Top 5 Content Types For The Manufacturing Industry in 2022

Are you a content, demand, or sales person at a manufacturing company that is curious how content can help you strategically reach your prospects (and close deals faster)? Keep reading. 

PathFactory, the leading content intelligence platform, has multiple manufacturing customers that are leveraging B2B content at all stages of the funnel to attract and guide buyers through their buyer journey. Like many businesses, manufacturing companies are being tasked to save on costs, hit targets, and “do more with less”.  Many of our customers implemented PathFactory to get more out of their content, and were thrilled at the growth in key metrics like pipeline generation, engagement, and MQL to SQL conversion.

Our tool provides these insights to our manufacturing customers in real time, but we wanted to share them more widely to help companies like yours get a head start on content creation and activation—because the best content will always include the topics your customers want to read about, in the format they prefer. PathFactory helps you find out what your buyers want, and this competitive edge has helped marketers like Steven Sanchez at Seagate grow their engagement time by 30%, and increase content views by 45%:

“By leveraging PathFactory to host a master track with engagement-based form strategy, the company was able to increase binge rate and overall view time which led to exponential growth for MQLs”

Top 5 content types by time spent in 2022

According to PathFactory data, shorter content in the form of data sheets or whitepapers are the preferred content types for audiences in the manufacturing industry. While e-book content is still engaged with, they would be considered longer-form content, and are usually a heavier lift compared to shorter, ‘snackable’ content. As part of your content strategy, it would be worth considering creating multiple shorter pieces of content, compared to one ‘big rock’ content asset.

1. Data Sheets (2 minutes, 51 seconds)
2. White Papers (2 minutes, 33 seconds)
3. Blog posts (2 minutes, 1 second)
4. Success stories / customer case studies (1 minute, 45 seconds)
5. E-books (1 minute, 19 seconds)

Top 5 content topics by time spent in 2022

1. High-Performance Computing (3 minutes, 51 seconds)
2. Computer Engineering (3 minutes, 48 seconds)
3. Internet of Things (3 minutes, 17 seconds)
4. Systems Engineering (3 minutes)
5. Artificial Intelligence (2 minutes, 55 seconds)

How has this changed since 2021?

While content types haven’t changed much since last year, there have been some major shifts in the topics that B2B buyers in manufacturing want to read about. In 2021, the top three content types were “Computer Engineering”, “Economy” and “Human Activities”. If we had to guess, this is indicative of people who were still very much considering the ripple effects of COVID-19—especially considering that “Collaboration” was also a topic that gained a lot of interest in 2021, with people spending slightly over 4 minutes consuming content on this topic, on average.

This is great–but where do I start?

Start where any company starts when they are trying to re-think how to create and activate their content. 

• Consider the content you have already. Take inventory of the content you have already: what’s performing well, what’s performing poorly (or could use a little refresh?). Don’t jump right into creating new content; most content can be repurposed to become evergreen with a little freshening up. Here are some tips to re-purpose your best content. We are happy to guide you through this if it’s your first time or it has not worked in the past.
• Find out what your highest-performing content assets are. Take a look at your highest-performing content assets. What do they have in common and, if you’re able to find out, what kind of personas or prospects are they attracting? Any insights you can get into your content will help you when deciding what new content you’ll need. Remember, performance isn’t measured in opens and clicks anymore.
• Evaluate if your lead gen strategy is working for you. Consider your demand creation strategy. Are you gating a piece of high-value content and hoping people will give you their email address for it? Check how that form is doing, and if you’re generating leads. Sometimes a change in form strategy can go a long way (for example, moving to a conditional- or engagement-based form gating strategy). Learn more about form gating here.

If you’re looking to ramp up your B2B content game, get in touch with one of our experts. They’ll be able to show you how content intelligence can help you rev up your revenue engine!