can write. Ask them:

“What’s the difference between content and copy?”

  • Copy is a category of “strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action.”
  • Content is a type of writing influenced by journalism that aims to educate and inform readers, without necessarily driving them to an action.

A content marketing copywriter is the best of both worlds, since:


Content without copywriting is a waste of good content

Sonia Simone, Co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Copyblogger

A good content marketing copywriting knows how to do both, educate and persuade, building rapport with readers without feeling ‘sales-y’, and converting prospects into customers (or customers into raving fans & evangelists).


I could talk about more of the stats in CMI’s report (and I might just do that in future posts), but for now, these are the ones that really piqued my interest.

How about you, what numbers surprised you in the Tech Content Marketing report this year? Hit the comments and let me know.